Magic And Mayhem: Spells Keep Blitz Away From Oxford In Michael McCartney’s Debut Novel

 Michael D. McCartney has just released his debut historical fantasy novel “A Subtler Magic” (Grapes & Wrath Press, 2026), set largely in London and Oxford during the Blitz of World War II.

 “I’ve tried to make the story feel deeply historically real — as if the readers are getting to learn some secret history about what really happened,” McCartney said during a recent email interview.

 Here’s the idea that sparked the atmospheric novel: Back in 2003, when McCartney was studying at the University of Oxford in England, he pondered why the city of Oxford hadn’t been targeted by Hitler’s bombs. One evening, overhearing a conversation in a pub, an answer came to him: “Oxford had been magically protected” by a theoretical college that taught sorcery. The wartime dean of the imaginary college was one Dame Beryl Llyn — a character McCartney based on his great-great grandmother, who died in 1953. Working with Dame Beryl was her adopted granddaughter, Dame Vivian, who McCartney based on his grandmother.

 “A Subtler Magic” features characters who perform acts of magic or, as it is dubbed at Oxford, “thaumaturgy.”

 At the time that McCartney conceived of his story, he was studying Medieval mystery plays, the Arthurian Legend and the history of the occult. McCartney, in fact, studied at Oxford several times — as an undergraduate and then later as an independent graduate student at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He also completed half of his master’s degree from Middlebury College at Lincoln College, Oxford. And finally, he took two semester-long online writing courses through the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. In other words, he steeped himself in the world that he describes — and creates — in “A Subtler Magic.”

 “A Subtler Magic” took McCartney three years to write. He compares his writing to archaeology. “While I tend to have a strong idea of plot, my characters often have ideas of their own,” he says. “I sometimes feel like I catch a glimpse of them and then begin to dust the sand off of them or chip them out of the stone only to discover that they’re something quite different.” 

 The novel opens in London in October when Vivian, a 30-year-old ambulance driver, is on her way to a dance on a “dark and stormy” night. That autumn German bombs drop on the city at night when the skies are clear. Not to give anything away, but the evening ends in horror. The scene soon switches to Oxford, where the aged Dame Beryl Lyn “found the wartime emptiness of Carmarthen Hall, of Oxford itself, oppressive.” Going out to mail a letter on that chilly night, Dame Beryl keeps her eye on the skies, which are ominously clearing. As we know, clear skies mean bombs. When Oxford is threatened, Beryl climbs way up into the cupola of the Radcliffe Camera, an iconic 18th century building at Oxford. There, overlooking the city, she performs her magic to keep the bombs at bay.

 “The thrum of the spell reached out, east and west and south, its caliginous tendrils snaking their way past chimneys and towers and spires, searching, questing for the river,” McCartney writes in his lush and descriptive prose. Due to Beryl’s spell, Oxford is soon invisible, engulfed in fog. Safe.

 McCartney, who lives in West Yarmouth, moved to Cape Cod in 2018. He is a native of Harveys Lake, Penn., outside of Wilkes-Barre. He became acquainted with many in Chatham during his three-year stint as circulation supervisor at the Eldredge Public Library, a job he left earlier this year. Prior to that he taught at a STEM high school in Maine where he was chair of English and performing arts. Today, he is a full-time author, writing every day, mainly between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. when his children are in school.

 “It’s been a long road to get my book out there,” he says, adding that he nearly gave up several times.

 McCartney has been teaching courses on literary history and daily life in history for three years through the Friends of Snow Library’s Lifetime Learning series. For his fall class, “Weaving a Subtler Magic,” he’ll focus on the two research interests that helped him to build his book. The first session will focus on literature — the origin and evolution of the Lady of the Lake and her role in the book. The second session will focus on history — daily life for Londoners in the Blitz and its role as a setting in his book.

 McCartney’s course, “Weaving a Subtler Magic,” through the Fall 2026 Lifetime Learning series, will be held on Monday, Sept. 28 and Monday, Oct. 5 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. The classes will be offered simultaneously in the Craine Room at the library and on Zoom. They will also be recorded. Register online through friendsofsnowlibrary.org/lifetime-learning-program/ or in-person at the library at 67 Main St., Orleans. A donation of $10 is suggested.

 “A Subtler Magic” is available locally at Where the Sidewalk Ends Bookstore in Chatham, Sea Howl Bookshop in Orleans and Brewster Bookstore.