Violin

A big, luscious novel that carries us from nineteenth-century Vienna to present-day New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro as it tells the story of three charismatic figures bound together by their obsession with music.

One is an exquisite young woman who dreams of becoming a great musician.

One is a violinist, the ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who preys upon the woman -- using his musical genious to enchant, command, and manipulate her and draw her into his spectral realms.

The third in this triumvirate - he intervenes to become her ally - is the crank shade of Ludwig von Beethoven.

A fabulous trio. A seductively opulent world. An amalgam of the eerie and the romantic that could only come from Anne Rice at her inimitable best.