Showing results by author "Anne Rice" in All Categories

In the traditional folktale of Sleeping Beauty, the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a Prince. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious. Now Anne Rice's retelling of the Beauty story probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire.

Howard Storm, an avowed atheist, was awaiting emergency surgery when he realized that he was at death's door. Storm found himself out of his own body, looking down on the hospital room scene below. Next, rather than going "toward the light", he found himself being torturously dragged to excruciating realms of darkness and death, where he was physically assaulted by monstrous beings of evil. His description of his pure terror and torture is unnerving in its utter originality and convincing detail.

Anne Rice's Violin tells the story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation. At the novel's center: a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana, and the demonic fiddler Stefan, a tormented ghost who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin to draw her into a state of madness. But Triana sets out to resist Stefan, and the struggle thrusts them both into a terrifying supernatural realm.

The novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O’Dare—a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases—just now: Lucky the Fox—and takes his orders from “The Right Man.”

In the days before the Civil War, there lived in New Orleans the gens de couleur libre - copper-skinned half-castes, liberated by their "owners," but confined by their color to a life of political non-existence and social subordination. Here is a compelling and richly textured tale of a people forever caught in the shadows between black and white.

This sequel to The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, the first of Anne Rice's elegantly written volumes of erotica, continues her explicit, teasing exploration of the psychology of human desire. Now Beauty, having indulged in a secret and forbidden infatuation with the rebellious slave Prince Tristan, is sent away from the Satyricon-like world of the Castle. Sold at auction, she will soon experience the tantalizing punishments of "the village".

In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire ... in 1985, a wild and voluptuos voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat. 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.

In a sweeping saga of music and vengeance, the acclaimed author of The Vampire Chronicles draws listeners into 18th-century Italy, bringing to life the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. This is the story of the castrati, the exquisite and otherworldly sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices win the adulation of royal courts and grand opera houses throughout Europe. These men are revered as idols - and, at the same time, scorned for all they are not.

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, he finds himself facing demonic adversaries, war and political intrigue.

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, Belinda is a forbidden passion. She's sweet 16, and the most seductive woman he's ever known. Bewitching, beguiling....

We all dream of the forbidden, but some of us make those dreams come true....With the same mystery, menace, and intensity as her Vampire books, Anne Rice's Exit to Eden explores the forbidden by taking us to The Club, a vacation paradise where no aspect of sexual pleasure is taboo.

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.

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.

In an exclusive interview with Michael Riley - available only on audio - Anne Rice speaks about her experiences and the beliefs, desires, fears, and passions that inspire her.

Anne Rice lures us once again into the seductive world of vampires with her short story, The Master of Rampling Gate. In 1888, siblings Richard and Julie are drawn to the beautiful but foreboding 400-year-old family mansion. What was the "unspeakable horror" their father saw in the luxurious home they are so drawn to? Available in audio exclusively from Audible.

In a new and major novel, the creator of fantastic universes of 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.

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.

Mesmerising, darkly erotic, terrifying, The Vampire Armand is an historic instalment to Anne Rice's internationally best-selling Vampire Chronicles. Magnificent and electrifying, The Vampire Armand tells the tale of the mesmerising leader of the vampire coven the Theatre des Vampires in Paris. This angel-faced killer was snatched from the steppes of Russia as a child and sold as a slave in Renaissance Venice.

Anne Rice's Violin tells the story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation. At the novel's center: a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana, and the demonic fiddler Stefan, a tormented ghost who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin to draw her into a state of madness.

A Vampire Chronicles novella from the internationally best-selling Anne Rice. 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.