Taltos
Locus Award nominee 1995.
Meet Mr. Ash, quiet-spoken, tall, unfailingly kind – sole survivor of an ancient species, the Taltos – thriving among humankind as he has always done, now the head of a great corporate empire. As the novel opens, he is stunned to learn from an old and mysterious friend that another Taltos has been seen – in the very same Scottish glen where centuries ago, long before the coming of the Romans, Ash ruled his clan.
At once he is propelled into the world of Rowan Mayfair, and into the mysteries of the Mayfair family – the New Orleans dynasty of witches forever besieged by ghosts, spirits, and the dizzying powers of his own species – a family intimately involved with the heritage of the Taltos, a family of unique, brilliant, and troubled souls struggling as they have for centuries to use both science and magic in their battle for greatness, even survival.
At the heart of the novel is the Talamasca, a secular order of psychic scholars, the only organization in existence which may understand Ash, his Taltos past, and the dilemma of the Mayfair witches.
The story of the Mayfair family continues, moving from London to Donnelaith, Scotland, to New Orleans, back and forth through time – from the origins of the Taltos and their mythic Lost Land to the moral crises of the present day.
Anne Rice
Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; 1941–2021) was an American author of gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotic literature. She was best known for her series of novels The Vampire Chronicles. Books from The Vampire Chronicles were the subject of two film adaptations - Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Queen of the Damned (2002).
Born in New Orleans, Rice spent much of her early life there before moving to Texas, and later to San Francisco. She was raised in an observant Catholic family but became an agnostic as a young adult. She began her professional writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, Rice published the novels Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. Several years later she distanced herself from organized Christianity, citing disagreement with the Roman Catholic Church's stances on social issues but pledging that faith in God remained "central to [her] life." However, she later considered herself a secular humanist.
Lives of the Mayfair Witches
Lives of the Mayfair Witches consists of three books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
