Staff Picks
The Queen of the Vampires: Anne Rice
- Kristin A.
- Monday, December 13, 2021
Collection
Anne Rice, the queen of the vampires and Gothic literature, has passed away at the age of 80. She was best known for her best-selling series, the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches. "Interview with the Vampire" was made into a successful feature film in 1994, helping to reignite interest in the vampire genre, which continues to this day.
Angel Time
The Songs of the Seraphim
Published in 2009
A seraph offers contract killer Toby O'Dare a chance to save rather than destroy lives. Carried back through the ages to thirteenth-century England, to dark realms where accusations of ritual murder have been made against Jews, where children suddenly die or disappear, O'Dare begins his perilous quest for salvation.
Blackwood Farm
Published in 2002
In her new novel, Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative--her vampire legend and the lore of the Mayfair witches--to give readers a world of classic deep South luxury and ancestral secrets.
The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned
Published in 1989
Doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell his insatiable hungers, Ramses the Damned turns up in Edwardian London as Dr. Ramsey and begins a romance with heiress Julie Stratford, but his cursed past again propels him toward disaster.
Of Love and Evil
The Songs of the Seraphim, a Novel
Published in 2010
Toby O'Dare, former government assassin, is summoned by the angel Malchiah to fifteenth-century Rome--the city of Michelangelo and Raphael, of Leo X and the Holy Inquisition--to solve a terrible crime of poisoning and to uncover the secrets of an earthbound restless spirit, a diabolical dybbuk.
Prince Lestat
The Vampire Chronicles
Published in 2014
A stunning departure, a surprising and compelling returnFrom Anne Rice, perennial best seller, single-handed reinventor of the vampire cosmology-a new, exhilarating novel, a deepening of her vampire mythology, and a chillingly hypnotic mystery-thriller. "What can we do but reach for the embrace that must now contain both heaven and hell: our doom again and again and again" -from The Vampire Lestat Rice once again summons up the irresistible spirit-world of the oldest and most powerful forces of the night, invisible beings unleashed on an unsuspecting world able to take blood from humans, in a long-awaited return to the extraordinary world of the Vampire Chronicles and the uniquely seductive Queen of the Damned("mesmerizing" -SF Chronicle), a long-awaited novel that picks up where The Vampire Lestat ("brilliantits undead characters are utterly alive" -New York Times) left off more than a quarter of a century ago to create an extraordinary new world of spirits and forces-the characters, legend, and lore of all the Vampire Chronicles. The novel opens with the vampire world in crisisvampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the DamnedOld vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto, and San Francisco. As the novel moves from present-day New York and the West Coast to ancient Egypt, fourth century Carthage, 14th-century Rome, the Venice of the Renaissance, the worlds and beings of all the Vampire Chronicles-Louis de Pointe du Lac; the eternally young Armand, whose face is that of a Boticelli angel; Mekare and Maharet, Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca; and Marius, the true Child of the Millennia; along with all the other new seductive, supernatural creatures-come together in this large, luxuriant, fiercely ambitious novel to ultimately rise up and seek out who-or what-the Voice is, and to discover the secret of what it desires and why And, at the book's center, the seemingly absent, curiously missing hero-wanderer, the dazzling, dangerous rebel-outlaw-the great hope of the Undead, the dazzling Prince Lestat From the Hardcover edition.
The Vampire Armand
Published in 1999
The vampire's story, from his boyhood in Kiev, his enslavement to a vampire masquerading as a Venetian painter, and his dedication to his two mortal children.
The Wolf Gift
Published in 2012
When Reuben, otherwise known as Sunshine Boy, was sent to write a piece about the uncertain future of the giant house on the cliff, he wasn't expecting to warm so instantly to elegant heiress Marchent Nideck. Nor was he expecting to get caught up in a violent attack which will leave him changed in ways he could never have imagined.
The Wolves of Midwinter
Published in 2013
It is the beginning of December. Oak fires are burning in the stately flickering hearths of Nideck Point. It is Yuletide. For Reuben Golding, now infused with the wolf gift and under the loving tutelage of the Morphenkinder, this Christmas promises to be like no other . . . as he soon becomes aware that the Morphenkinder, steeped in their own rituals, are also celebrating the Midwinter Yuletide festival deep within Nideck forest. From out of the shadows of the exquisite mansion comes a ghost - tormented, imploring, unable to speak yet able to embrace and desire with desperate affection . . . As Reuben finds himself caught up with the passions and yearnings of this spectral presence and the preparations for the Nideck town Christmas reach a fever pitch, astonishing secrets are revealed, secrets that tell of a strange netherworld, of spirits - centuries old - who possess their own fantastical ancient histories and taunt with their dark, magical powers.
Blood Communion
A Tale of Prince Lestat
Published in 2018
In this spellbinding novel, Lestat, rebel outlaw, addresses the tribe of vampires, directly, intimately, passionately, and tells the mesmerizing story of the formation of the Blood Communion and how he became Prince of the vampire world, the true ruler of this vast realm, and how his vision for all the Children of the Universe to thrive as one, came to be. The tale spills from Lestat's heart, as he speaks first of his new existence as reigning monarch--and then of his fierce battle of wits and words with the mysterious Rhoshamandes, proud Child of the Millennia, reviled outcast for his senseless slaughter of the legendary ancient vampire Maharet, avowed enemy of Queen Akasha; Rhoshamandes, a demon spirit who refuses to live in harmony at the Court of Prince Lestat and threatens all that Lestat has dreamt of. As the tale unfolds, Lestat takes us from the towers and battlements of his ancestral castle in the snow-covered mountains of France to the verdant wilds of lush Louisiana with its lingering fragrances of magnolias and night jasmine; from the far reaches of the Pacific's untouched islands to the 18th-century city of St. Petersburg and the court of the Empress Catherine . . .
Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis
Published in 2016
"From Anne Rice, conjurer of the beloved best sellers Interview with the Vampire and Prince Lestat, an ambitious and exhilarating new novel of utopian vision and power "In my dreams, I saw a city fall into the sea. I heard the cries of thousands. I saw flames that outshone the lamps of heaven. And all the world was shaken."--Anne Rice, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis At the novel's center: the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, hero, leader, inspirer, irresistible force, irrepressible spirit, battling (and ultimately reconciling with) a strange otherworldly form that has somehow taken possession of Lestat's undead body and soul. This ancient and mysterious power and unearthly spirit of vampire lore has all the force, history, and insidious reach of the unknowable Universe. It is through this spirit, previously considered benign for thousands of vampire years and throughout the Vampire Chronicles, that we come to be told the hypnotic tale of a great sea power of ancient times; a mysterious heaven on earth situated on a boundless continent--and of how and why, and in what manner and with what far-reaching purpose, this force came to build and rule the great legendary empire of centuries ago that thrived in the Atlantic Ocean. And as we learn of the mighty, far-reaching powers and perfections of this lost kingdom of Atalantaya, the lost realms of Atlantis, we come to understand its secrets, and how and why the vampire Lestat, indeed all the vampires, must reckon so many millennia later with the terrifying force of this ageless, all-powerful Atalantaya spirit"-- Provided by publisher.
Ramses the Damned
The Passion of Cleopatra
Published in 2017
From the iconic and bestselling author of The Mummy and The Vampire Chronicles, a mesmerizing, glamorous new tale of ancient feuds and modern passions. Ramses the Great, former pharaoh of Egypt, is reawakened by the elixir of life in Edwardian England. Now immortal with his bride-to-be, he is swept up in a fierce and deadly battle of wills and psyches against the once-great Queen Cleopatra. Ramses has reawakened Cleopatra with the same perilous elixir whose unworldly force brings the dead back to life. But as these ancient rulers defy one another in their quest to understand the powers of the strange elixir, they are haunted by a mysterious presence even older and more powerful than they, a figure drawn forth from the mists of history who possesses spectacular magical potions and tonics eight millennia old. This is a figure who ruled over an ancient kingdom stretching from the once-fertile earth of the Sahara to the far corners of the world, a queen with a supreme knowledge of the deepest origins of the elixir of life. She may be the only one who can make known to Ramses and Cleopatra the key to their immortality--and the secrets of the miraculous, unknowable, endless expanse of the universe.
Taltos
Lives of the Mayfair Witches
Published in 1996
Mr. Ash learns there are other surviving Taltos and goes to New Orleans, where he becomes involved with the Mayfair witches.
The Witching Hour
Published in 1993
Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling, Anne Rice makes real a family of witches--a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.--From publisher.