Night Hunter
Michael Reaves
276 pages
ISBN: 0812519949
Publisher: TOR Books
Pub. Date: August 1995

Synopsis:
The dead boy was a young hustler. No one cared much about him while he was alive, but when he was found in a sleazy motel room with a stake through his heart and a bulb of garlic in his mouth, he became famous as the Night Hunter's first victim. Police detective Jake Hull doesn't believe in vampires. Yet.

Synopsis:
BLOOD HUNT - He's a hit man who never misses. Except when his target isn't human. Or even alive. BLOOD THIRST - She's a traitor to her own kind, the hell spawn legion called the Undead. Her unforgivable sin - to dare save the world of the living from the final annihilation. BLOOD WAR - A nightmare contagion is about to overtake the human race. Unless America can secure teh antidote in time. And unless a lone killer can join forces with his beautiful and indestructable quarry - against a host of vampires unleashed for the ultimate, unthinkable triumph of darkness over light.

Synopsis:
Americans escaping a nightmare, Rebecca and Richard's flight from Berlin has brought them to this dark place in the Romanian woods. They seek sanctuary in the ancient home of the Count and Countess Viroslav - within castle walls adorned with tapestries celebrating chaos, flesh and seduction. Their host and hostess appear ageless, exquisite and generous; beautiful creatures of the night. Here every pleasure is explored - and nothing is forbidden. But unholy things have lured Rebecca and Richard into a web of evil - enticing the attractive young couple with erotic fantasy and silken caress... and a promise of sensuous, undying love at teh cost of their very souls.

Synopsis:
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 doppelgänger, “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 doppelgänger 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.

Synopsis:
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.

Synopsis:
In the now-classic novel Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice refreshed the archetypal vampire myth for a late-20th-century audience. The story is ostensibly a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional nadir, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris. But a summary of this story bypasses the central attractions of the novel. First and foremost, the method Rice chose to tell her tale--with Louis' first-person confession to a skeptical boy--transformed the vampire from a hideous predator into a highly sympathetic, seductive, and all-too-human figure. Second, by entering the experience of an immortal character, one raised with a deep Catholic faith, Rice was able to explore profound philosophical concerns--the nature of evil, the reality of death, and the limits of human perception--in ways not possible from the perspective of a more finite narrator.

Synopsis:
In Anne Rice's new novel, the Vampire Lestat - outsider, 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 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.

Synopsis:
Just when you thought it was safe for a bloodsucker to go out in the dark in New Orleans, along comes Merrick Mayfair, a sultry, hard-drinking octoroon beauty whose voodoo can turn the toughest vampire into a marionette dancing to her merry, scary tune. In Merrick, Anne Rice brings back three of her most wildly popular characters--the vampires Lestat and Louis and the dead vampire child Claudia--and introduces them to the world of her Mayfair Witches book series. It is Louis who brings about the collision of the fang and voodoo universes. Louis made Claudia a vampire in Rice's classic Interview with the Vampire, in which she was destroyed, and now he's obsessed with raising her ghost to make amends and seek guidance from the beyond. Vampire David Talbot lobbies Merrick to call Claudia's spirit and slake Louis's guilt, but Talbot winds up in the grip of an obsession with the witch. You see, Talbot, unlike most vampires, lived 70 years as a human, so his sexual response to humans is still as strong as his blood thirst. Merrick can cast spells to make men crave her, and Talbot is tormented. After she reads his palm, he muses, "I wanted to take her in my arms, not to feed from her, no, not harm her, only kiss her, only sink my fangs a very little, only taste her blood and her secrets, but this was dreadful and I wouldn't let it go on." The secrets of Merrick are dark and sensuous, but the book is a romp animated by Rice's feeling of coming back to life through the magic of a literary outpouring. The narrative flashes back to the past, to an Indiana Jones-ish adventure in a Guatemalan cave, and to scenes from many other Rice novels. It may be helpful to read Merrick with the Rice-approved guidebooks The Vampire Companion and The Witches' Companion at hand. After many books, Rice's grand Vampire Chronicles tale was in peril of getting long in the tooth. Merrick Mayfair's magic represents an infusion of fresh blood. --Tim Appelo

Synopsis:
Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches, and the fantastic worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler. We are in Paris, the time is now. In a crowded cafe, David meets Pandora. She is 2,000 years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to write for him the story of her life -- from her mortal girlhood in the peaceful Rome of Caesar Augustus through her periolous journey toward the vampire Marius, who will bestow on her the Dark Gift, and through their two centuries together before they are tragically lost to each other.

Synopsis:
That raucous rock-star vampire Lestat interrupts the 6,000-year slumber of the mama of all bloodsuckers, Akasha, Queen of the Damned. Akasha was once the queen of the Nile (she has a bit in common with the Egyptian goddess Isis), and it's unwise to rile her now that she's had 60 centuries of practice being undead. She is so peeved about male violence that she might just have to kill most of them. And she has her eye on handsome Lestat with other ideas as well. --Tim Appelo

Synopsis:
It's been said that Vladimir Nabokov's best novels are the ones he wrote after starting a failed novel. Anne Rice wrote The Body Thief, the fourth thrilling episode of her Vampire Chronicles, right after she spent a long time poring over that most romantic of horror novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, to research a novel Rice abandoned about an artificial man. Perhaps as a result of Shelley's influence, The Body Thief is far more psychologically penetrating than its predecessors, with a laser-like focus on a single tormented soul. Oh, we meet some wild new characters, and Rice's toothsome vampire-hero Lestat zooms around the globe--as is his magical habit--from Miami to the Gobi desert, but he's in such despair that he trades his immortal body to a con man named Raglan James, who offers him in return two days of strictly mortal bliss. Lestat has always had a faulty impulse-control valve, and it gets him in truly intriguing trouble this time. On the plus side, he gets to experience romance with a nun and orange juice--"thick like blood, but full of sweetness." But Lestat is horrified by an uncommon cold, and his toilet training proves traumatic. He's also got to catch Raglan James, who has no intention of giving up his dishonestly acquired new superpowered body. Lestat enlists the help of David Talbot, a mortal in the Talamasca, a secret society of immortal watchers described in Queen of the Damned. The swapping of bodies and supernatural stories is choice, and there's even a moral: never give a bloodsucker an even break. --Tim Appelo

Synopsis:
In The Vampire Armand, Anne Rice returns to her indomitable Vampire Chronicles and recaptures the gothic horror and delight she first explored in her classic tale Interview with the Vampire (in which Armand, played by Antonio Banderas in the film version, made his first appearance as director of the Théâtre des Vampires). The story begins in the aftermath of Memnoch the Devil. Vampires from all over the globe have gathered around Lestat, who lies prostrate on the floor of a cathedral. Dead? In a coma? As Armand reflects on Lestat's condition, he is drawn by David Talbot to tell the story of his own life. The narrative abruptly rushes back to 15th-century Constantinople, and the Armand of the present recounts the fragmented memories of his childhood abduction from Kiev. Eventually, he is sold to a Venetian artist (and vampire), Marius. Rice revels in descriptions of the sensual relationship between the young and still-mortal Armand and his vampiric mentor. But when Armand is finally transformed, the tone of the book dramatically shifts. Raw and sexually explicit scenes are displaced by Armand's introspective quest for a union of his Russian Orthodox childhood, his hedonistic life with Marius, and his newly acquired immortality. These final chapters remind one of the archetypal significance of Rice's vampires; at their best, Armand, Lestat, and Marius offer keen insights into the most human of concerns. The Vampire Armand is richly intertextual; readers will relish the retelling of critical events from Lestat and Louis's narratives. Nevertheless, the novel is very much Armand's own tragic tale. Rice deftly integrates the necessary back-story for new readers to enter her epic series, and the introduction of a few new voices adds a fresh perspective--and the promise of provocative future installments. --Patrick O'Kelley

Synopsis:
As with the first book in the series, the novel begins with a frame narrative. After over a half century underground, Lestat awakens in the 1980s to the cacophony of electronic sounds and images that characterizes the MTV generation. Particularly, he is captivated by a fledgling rock band named Satan's Night Out. Determined both to achieve international fame and end the centuries of self-imposed vampire silence, Lestat takes command of the band (now renamed "The Vampire Lestat") and pens his own autobiography. The remainder of the novel purports to be that autobiography: the vampire traces his mortal youth as the son of a marquis in pre-Revolutionary France, his initiation into vampirism at the hands of Magnus, and his quest for the ultimate origins of his undead species. While very different from the first novel in the Vampire Chronicles, The Vampire Lestat has proved to be the foundation for a broader range of narratives than is possible from Louis's brooding, passive perspective. The character of Lestat is one of Rice's most complex and popular literary alter egos, and his Faustian strivings have a mythopoeic resonance that links the novel to a grand tradition of spiritual and supernatural fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley

Synopsis:
The hunky Vittorio is sweet 16 and "incalculably rich" in 15th-century Italy, the epoch of the Medicis and Vittorio's favorite painter, madly passionate Filippo Lippi. One night, Vittorio's family is butchered by vampires. The gorgeous Ursula spares Vittorio to make him her reluctant undying sweetheart. Vittorio flees to the creepy town of Santa Maddalana, which has made a pact to sacrifice its young to Lord Florian's vampire horde. Vittorio is bent on revenge as he invades the eerie Court of the Ruby Grail (i.e. blood), as angry with the child-sacrificing humans as he is with Florian's fang gangsters. --Tim Appelo

Synopsis:
From yesterday to a hundred years ago, he lives in the world and walks among us. He enjoys the finest things in life, including beautfiul women, well-aged wine, and the finest classical composers. He has no guilt -- he has no need of it. Neither good, nor bad, neither angel nor devil, he is a man, he is a vampire. And this is his story....

Synopsis:
A DARK, UNHOLY COVENANT - In an ancient monastery, far from the bustling streets of London, an order of monks celebrates the glories of art and music. Separate from the world, they conceal a secret. For within the sheltered walls, a beautiful woman makes a horrifying promise--and a boy receives a life-saving gift. BLEEDS INTO A HELLISH CURSE - Soon a monster is preying upon the people of Victorian London. A fiend who thrives on darkness and blood. Victim after victim falls to the beast. No one is safe. The murders are indiscriminate, ruthless. Only the same violent death links them--the torn throat and the bloodless corpse left behind. THE LONDON VAMPIRE PANIC - Lead by the famous vampire hunter Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, six men set out to track down and unmask the killer--and bring the nightmare gripping the city to a blessed end. If they can stay alive. . . .

Synopsis:
RISEN FROM A WATERY GRAVE - Entombed for almost a century in the corpse of the Titanic at the bottom of the icy north Atlantic, the Vampire is finally released by a treasure-hunting expedition--that never makes it back alive. OVERCOME WITH BLOODLUST - In a small South Carolina town, a stranger calling himself Charles Gabriel seeks desperate help from a beautiful psychiatrist. But while irresistible sexual passions are stirred by supernatural powers, the town falls victim to a horrifyingly rampant surge of an unearthly evil. THE VAMPIRE HUNTER - Torn by his loyalty to a centuries-old, unholy brotherhood, the Vampire longs to be freed from his hunger, but he has become the prey of those who seek vengeance against him. Now the only escape is Death. . . Entombed for almost a century in the corpse of the "Titanic" at the bottom of the icy North Atlantic, the Vampire is finally released by a treasure-hunting expedition--that never makes it back alive. In a small South Carolina town, a stranger calling himself Charles Gabriel seeks desperate help from a beautiful psychiatrist. But while irresistible sexual passions are stirred by supernatural powers, the town falls victim to a horrifyingly rampant surge of unearthly evil.

Synopsis:
In the spine-tingling, pulse-pounding tradition of "Interview With The Vampire," a chilling look into the secret world of the Vampiri, which exists around us always -- invisible, unsuspected . . . until we feel the prick of teeth at our neck in a dream and wake up to find . . . an end to all dreaming and a beginning to a unliving nightmare! For the millions of vampire fans, here is the much-awaited sequel to the bloody success I, Vampire. Once Mozart was a famous composer. Now he is a famous vampire. Hundreds of years after he lived, he is among those locked in combat with the vampire who once was known as John Wilkes Booth. . . .

Synopsis:
Aboard the ultraluxurious Prince William's maiden voyage, a glittering array of millionaires, movie stars, and royalty cavort, all with their own dark secrets. But not one of them has a past as evil as the ravishing Princess Nicoletta Vittorini de Medusa. And few can resist the siren call of the deadly ecstasy she offers.

Synopsis:
The mysterious death of an archaeologist lures disease-control researcher Dr. Bailey Harrison deep into the jungles of Costa Rica. There, in the hot zone, an unknown and potentially devastating new virus has made its first lethal appearance. Yet a more horrifying evil awaits Bailey at the end of her quest. For in a lavish estate carved from the savage wilderness, an extraordinary man rules, the master of a forbidding world. And he himself is slave to a centuries-old hunger.

Synopsis:
Adriana Thorn loved the quiet rhythm of the night. And enigmatic Valentin Kadar moved in this nocturnal world, at one with the heartbeat of the dark city. From the first moment Adriana felt his touch, she was drawn to him with a desire so intense it made her burn... like liquid fire through her veins. But soon someone, or something, began stalking the people closest to her. Was it coincidence that the terror had begun when Valentin came into her life? Adriana couldn't deny the aura of danger her mysterious lover carried with him. but neither could she fight the overwhelming need that drew her to a man she had never seen in the light of day.