Promotional Information

'Morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy' - Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Anne Rice was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, which provided the backdrop for many of her famous novels. She was the author of more than 30 books, including her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, which was published in 1976. It has since gone on to become one of the best-selling novels of all time, and was adapted into a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, and Antonio Banderas. In addition to The Vampire Chronicles, Anne was the author of several other best-selling supernatural series including Mayfair Witches, Queen of the Damned, the Wolf Gift, and Ramses the Damned. She passed away in 2021.

Reviews

Compelling... Sensuous... Engrossing... Rich
*Wall Street Journal*

Vintage Rice - lush prose, dense atmosphere, steamy sex, gothic tension
*San Francisco Chronicle*

Morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy
*Publishers Weekly*

Compelling... Sensuous... Engrossing... Rich * Wall Street Journal *
Vintage Rice - lush prose, dense atmosphere, steamy sex, gothic tension * San Francisco Chronicle *
Morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy * Publishers Weekly *

Pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans is preserved beautifully in Anne Rice's The Witching Hour (Ballantine. 1993. ISBN 978-0-345-38446-1. pap. $7.99) as two San Franciscans are drawn back to their Louisiana birthplace and its world of -primeval secrets. Michael Curry, a renowned building renovator, and Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful and talented neurosurgeon, brought together through unusual circumstances, feel connected by a deep, inexplicable bond. With her usual slowly simmering style, Rice reveals the ancient, horrific mystery surrounding the women of the Mayfair family. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

``We watch and we are always here'' is the motto of the Talamasca, a saintly group with extrasensory powers which has for centuries chronicled the lives of the Mayfairs--a dynasty of witches that brought down a shower of flames in 17th-century Scotland, fled to the plantations of Haiti and on to the New World, where they settled in the haunted city of New Orleans. Rice ( The Queen of the Damned ) plumbs a rich vein of witchcraft lore, conjuring in her overheated, florid prose the decayed antebellum mansion where incest rules, dolls are made of human bone and hair, and violent storms sweep the skies each time a witch dies and the power passes on. Newly annointed is Rowan Mayfair, a brilliant California neurosurgeon kept in ignorance of her heritage by her adoptive parents. She returns to the fold after bringing back Michael Curry from the dead; he, too, has unwanted extrasensory gifts and, like Rowan and the 12 Mayfairs before her, has beheld Lasher: devil, seducer, spirit. Now Lasher wants to come through to this world forever and Rowan is the Mayfair who can open the door. This massive tome repeatedly slows, then speeds when Rice casts off the Talamasca's pretentious, scholarly tones and goes for the jugular with morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy. 300,000 first printing; BOMC main selection. (Nov.)