Vampire Chronicles Books In Order

Interview with the Vampire

Packaged in a deluxe gold case, Interview with the Vampire, on Compact Disk.2 CDs / 3 hoursRead by F. Murray Abrahamalso available on cassetteInterview with the Vampire is a novel that evokes the brilliance, the decadence, the horror of The Vampire’s world as he pours out the erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. It is the first of the famous ‘Chronicles of the Vampires’ by Anne Rice.’From the beginning we are seduced, hypnotized by the voice of the vampire.’ Chicago Tribune’A supernatural thriller raised to the level of literature.’ Philadelphia Inquirer’If you surrender, you will find that you have surrender to enchantment, as if in a voluptuous dream.’ Boston Globe

The Vampire Lestat

Returning to the hypnotic world she so brilliantly created in Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice demonstrates once again her power to enthrall. With the same richness of drama, atmosphere and incident, she tells the fantastic story of The Vampire Lestat, whom we first perceived as the seductive devil vampire of Interview with the Vampire and whom we now follow through the ages as he searches for the origin and meaning of his own dark immortality. And who, more and more, engages our sympathy until he stands revealed as a questing romantic, a vampire hero with his own strange and passionate courage and morality. As the novel opens, Lestat, having risen from the earth after a fifty five years’ sleep, and infatuated with the modern world, presents himself in all his vampire brilliance as a rock star, a superstar, a seducer of millions. And, in this blaze of adulation, daring to break the vampire oath of silence, he determines to tell his story, to rouse the generations of the living dead from their slumbers and to penetrate the riddle of his own existence. As he speaks we are plunged back into eighteenth century France, into the castle where we meet the young Lestat: child of impoverished aristocrats, heroic hunter of wolves, at odds with his tyrannical father, running away to join a traveling troupe of actors. We see him in the licentious Paris of the day, first apprentice at a boulevard theater, then its most celebrated actor, idolized, adored by many and night after night watched by one…
until, in a sleep filled with dreams of the wolves he killed as a boy, he is shocked awake by a dark figure and suddenly, horribly, eternally joined to the unholy brotherhood. We follow Lestat as he searches for others like him in churches and brothels, in gambling houses, huts and palaces sometimes joined by the vampire angel Gabrielle, who is bound to him both by blood and by passion; sometimes traveling with his adored Nicolas, the violinist whose music and beauty are equally transcendent. We follow Lestat as he travels from the snowcapped mountains of the Auvergne and the primeval forest of ancient Gaul to Sicily, Istanbul, Venice and Cairo, searching for his origins, sometimes finding clues to the birth of the vampire race, knowing always that the central truth eludes him. But all the while, throughout his travels, through many lands and many times, Lestat has made enemies among his brethren vampires who are in terror of his questions, who fear he will disturb the uneasy balance in which they exist with the mortal world, and who suspect in him a desire to rule. And when, in the caves below a craggy Greek island, in a sanctuary whose walls are covered with gold flecked murals, the very first of the living dead awake, the truth at the heart of his quest is at last revealed. Ancient forces held immobile through the ages are irreversibly set in motion, and as the novel rushes to its stunning climax, Lestat’s vampire foes converge in pursuit of him on the demonic freeways of the twentieth century.

The Queen of the Damned

In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now classic Interview with the Vampire…
in 1985, a wild and voluptous voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat. In The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice continues her extraordinary ‘Vampire Chronicles’ in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Three brilliantly colored narrative threads intertwine as the story unfolds: The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco. Among the audience pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a ‘greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals,’ fiends themselves who hate Lestat’s power and who are determined to destroy him…
The sleep of certain men and women vampires and mortals scattered around the world is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: of twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy. It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey’s end…
Akasha Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to ‘save’ mankind from itself and make ‘all myths of the world real’ by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods: ‘I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment be the cause’…
These narrative threads wind sinuously across a vast, richly detailed tapestry of the violent, sensual world of vampirism, taking us back 6,000 years to its beginnings. As the stories of the ‘first brood’ of blood drinkers are revealed, we are swept across the ages, from Egypt to South America to the Himalayas to all the shrouded corners of the globe where vampires have left their mark. Vampires are created mortals succumbing to the sensation of ‘being enptied, of being devoured, of being nothing.’ Vampires are destroyed. Dark rituals are performed the rituals of ancient creatures prowling the modern world. And, finally, we are brought to a moment in the twentieth century when, in an astonishing climax, the fate of the living dead and perhaps of the living, all the living will be decided. From the Hardcover edition.

The Tale of the Body Thief

In another feat of hypnotic storytelling, Anne Rice continues the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles that began with the now classic Interview with the Vampire and continued with The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned. Lestat speaks. Vampire hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals. For centuries he has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Lestat is alone. And suddenly all his vampire rationale everything he has come to believe and feel safe with is called into question. In his overwhelming need to destroy his doubts and his loneliness, Lestat embarks on the most dangerous enterprise he has undertaken in all the danger haunted years of his long existence. The Tale of the Body Thief is told with the unique and mesmerizing passion, power, color, and invention that distinguish the novels of Anne Rice. From the Hardcover edition.

Memnoch the Devil

In Anne Rice’s extraordinary novel, the Vampire Lestat outsides, canny monster, hero wanderer is at last offered the chance to be redeemed.

He is brought into direct confrontation with both God and the Devil, and into the land of Death.

We are in New York. The city is blanketed in snow. Through the whiteness Lestat is searching for Dora, the beautiful and charismatic daughter of a drug lord, the woman who arouses Lestat’s tenderness as no mortal ever has.

While torn between his vampire passions and his overwhelming love for Dora, Lestat is confronted by the most dangerous of adversaries he has yet known.

He is snatched from the world itself by the mysterious Memnoch, who claims to be the Devil. He is invited to be a witness at the Creation. He is taken like the ancient prophets into the heavenly realm and is ushered into Purgatory.

He must decide if he can believe in the Devil or in God. And finally, he must decide which, if either, he will serve.

In the first four Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summoned up for us worlds that are fantastic and distant, making them as resonant, real, and immediate as our own. In this, her most daring and darkest novel, she takes us, with Lestat, into the mythical world that is most important to us into the realms of our own theology.

The Vampire Armand

See the difference, read 1 bestselling author Anne Rice in Large Print About Large PrintAll Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16 point typefaceIn 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, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms. 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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Merrick

In her mesmerizing new novel, the author of The Vampire Chronicles and the saga of the Mayfair Witches demonstrates once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of myth and magic. Here, in a magnificent tale of sorcery and the occult, she makes real for us a hitherto unexplored world of witchcraft. At the center is the beautiful, unconquerable witch Merrick. She is a descendant of the gens de couleur libres, a society of New Orleans octoroons and quadroons steeped in the lore and ceremony of voodoo, who reign in the shadowy world where African and French the dark and the white intermingle. Her ancestors are the great Mayfair witches, of whom she knows nothing and from whom she inherits the power and the magical knowledge of a Circe. Into this exotic realm comes David Talbot hero, storyteller, adventurer, almost mortal vampire, visitor from another dark realm. It is he who recounts Merrick‘s haunting tale a tale that takes us from the New Orleans of past and present to the jungles of Guatemala, from the Maya ruins of a century ago to ancient civilizations not yet explored. Anne Rice’s richly told novel weaves an irresistible story of two worlds: the witches’ world and the vampires’ world, where magical powers and otherworldly fascinations are locked together in a dance of seduction, death, and rebirth.

Blood And Gold

Read by 12 cassettes13 hoursThe Vampire Chronicles continue with Anne Rice’s spellbinding new novel. Out of the pages of the Vampire Chronicles steps the golden haired Marius, true Child of the Millenia, once mentor to the Vampire Lestat, always and forever the conscientious slayer of the evildoer, and now ready to reveal the secrets of his two thousand year long existence in his own intense voice. Born in Imperial Rome, imprisoned and made a ‘blood god’ by the ancient Druids, Marius is the baffled yet powerful protector of Akasha and Enkil, Queen and King of the vampires, in whom the core of the race resides. We follow his through his tragic loss of the vampire Pandora, his lover and fledgling creation. Through him we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Christendom of Constantine, and the sack of the Eternal City by the Visigoths. We see him sailing to the glittering city of Constantinople. Worlds within worlds unfold as Marius, surviving the Dark Ages and the Black Death, emerges in the midst of the Italian Renaissance to create magnificient paintings and a vampire the boy Armand. Moving from Florence, Venice, Dresden, Paris, and the English castle of the secret and scholarly order of the Talamasca, the novel reaches its dramatic finale in a jungle paradise where the oldest of the vampires reigns supreme.

Blackwood Farm

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 doppelg nger, 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 doppelg nger 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, Blackwood Farm is Anne Rice at her mesmerizing best. From the Audio Cassette Unabridged edition.

Blood Canticle

Anne Rice continues her astonishing Vampire Chronicles in a new novel that begins where Blackwood Farm left off and tells the story of Lestat’s quest for redemption, goodness, and the love of Rowan Mayfair. Welcome back to Blackwood Farm. Here are all of the brilliantly conceived characters that make up the two worlds of vampires and witches: Mona Mayfair, who s come to the farm to die and is brought into the realm of the undead; her uncle, Julian Mayfair, guardian of the family, determined to forever torment Lestat for what he has done to Mona; Rowan Mayfair, brilliant neurosurgeon and witch, who finds herself dangerously drawn to the all powerful Lestat; her husband, Michael Curry, hero of the Mayfair Chronicles, who seeks Lestat s help with the temporary madness of his wife; Ash Templeton, a 5,000 year old Taltos who has taken Mona s child; and Patsy, the country western singer, who returns to avenge her death at the hands of her son, Quinn Blackwood. Delightfully, at the book s centre is the Vampire Lestat, once the epitome of evil, now pursuing the transformation set in motion with Memnoch the Devil. He struggles with his vampirism and yearns for goodness, purity and love, as he saves Patsy s ghost from the dark realm of the Earthbound, uncovers the mystery of the Taltos and unselfishly decides the fate of his beloved Rowan Mayfair.A story of love and loyalty, of the search for passion and promise, Blood Canticle is Anne Rice at her finest. From the Hardcover edition.

Pandora

6 cassettes / 9 hoursUnabridgedRead by Kate ReadingAlso available abridged and abridged on CDAnne 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 caf , 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.

Vittorio, The Vampire

With Pandora, Anne Rice began a magnificent new series of vampire novels. Now, in the second of her New Tales of the Vampires, she tells the mesmerizing story of Vittorio, a vampire in the Italian Age of Gold. 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 vampire Ursula, the most beautiful of his supernatural enemies. As he sets out in pursuit of vengeance, entering the nightmarish Court of the Ruby Grail, increasingly more enchanted and confused by his love for the mysterious Ursula, he finds himself facing demonic adversaries, war and political intrigue. 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.