Anne Rice

At the centre: Toby O'Dare — Lucky the Fox — a contract killer of underground fame. A soulless soul, a dead man walking... He's fallen far from grace, and lives under a series of aliases. Lucky takes his orders from someone he calls 'The Right Man', someone whose name and allegiances he doesn't know. When the novel opens, the time is the present. The place is Riverside, California, the Mission Inn. For Lucky, it is his place of solace; he can be there without disguise. This time, he's been sent on an assignment to kill. Into his nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions, comes a mysterious stranger, a seraph, who offers him a chance to save lives, rather than destroy them. Lucky, who grew up in a New Orleans, son of an alcoholic mother and a murdered father, long ago dreamt of being a priest, craving rituals, taking refuge in history, books and lute music — but instead came to embody danger and violence — now seizes his chance. He is lifted in (angel) time and carried back through the ages to thirteenth-century England, to a dangerous world, where Jews live an uneasy existence, their money coveted and protected by the crown for their function as money-lenders, unjustly despised by the rest. Into this primitive, treacherous setting, where accusations of ritual murder have been made against innocent Jews, and children have been found dead or missing, O'Dare begins a journey of salvation that leads him from the medieval villages of England to the cities of London and Paris as his quest becomes a story of danger and flight, loyalty and betrayal, selflessness and love.

The leader of the vampire coven, the Theatre des Vampires in Paris was snatched from the steppes of Russia as a child, and sold as a slave in Renaissance Venice. From there Armand's story spans several hundred years, culminating in a visit to New Orleans at the end of the twentieth century. Here his victims await either death or immortality.

Herod Antipas rules Galilee, Pontius Pilate is the new Roman governor of Judea, and the Roman Empire rules the world. These are turbulent times for Israel, a troubled land of turmoil and insurrection. Now in his thirtieth year, Jesus and his tight-knit family endure a long, dusty winter of disruption and chaos. Whispers of his virgin birth still persist, and while he struggles with the demands of his family and the weight of his great destiny, those around him wait for some sign of the path he will take. But this quiet man of Nazareth is instead called upon to found a ministry which will utterly transform an unsuspecting world …

Anne Rice's vivid and hugely ambitious continuation of the life of Christ the Lord tells of the last winter of Jesus' «hidden years» — his thirtieth — and ends with His first great miracle — the turning of water into wine at the marriage of Cana. Based on the Four Gospels and scrupulously researched.

Once a proud Senator in Imperial Rome, Marius is kidnapped and forced into that dark realm of blood, where he is made a protector of the Queen and King of the vampires-in whom the core of the supernatural race resides. Through his eyes we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Emperor Constantine, the horrific sack of the Eternal City at the hands of the Visigoths, and the vile aftermath of the Black Death. Ultimately restored by the beauty of the Renaissance, Marius becomes a painter, living dangerously yet happily among mortals, and giving his heart to the great master Botticelli, to the bewitching courtesan Bianca, and to the mysterious young apprentice Armand. But it is in the present day, deep in the jungle, when Marius will meet his fate seeking justice from the oldest vampires in the world...

After 6,000 years of horrifying stillness, Akash, mother of all vampires and Queen of the Damned, has risen from her sleep to let loose the powers of the night. But her monstrous plan for ruling the worlds of the living and the undead must be stopped before she destroys mankind, and it falls to the evil vampire Lestat to fight her all-encompassing evil — for it is he who challenged her power by waking her from sleep.

Belinda is the ultimate fantasy: a golden-haired object of desire, fresh and uninhibited. But to Jeremy Walker, a handsome and famous 44-year-old illustrator of children's books, this incredibly seductive woman is a forbidden passion...because Belinda is only 16. «Who was she?» That was the first thought that came into my mind when I saw her in the bookstore. Who was she really? She's Belinda. She's sixteen years old. She's the object of one man's ultimate fantasy. And she's one of the most «uniquely sensual and provocative» heroines to emerge from the «fearless» imagination of New York Times bestselling author Anne Rice.

The reader is held captive, and, ultimately, seduced. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Ramses the Great has awakened in Edwardian London. Having drunk the elixir of life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied. Although he pursues voluptuous aristocrat Julie Stratford, the woman for whom he desperately longs is Cleopatra. And his intense longing for her, undiminished over the centuries, will force him to commit an act that will place everyone around him in the gravest danger....

In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life — the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood. Anne Rice's compulsively readable novel is arguably the most celebrated work of vampire fiction since Bram Stoker's Dracula was published in 1897. As the Washington Post said on its first publication, it is a 'thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination... sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable'.

From the author of the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles comes a huge mesmerizing novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries. Two people with special powers are drwan together and set out in a passionate alliance to unlock the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift. As the strane saga is played out, a world of witches is created that will fascinate readers for years to come.

In Miami, 1992, a tropical garden of a city where corruption pulses beneath the lush surface is the perfect city for a vampire. Yet Lestat — hero, rock star, incorrigible seducer and the most powerful and sensual vampire of them all — prowls this savage garden in desperate misery. Restlessly pursuing the mystery of his dark existence, Lestat yearns to think, breathe and feel as a man, free of his nightmare immortality. When, stalked in his turn by the only creature able to grant his desire, Lestat rashly seizes the chance. While the Body Thief, cloaked in Lestat's immortal powers, lays a trail of carnage across America and the Caribbean, Lestat himself is abandoned to the fragility of human life, and discovers that a mortal body is no fit receptacle for a vampire's soul. Rejected by the other vampires, a tormented and appallingly vulnerable Lestat is forced to seek human help to recover his vampire self; help he abuses unforgivably when, in a mesmerizing climax, he succumbs to the basest urge in any nature.

On the verandah of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking. And the witching hour begins...Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches — a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being. A hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult across four centuries, The Witching Hour could only have been written by the spellbinding bestselling author of The Vampire Chronicles.

Ramses the Great has reawakened in opulent Edwardian London. Having drunk the elixir of life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied. He becomes the close companion of a voluptuous heiress, Julie Stratford, but his cursed past again propels him toward disaster. He is tormented by searing memories of his last reawakening, at the behest of Cleopatra, his beloved queen of Egypt. And his intense longing for her, undiminished over the centuries, will force him to commit an act that will place everyone around him in the gravest danger...

In her new novel, perennial bestseller Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative — her Vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches — to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets. Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing rooms, bright, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelgänger, “Goblin”, a spirit from a dream world that Quinn can’t escape and that prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself. As the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Quinn’s boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans, from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the spectre that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds. A story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny, «lackwood Farm»is Anne Rice at her mesmerizing best.

Educated in the Florence of Cosimo de' Medici, trained in knighthood at his father's mountaintop castle, Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly splendor and country pleasures — a world suddenly threatened when his entire family is confronted by an unholy power. In the midst of this upheaval, Vittorio is seduced by the beautiful and sinister vampire Ursula — setting in motion a chilling chain of events that will mark his life for eternity. Against a backdrop of the wonders — both sacred and profane — and the beauty and ferocity of Renaissance Italy, Anne Rice creates a passionate and tragic legend of doomed young love and lost innocence.

In this sixth installment of «The Vampire Chronicles», Rice brings readers the story of the eternally young Armand. Introduced as a minor player in the classic «Interview With the Vampire», Armand now takes his place center stage as he relates his 500-year history. Features an exclusive interview with Rice.

In this first of a series, David Talbot, vampire survivor of «Memnoch the Devil», calls forth Pandora, last seen in «Queen of the Damned», to tell her own extraordinary tale. Once a mortal girl in ancient Rome, she was given immortality by Marius, her lover and the dark genius of the Lestat novels.

Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead. The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life. Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans. She carries us back to her mortal girlhood in the world of Caesar Augustus, a world chronicled by Ovid and Petronius. This is where Pandora meets and falls in love with the handsome, charismatic, lighthearted, still-mortal Marius. This is the Rome she is forced to flee in fear of assassination by conspirators plotting to take over the city. And we follow her to the exotic port of Antioch, where she is destined to be reunited with Marius, now immortal and haunted by his vampire nature, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift as they set out on the fraught and fantastic adventure of their two turbulent centuries together.

In a new and major novel, the creator of fantastic universes o vampires and witches takes us now into the world of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the destruction of Solomon's Temple, to tell the story of Azriel, Servant of the Bones. He is ghost, genii, demon, angel--pure spirit made visible. He pours his heart out to us as he journeys from an ancient Babylon of royal plottings and religious upheavals to Europe of the Black Death and on to the modern world. There he finds himself, amidst the towers of Manhattan, in confrontation with his own human origins and the dark forces that have sought to condemn him to a life of evil and destruction.

In her latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice brings readers the story of Armand — eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel — who first appeared in his dark glory in «Interview with the Vampire». Moving through scenes of luxury, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to 19th-century Paris and toady's New Orleans, this romantic hero is forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.

Triana, a beautiful young woman who dreams of becoming a great musician, falls prey to the demonic Stefan, the tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who seduces and manipulates her, drawing her into the dark side of her own nature and then into the cruel past.

Set in New Orleans before the American Civil War, this is the story of the «Free People of Color», descended from slaves, and their French and Spanish owners. Among their number is Marcel, an artist in the making, also his gentle sister Marie and Anna Bella, a beautiful young courtesan.

They were the castrati-male sopranos whose glorious voices brought them adulation throughout Europe even as they were despised as monsters. For Tonio Treschi, the child of Venetian nobility, kidnapped and castrated in a murderous family conspiracy, only one thing would soothe his soul-revenge!

Lestat, the vampire-hero, enchanter and seducer of mortals, speaks in the new book in the bestselling Vampire Chronicles that began with Interview with the Vampire and continued with The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned. For centuries Lestat has been a courted prince in the dark universe of the living dead. But now he is alone, and everything he has come to believe in is called into question. Soon he will embark on the most dangerous enterprise he has ever undertaken...