Merrick
~ Chatto & Windus 2000 (UK)

With the help of David Talbot, ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca organisation, Louis appeals to Merrick, the beautiful mixed-race daughter of the New Orleans Mayfair clan - from the wrong side of the tracks. To save Louis' sanity, Merrick must use her black witchcraft to call up the ghost of Claudia - however dangerous this may be. But there are other spirits who will not lie still, and her search takes her close to the edge, through blood and terror, voodoo and violence.

Sweeping from New Orleans to the Brazilian jungle, this is vampire literature at its most thrilling, seductive and superb.

Merrick ~ Chatto & Windus 2000 (UK)

Merrick
~ Knopf 2000 (US)

In her mesmerising new novel, the author of The Vampire Chronicles and the saga of the Mayfair witches demonstrates once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of myth and magic. Here, in a magnificent tale of sorcery and the occult, she makes real for us a hitherto unexplored world of witchcraft.

At the centre is the beautiful, unconquerable witch Merrick. She is a descendent of the gens de couleur libres, a society of New Orleans octoroons and quadroons steeped in the lore and ceremony of voodoo, who reigned in the shadowy world where African and French - the dark and the white - intermingled. Her ancestors are the great Mayfair Witches, of who she knows nothing - and from whom she inherits the power and the magical knowledge of a Circe.

Into this exotic realm comes David Talbot - hero, storyteller, adventurer, almost-mortal vampire, visitor from another dark realm. It is he who recounts Merrick's haunting tale - a tale that takes us from the New Orleans of past and present to the jungles of Guatemala, from the Maya ruins of a century ago to ancient civilizations not yet explored.

Anne Rice's richly told novel weaves an irresistible story of two worlds: the witches' world and the vampires' world, where magical powers and otherworldly fascinations are locked together in a dance of seduction, death, and rebirth.

Merrick ~ Knopf 2000 (US)

Twenty Six Years with my Beloved Immortals ~ Merrick

What can I say to you about this new book, to be published in the fall of 2000?

Merrick is a full dress Vampire Chronicle. I don't think I say too much when I tell you that in this one, David Talbot speaks in his own voice for the first time and tells us everything that happens. Other characters include Merrick herself, of course, a woman of mixed blood and strange heritage, a sorceress of immense power - and Louis, my Louis from Interview with the Vampire who wants the mortal Merrick to use her unique powers to raise the spirit of the dead child vampire Claudia.

All the rest I leave to your imagination unless you choose to read the book and join me for another adventure.

Anne Rice