Theo

Theo

Becket | Anne Rice

Mary Paige discovers that her photographic memory has made her the most powerful Blood Vivicanti. Yet the trauma of her youth has also made her the most vulnerable. Mary Paige must now choose between drinking the right kind of blood and eating the wrong kind of Blood Memories. International Bestselling Author ANNE RICE and BECKET bring you the original new story of THE BLOOD VIVICANTI.
Wyn

Wyn

Becket | Anne Rice

At seventeen-years-old, Mary Paige has become one of the most powerful creatures on the planet – a Blood Vivicanti. Scientifically recreated in an underground layer by a billionaire engineer, Mary Paige discovers that her speed and strength have increased, but so has her appetite for blood and her photographic memory!
Lowen the Dark Man

Lowen the Dark Man

Becket | Anne Rice

International Bestselling Author ANNE RICE and BECKET bring you the fifth installment of the original new story of THE BLOOD VIVICANTI.
Pandora

Pandora

Anne Rice

Amazon.com Review
Anne Rice fans will greet Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires, the first of her new vampire chronicles, as hungrily as the Fang Gang facing a fresh new neck. Our heroine, Pandora, a senator's daughter in Augustus Caesar's day, flees to Antioch when her family gets killed and discovers the antidote to stern Roman rationalism in the occult wisdom of the East. "Something attacked my reason," Pandora writes. "The very thing the Roman Emperors had so feared in Egyptian cults and Oriental cults swept over me: mystery and emotion which claim a superiority to reason and law."
Pandora gets her sexy vampire initiation at the fangs of handsome Marius (who later inducted Rice's famed vampire Lestat). Pandora tells how a nice Roman girl became a vampire in modern Paris, but mostly the book celebrates the sights and sounds (and philosophical bloodlettings) of the classical world. Pandora is more like Robert Graves's sublime
Yet Pandora is a logical extension of Rice's work, and Pandora is a combination of her past vampire heroes and the nakedly, horrifyingly autobiographical heroine of Rice's 1997 novel Violin is remarkably messy, but it captures the volcanic passion that erupts in her best work--Rice calls it "a study in pain." Pandora is really a dramatized debate between passion and reason, which Pandora calls "male reason." She teases her vampire mentor: "Marius guarded his delicate rationality as a Vestal Virgin guards a sacred flame. If ever any ecstatic emotion took hold of me, he [would] tell me in no uncertain terms that it was irrational, irrational, irrational!" (To hear how close Pandora's voice is to her passionate creator, listen to the 1997 audiocassette
Rice's research gives fresh blood to her storytelling. Even her chronic third-act problem scarcely slows down this brisk romp of a novel. Pandora has intellectual thirst as well as blood lust, and she conveys the high old time Rice obviously had imbibing historical lore. "It is fun to read these mad Gnostics!" exults Pandora in the early Christian era. It is also fun to read this mad Pandora. Anne Rice hasn't been this fun to read in years.
From Publishers Weekly
Although Rice bid goodbye to the vampire Lestat in Memnoch the Devil, her fifth novel in The Vampire Chronicles, she has not abandoned vampires altogether. Two installments are planned this year in her New Tales of the Vampires series, and in the first of these, the ancient vampire Pandora tells her story. Urged on by David Talbot?fledgling vampire, self-appointed chronicler and former psychic detective?Pandora documents in sophisticated detail her pre-vampire existence as the privileged daughter of a Roman senator. She's a curious character, first introduced in The Queen of the Damned, in which Marius described her as the Greek courtesan who seduced him into making her a vampire and helped him care for the vampire progenitors until strife forced them apart. Here, Pandora herself sets the record straight. Born early in Augustus's reign, the educated, spirited Pandora was no courtesan?though we do see her challenge the sexual mores of her moment. When Tiberius brings chaos to Rome, and dishonor and death to Pandora's family, she goes to Antioch and tries to solve the mystery of her compelling blood dreams about Egypt. There, she reunites with her childhood crush, Marius, and learns from him what it means to be a vampire. Along the way, we find little of Rice's trademark eroticism, but Pandora has long been one of her more elusive characters, so fans will relish this vivid rendering of her life and times. Random House audio.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Lasher

Lasher

Anne Rice

Amazon.com Review
At the center of this dark and compelling tale is Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, who must flee from the darkly brutal, yet irresistable demon known as Lasher. With a dreamlike power, this wickedly seductive entity draws us through twilight paths, telling a chilling and hypnotic story of spiritual aspiration and passion.
From Publishers Weekly
Returning to the Mayfair clan she introduced in The Witching Hour , Rice offers another vast, transcontinental saga of witchcraft and demonism in the tradition of Gothic melodrama. The eponymous Lasher is a demon spirit who preys on female Mayfairs in his attempt to procreate. Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven who has borne Lasher's child, has now disappeared. At times this main narrative is lost as the story moves from the Louisiana Mayfairs to the Scottish Donnelaiths and the clandestine London Telamasca society, with copious personal histories and myriad characters. Long sections ramble without a compelling point of view, and are dampened by stock elements: cliched wind storms, sexy witches, the endless supply of money the Telemasca has at its disposal. At times, Lasher is too much in evidence (rattling the china, gnashing his teeth) to be frightening. But embedded in this antique demonism is a contemporary tale of incest and family abuse that achieves resonance. It is maintained through the character of Lasher, both child and man at the same time, who manipulates his victims with his own pain. At their best, Rice's characters rise above the more wooden plot machinations with an ironic and modern complexity: Mona, the young feminist witch with sharklike business instincts; Julien, the dead patriarch, who movingly recalls his male lovers; Yuri, the clever Serbian orphan. Despite lapses into uninspired language, ultimately the novel is compelling through its exhaustive monumentality. 700,000 first printing; Literary Guild main selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Eclipse (Twilight Saga)

Eclipse (Twilight Saga)

Stephanie Meyer

From Publishers Weekly
The legions of readers who are hooked on the romantic struggles of Bella and the vampire Edward will ecstatically devour this third installment of the story begun in Twilight, but it's unlikely to win over any newcomers. Jake, the werewolf met in New Moon, pursues Bella with renewed vigilance. However, when repercussions from an episode in Twilight place Bella in the mortal danger that series fans have come to expect, Jake and Edward forge an uneasy alliance. The plot patterns have begun to show here, but Meyer's other strengths remain intact. The supernatural elements accentuate the ordinary human dramas of growing up. Jake and Edward's competition for Bella feels particularly authentic, especially in their apparent desire to best each other as much as to win Bella. Once again the author presents teenage love as an almost inhuman force: "[He] would have been my soul mate still," says Bella, "if his claim had not been overshadowed by something stronger, something so strong that it could not exist in a rational world." According to Meyer, the fourth book should tie up at least the Edward story, if not the whole shebang. Ages 12-up. (Aug.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
From
The third episode of Meyer’s vampire-romance series finds heroine Bella Swan anxious to become a vampire and live forever with handsome vampire Edward. Obstacles arise when Edward demands marriage and werewolf Jacob declares his love for Bella. Eventually, the Cullen vampires and the Quileute werewolves unite to face off against a pack of uncontrollable vampires seeking revenge on Bella. Kadushin portrays kindly Edward in soft, warm tones and voices teenager Jacob in more brash, edgy speech patterns. She captures Bella’s uncertainty as she wavers between her love for Edward and her intrigue with Jacob. Kadushin’s performance is particularly stellar in passages where Bella is cold and her words come out in a chattering fashion or when she is upset, causing her to sob and hiccup. Matt Weathers reads the epilogue, which indicates a follow-up title is likely, news that should please fans of the popular series. Grades 9-12. --Pam Spencer Holley
Throne of Glass Omnibus

Throne of Glass Omnibus

Sarah J. Maas

One of the best fantasy book series of the past decade - Time Magazine
When magic has gone from the world and a vicious king rules from his throne of glass, an assassin comes to the castle. She is a prisoner, but if she can defeat twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to find the greatest assassin in the land, she will become the king's champion and earn her freedom. But the evil she encounters in the castle goes deep, and as dark forces gather on the horizon – forces which threaten to destroy her entire world – the assassin must take her place in a fight greater than she could ever have imagined.
This is the epic, heart-stopping fantasy series that has turned #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas into a worldwide phenomenon. Fans new and old will dive into this ebook bundle containing the whole series: Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows,...