Prince Lestat

From Anne Rice, perennial best seller, single-handed reinventor of the vampire universe beginning with the now iconic INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, and QUEEN OF THE DAMNED — a stunning departure, a surprising and compelling return... a new, exhilarating novel that deepens Rice's vampire mythology, and gives us a chillingly hypnotic, rich mystery-thriller.

"What can we do but reach for the embrace that must now contain both heaven and hell: our doom again and again and again..." — from The Vampire Lestat

Rice once again summons up the irresistible spirit-world of the oldest and most powerful forces of the night, invisible beings unleashed on an unsuspecting world able to take blood from humans, in a long-awaited return to the extraordinary world of the Vampire Chronicles and the uniquely seductive Queen of the Damned ("mesmerizing" — SF Chronicle), a long-awaited novel that picks up where The Vampire Lestat ("brilliant... its undead characters are utterly alive" — New York Times) left off more than a quarter of a century ago to create an extraordinary new world of spirits and forces — the characters, legend, and lore of all the Vampire Chronicles.

The novel opens with the vampire world in crisis... vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned... Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto, and San Francisco. As the novel moves from present-day New York and the West Coast to ancient Egypt, fourth century Carthage, 14th-century Rome, the Venice of the Renaissance, the worlds and beings of all the Vampire Chronicles — Louis de Pointe du Lac; the eternally young Armand, whose face is that of a Boticelli angel; Mekare and Maharet, Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca; and Marius, the true Child of the Millennia; along with all the other new seductive, supernatural creatures — come together in this large, luxuriant, fiercely ambitious novel to ultimately rise up and seek out who — or what — the Voice is, and to discover the secret of what it desires and why...

And, at the book's center, the seemingly absent, curiously missing hero-wanderer, the dazzling, dangerous rebel-outlaw — the great hope of the Undead, the dazzling Prince Lestat...

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Horror Vampires

Release date: October 22, 2014

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Anne Rice

Before vampires glittered or brooded on screen, they whispered secrets in Anne Rice’s richly imagined worlds—sensual, gothic, and unafraid to bleed into the philosophical. Best known for Interview with the Vampire, she didn’t just redefine the vampire novel—she gave it a soul. Rice’s immortals weren’t monsters hiding in the shadows; they were conflicted, emotional, endlessly introspective beings asking what it meant to live forever in a world constantly changing.

Born in New Orleans in 1941, Rice was raised in a city where history lingers like fog, and where ghosts—real or imagined—seem to breathe through the ironwork and old stone. That Southern Gothic influence runs through her work, not just in setting but in mood. Her novels feel like candlelit confessionals, where beauty, pain, religion, and sensuality collide. As a child, she was named Howard Allen (after her father) and later chose the name Anne. The act of self-renaming feels fitting for someone who would spend her life exploring transformation—both physical and existential.

Rice’s journey into fiction wasn’t linear. After the death of her young daughter, she poured her grief into writing, crafting the haunting voice of Louis, the melancholy narrator of Interview with the Vampire. Published in 1976, the novel didn’t fit neatly into genre boxes. It was horror, yes—but also philosophy, theology, and longing. Over the years, the book evolved from cult classic to cultural milestone, especially after Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt brought The Vampire Chronicles to Hollywood in the '90s.

Beyond vampires, Rice ventured into witches (The Lives of the Mayfair Witches), angels, mummies, even a retelling of the life of Christ. She defied literary expectations, switching genres with a boldness that both confused and fascinated critics. Still, her fingerprints were always present—lavish prose, tortured characters, and a near-obsessive focus on identity, faith, and redemption.

Though often associated with horror, Rice's novels are just as much about humanity as they are about the supernatural. Her characters suffer from loneliness, guilt, and longing for connection. They’re gods in decay, clinging to memory. For readers, the allure was never just in the blood—it was in the way she gave myth emotional weight.

Over the course of her career, Rice sold over 150 million copies of her books. But she remained, at heart, a deeply personal writer. In one interview, she reflected, “My vampires were a metaphor for the lost, the outcast, the person who feels different.” That empathy is why her stories resonate—not because they’re fantastical, but because they’re achingly human underneath the glamour and the night.

Anne Rice passed away in 2021, but her influence lives on. She didn’t just create iconic characters—she opened a door for writers who saw darkness not as something to fear, but as something to understand. In a literary world that often demands tidy labels, Rice dared to be messy, emotional, and extravagant. And in doing so, she became unforgettable.