These are the books in Anne Rice’s exciting series of vampire tales, stories that keep us endlessly fascinated with the creatures of the underworld.
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'.
‘Ah, the taste and feel of blood when all passion and greed is sharpened in that one desire!’
Lestat: a vampire - but very much not the conventional undead, for Lestat is the truly alive. Lestat is vivid, ecstatic, stagestruck, and in his extravagant story he plunges from the lasciviousness of eighteenth-century Paris to the demonic Egypt of prehistory; from fin-de-siecle New Orleans to the frenetic twentieth-century world of rock superstardom - as, pursued by the living and the dead, he searches across time for the secret of his own dark immortality.
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.
The burden of immortality is weighing upon the vampire Lestat. In a desperate bid to end his everlasting life he attempts suicide by flying into the sunrise above the Gobi desert. The attempt fails but it intensifies his desire to be human again. Just as Lestat resigns himself to the body of a killer he is approached by the body thief, a creature who covets Lestat's monstrous power and can give him what he wants: a mortal body. Lestat, ignoring the warnings of those he trusts, agrees to surrender his vampire body for a week. But the body thief vanishes. Chaos ensues and the newly mortal Lestat is left to discover what he had forgotten: the suffering, the weakness and the fragility of a living life.
In this terrifying novel from the phenomenally successful Anne Rice, the illustrious vampire Lestat makes a Faustian pact with Devil. Satan has come to New Orleans with an enticing proposition. Under the name Memnoch this lord of darkness takes Lestat on a tour through the boundaries of space and time, offering an alternative and personalised account of the Bible, exploring the events which shaped our world. Their journey comes to an apocalyptic conclusion in hell, from which Lestat returns frail and broken. The experience has shattered his perceptions of the known Universe, but can you ever trust the Devil?
The first in an irresistible new series of short and mesmerizing vampire novels.
In a cafe in modern-day Paris, in the aftermath of a fresh kill, the fearless and beautiful Pandora begins to tell her tale of treachery, vengeance and love stretching across two millennia. As a young mortal in Imperial Rome in the time of Caesar Augustus, Pandora was first introduced to the blood-tainted cult of Isis. Later, in exile in Antioch, she was drawn even further into the dark, ancient rites. Now looking back across the centuries, Pandora decides to return once more to New Orleans, to find the love of her early life, Marius, and to see once again the Vampire Lestat...
In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand--eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire.
Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood--a ruined city under Mongol dominion--and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood.
As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.
A VAMPIRE IN THE ITALIAN AGE OF GOLD. . .
Sixteen years old, Vittorio is the sole survivor of a bizarre and violent massacre at his father's Tuscan palazzo. Escaping to the Florence of Cosimo de Medici, he seeks vengeance and retribution. But though he has been saved from death by a mysterious woman, he finds himself at the mercy of demonic, bloody nightmares, war and political intrigue. And, beyond even these perils, Vittorio faces being torn apart by a dangerous love. Against a backdrop of the wonders - both sacred and profane - of Renaissance Italy, with its art and ferocity, angels and demons, Anne Rice introduces a seductive new character and creates a passionate tragic legend of doomed young love and lost innocence.
Louis is a vampire tortured by guilt. His status as a killer has left him conflicted for much of his immortal life, but after the murder of Claudia, his beloved child vampire, he spirals into a state of depression. And in a moment of desperation he decides to bring her back with the help of the beautiful witch Merrick. To save Louis' sanity, Merrick must use black magic to call up the ghost of Claudia - however dangerous this may be. But in the dark unknown of the underworld there are other spirits who will not lie still, and her search takes her close to the edge of peril.
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. . . .
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