The Wolves of Midwinter
The tale of THE WOLF GIFT continues...
In Anne Rice’s
surprising and compelling best-selling novel, the first of her strange
and mythic imagining of the world of wolfen powers (“I devoured these
pages... As solid and engaging as anything she has written since her
early vampire chronicle fiction” — Alan Cheuse, The Boston Globe; “A delectable cocktail of old-fashioned lost-race adventure, shape-shifting and suspense” — Elizabeth Hand, The Washington Post), readers were spellbound as Rice imagined a daring new world set against the wild and beckoning California coast.
Now in her new novel, as lush and romantic in detail and atmosphere as
it is sleek and steely in storytelling, Anne Rice brings us once again
to the rugged coastline of Northern California, to the grand mansion at
Nideck Point — to further explore the unearthly education of her
transformed Man Wolf.
The novel opens on a cold, gray landscape. It is the beginning of December. Oak fires are burning in the stately
flickering hearths of Nideck Point. It is Yuletide. For Reuben Golding,
now infused with the wolf gift and under the loving tutelage of the
Morphenkinder, this Christmas promises to be like no other... as he
soon becomes aware that the Morphenkinder, steeped in their own rituals, are also celebrating the Midwinter Yuletide festival deep within Nideck forest.
From out of the shadows of the exquisite mansion
comes a ghost — tormented, imploring, unable to speak yet able to embrace
and desire with desperate affection... As Reuben finds himself caught up with the passions and yearnings of this spectral presence and the
preparations for the Nideck town Christmas reach a fever pitch,
astonishing secrets are revealed, secrets that tell of a strange
netherworld, of spirits — centuries old — who possess their own fantastical
ancient histories and taunt with their dark, magical powers...
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.
The Wolf Gift Chronicles
The Wolf Gift Chronicles consists of two books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
