MERRICK

Anne Rice's richly told new novel for the first time weaves together two irresistible worlds - the witches' world and the vampires' world - in a dance of seduction, death and rebirth. Lestat's mesmerizing friend Louis de Pointe du Lac is tortured by the memory of the child vampire Claudia, whom he loved and lost. With the help of David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca organization, Louis appeals to Merrick, the beautiful, mixed-race, illegitimate daughter of the New Orleans Mayfair clan. Merrick must use her black witchcraft to call up the ghost of Claudia - however dangerous this may be - and her search takes her close to the edge, through blood and terror, voodoo and violence. Sweeping from New Orleans to the Guatemalan jungle, this is vampire literature at its most hypnotic, exotic and splendid.