Anne Rice - The Witching Hour (Mayfair Witches, Book 1)

On the verandah of a great New
Orleans house, now faded, a mute
and fragile woman sits rocking. And
THE WITCHING HOUR begins .

Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witchesa family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being. A hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries, THE WITCHING HOUR could only have been written by the bestselling author of Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned and The Tale of the Body Thief.

THE WITCHING HOUR unfolds like a poisonous lotus blossom redolent with luxurious evil . She writes with hypnotic power . This novel will delight the senses . Rice thoroughly enjoys herself as she slides through 17th-century France, the fetid plantations of Port-au-Prince, the pain of the Civil War South and the seeming normalcy of todays San Francisco and New Orleans.

Rita Mae Brown
The Los Angeles Times

A CAPTIVATING STORY,
ENTERTAINING, RICH, EVEN
MESMERIZING The same
lovely, descriptive, erotic writing
she brought to her vampires.
Detroit Free Press

Anne Rice has stirred quite an intoxicating brew about the talents, wizardry, foibles, frustrations and, not least, genealogy of a family of witches . (She) can create an atmosphere, whether in San Francisco or New Orleans, which seems as sensual, dangerous, and intriguing as any one of her characters.

The San Diego Tribune

Compelling Sensuous Engrossing Rich.

The Wall Street Journal

Gothic Erotic and satisfying Another modern morality tale in the masterful Anne Rice tradition.

Self

COMPELLING
The authors powerful writing
and strong imagery keep
the reader enthralled.
Library Journal

Rice plumbs a rich vein of witchcraft lore, conjuring the decayed antebellum mansion where incest rules, dolls are made of human bone and hair, and violent storms sweep the skies each time a witch dies and the power passes on . (Rice) goes for the jugular with morbid delights, sexually charged passages and wicked, wild tragedy.

Publishers Weekly

Anne Rice writes delicious, romantic, gothic tales.

The Seattle Times

A steamy new world of southern witchcraft.

The Kirkus Reviews

BY ANNE RICE

Interview with the Vampire

The Feast of All Saints

Cry to Heaven

The Vampire Lestat

The Queen of the Damned

The Mummy

The Witching Hour

The Tale of the Body Thief

Lasher

Taltos

Memnoch the Devil

Servant of the Bones

Violin

Pandora

The Vampire Armand

Vittorio, The Vampire

Merrick

Blood and Gold

Blackwood Farm

Blood Canticle

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

Christ the Lord: Road to Cana

Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession

Angel Time

With Love:

FOR
Stan Rice and Christopher Rice

FOR
John Preston

FOR
OBrien Borchardt, Tamara OBrien Tinker, Karen OBrien,
and Micki OBrien Collins

AND FOR
Dorothy Van Bever OBrien, who bought me my first typewriter in 1959, taking the time and trouble to see that it was a good one.

And the rain is brain-colored.
And the thunder sounds like something remembering something.

STAN RICE

T HE DOCTOR WOKE up afraid. He had been dreaming of the old house in New Orleans again. He had seen the woman in the rocker. Hed seen the man with the brown eyes.

And even now in this quiet hotel room above New York City he felt the old alarming disorientation. Hed been talking again with the brown-eyed man. Yes, help her. No, this is just a dream. I want to get out of it.

The doctor sat up in bed. No sound but the faint roar of the air conditioner. Why was he thinking about it tonight in a hotel room in the Parker Meridien? For a moment he couldnt shake the feeling of the old house. He saw the woman againher bent head, her vacant stare. He could almost hear the hum of the insects against the screens of the old porch. And the brown-eyed man was speaking without moving his lips. A waxen dummy infused with life

No. Stop it.

He got out of bed and padded silently across the carpeted floor until he stood in front of the sheer white curtains, peering out at black sooty rooftops and dim neon signs flickering against brick walls. The early morning light showed behind the clouds above the dull concrete facade opposite. No debilitating heat here. No drowsing scent of roses, of gardenias.

Gradually his head cleared.

He thought of the Englishman at the bar in the lobby again. Thats what had brought it all backthe Englishman remarking to the bartender that hed just come from New Orleans, and that certainly was a haunted city. The Englishman, an affable man, a true Old World gentleman it seemed, in a narrow seersucker suit with a gold watch chain fixed to his vest pocket. Where did one see that kind of man these days?a man with the sharp melodious inflection of a British stage actor, and brilliant, ageless blue eyes.

The doctor had turned to him and said: Yes, youre right about New Orleans, you certainly are. I saw a ghost myself in New Orleans, and not very long ago Then he had stopped, embarrassed. He had stared at the melted bourbon before him, the sharp refraction of light in the base of the crystal glass.

Hum of flies in summer; smell of medicine. That much Thorazine? Could there be some mistake?

But the Englishman had been respectfully curious. Hed invited the doctor to join him for dinner, said he collected such tales. For a moment, the doctor had been tempted. There was a lull in the convention, and he liked this man, felt an immediate trust in him. And the lobby of the Parker Meridien was a nice cheerful place, full of light, movement, people. So far away from that gloomy New Orleans corner, from the sad old city festering with secrets in its perpetual Caribbean heat.

But the doctor could not tell that story.

If ever you change your mind, do call me, the Englishman had said. My name is Aaron Lightner. Hed given the doctor a card with the name of an organization inscribed on it: You might say we collect ghost storiestrue ones, that is.

THE TALAMASCA

We watch
And we are always here.

It was a curious motto.

Yes, that was what had brought it all back. The Englishman and that peculiar calling card with the European phone numbers, the Englishman who was leaving for the Coast tomorrow to see a California man who had lately drowned and been brought back to life. The doctor had read of that case in the New York papersone of those characters who suffers clinical death and returns after having seen the light.

They had talked about the drowned man together, he and the Englishman. He claims now to have psychic powers, you see, said the Englishman, and that interests us, of course. Seems he sees images when he touches things with his bare hands. We call it psychometry.