Anne Rice Books in Order (The Vampire Chronicles, The Mayfair Witches…)

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Thanks! Anne Rice (October 4, 1941 – December 11, 2021) was an American writer of gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotic fiction–and the sister of novelist Alice Borchardt. She was famous for her vampire novels, namely the series of novels The Vampire Chronicles, which revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, played by Tom Cruise in the movie Interview with the Vampire in 1994. Interview with the Vampire was originally a short story but, in 1973, while still grieving the loss of her daughter, Rice turned it into her first novel. It took a few years to find someone willing to publish it, but it became a bestseller. After that, she wrote historical novels and erotic novels (using the pen names, Anne Rampling and A. N. Roquelaure) before returning to the world of vampires.

How to read Anne Rice’s Books in Order?

The Vampire Chronicles Books in Order

1. Interview with the Vampire (1976)
   • Interview with the Vampire: Claudia’s Story (2012) – A graphic novel of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, told through the eyes of the vampire Claudia
   • “Interlude with the Undead – Written for the January 1979 issue of Playboy.
2. The Vampire Lestat (1985)
3. The Queen of the Damned (1988)
4. The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
5. Memnoch the Devil (1995)
6. The Vampire Armand (1998)
7. Merrick (2000) – Vampire/Mayfair Crossover
8. Blood and Gold (2001)
9. Blackwood Farm (2002) – Vampire/Mayfair Crossover
10. Blood Canticle (2003) – Vampire/Mayfair Crossover
11. Prince Lestat (2014)
12. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016)
13. Blood Communion (2018)

Lives of the Mayfair Witches Books in Order

The Lives of the Mayfair Witches is a series from Anne Rice that will crossover with ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ later on. To see where to read the books in correlation to The Vampire Chronicles, go see our Reading order.

1. The Witching Hour (1990) – The story of the Mayfair family of New Orleans, generations of male and female witches, where a death of one strengthens the others with his/her knowledge.
   One Mayfair witch per generation is designated to receive the powers of ‘the man,’ known as Lasher who gives the witches gifts, excites them, and protects them. Lasher’s current witch is Deirdre, who lies catatonic from psychological shock treatments.
2. Lasher (1993) – The Talamasca, documenters of paranormal activity, is on the hunt for the newly born Lasher. Mayfair women are dying from hemorrhages and a strange genetic anomaly has been found in Rowan and Michael.
   Lasher, born from Rowan, is another species altogether and now in the corporeal body, represents an incalculable threat to the Mayfairs. Rowan and Lasher travel together to Houston and she becomes pregnant with another creature like him, a Taltos.
3. Taltos (1994) – The Talamasca seeks to preserve the nearly extinct Taltos race by bringing together a male and female. Their searching catches the attention of an ancient Taltos named Ashlar entwined with Lasher’s identity.
   Ashlar reveals the taltos mythology and lineage and enlists the help of Michael and Rowan in his battle against evil.

The New Tales of the Vampires Books in Order

The New Tales of the Vampires is another series from Anne Rice that will connect with The Vampire Chronicles and The Lives of the Mayfair Witches. To see where to read the books in correlation to The Vampire Chronicles, go see our Reading order.

1. Pandora (1998) – In present-day Paris in a crowded cafe, where the vampire David Talbot meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.
2. Vittorio the Vampire (1999) – Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly splendor and country pleasures that is suddenly threatened when his entire family is confronted by an unholy power. In the midst of this upheaval, Vittorio is seduced by the vampire Ursula, the most beautiful of his supernatural enemies.
   As he sets out in pursuit of vengeance, entering the nightmarish Court of the Ruby Grail, increasingly more enchanted (and confused) by his love for the mysterious Ursula, he finds himself facing demonic adversaries, war, and political intrigue.

Ramses the Damned Books in Order

1. The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned(1989) – He was Ramses the Damned in ancient Egypt, but awoke in opulent Edwardian London as Dr. Ramsey, an expert in Egyptology. He mixes with the aristocrats and samples their voluptuous lifestyle, but it is for his beloved, Cleopatra, that he longs, and will do anything to be with her…
2. Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra (2017) – Ramses the Great, former pharaoh of Egypt, is reawakened by the elixir of life in Edwardian England. Now immortal with his bride-to-be, he is swept up in a fierce and deadly battle of wills and psyches against the once-great Queen Cleopatra.
   Ramses has reawakened Cleopatra with the same perilous elixir whose unworldly force brings the dead back to life. But as these ancient rulers defy one another in their quest to understand the powers of the strange elixir, they are haunted by a mysterious presence even older and more powerful than they, a figure drawn forth from the mists of history who possesses spectacular magical potions and tonics eight millennia old.
3. The Reign of Osiris (2022) – A pharaoh made immortal by a mysterious and powerful elixir, Ramses the Great became counselor and lover to some of Egypt’s greatest and most powerful rulers before he was awakened from centuries of slumber to the mystifying and dazzling world of Edwardian England.
   Having vanquished foes both human and supernatural, he’s found love with the beautiful heiress Julie Stratford, daughter of Lawrence Stratford, the slain archeologist who discovered his tomb. Now, with the outbreak of a world war looming, Ramses and those immortals brought forth from the mists of history by his resurrection will face their greatest test yet.

The Christ the Lord Books in Order

1. Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005) – In Israel, in the turbulent first century, a baby is born to a humble Jewish family – but to a great destiny. He has an uneasy childhood, as he begins to come to terms with his extraordinary powers, and the whispered mysteries surrounding his birth.
   The tyrannical rule of King Herod has driven the family from the Holy Land to the relative safety of cosmopolitan Alexandria. But on Herod’s death, they decide to return home to Israel, to Galilee, a troubled land under Roman occupation, at a time of chaos and turmoil, insurrection and confusion…
2. Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (2008) – Herod Antipas rules Galilee, Pontius Pilate is the new Roman governor of Judea, and the Roman Empire rules the world. These are turbulent times for Israel, a troubled land of turmoil and insurrection.

The Songs of the Seraphim Books in Order

1. Angel Time (2009) – Toby O’Dare-aka Lucky the Fox-is a contract killer on assignment once again. He’s a soulless soul, a dead man walking. His nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions is disrupted when a mysterious stranger, a seraph, offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. O’Dare, who long ago dreamt of being a priest, seizes his chance.
   Now he is carried back through the ages to thirteenth-century England, to dark realms where children suddenly die or disappear, and accusations of ritual murder have been made against Jews.
2. Of Love and Evil(2010) – Barely recovered from his previous divine mission, former contract killer Toby O’Dare is once again summoned by the angel Malchiah to investigate the poisoning of a prominent nobleman and stop the haunting of a diabolical dybbuk.
   Together, they travel back to fifteenth-century Italy where Toby soon discovers that he is in the midst of plots and counterplots, surrounded on all sides by increasingly dangerous threats as the veil of ecclesiastical terror closes in around him.

The Wolf Gift Chronicles in Order

1. The Wolf Gift (2012) – After a brutal attack, Reuben finds himself changing. His hair is longer, his skin is more sensitive and her can hear things he never could before. Now he must confront the beast within him or lose himself completely.
2. The Wolves of Midwinter(2013) – In the stately flickering hearths of the grand mansion of Nideck Point, oak fires are burning. The Morphenkinder are busy getting ready for the ancient pagan feast of midwinter. Everyone is invited, including some of their own who do not wish them well…
   Reuben Golding, the newest of the Morphenkinder, is struggling with his new existence as a Man-Wolf, struggling to learn to control his desires and bloodthirsty urges.
   As preparations for the feast gather pace, destiny continues to hound Reuben, not least in the form of a strange, tormented ghost who appears at the window, unable to speak. But he is not alone: before the festivities are over, choices must be made – choices that will decide the fate of the Morphenkinder for ever.

Standalone novels by Anne Rice

1. The Feast of All Saints(1979) – In the days before the Civil War, there lived a Louisiana people unique in Southern history. Though descended from African slaves, they were also descended from the French and Spanish who enslaved them.
   Called the Free People of Color, this historical novel chronicles the lives of four of them–men and women caught perilously between the worlds of master and slave, privilege and oppression, passion and pain.
2. Cry to Heaven (1982) – This is the story of the castrati, the exquisite and otherworldly sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices win the adulation of royal courts and grand opera houses throughout Europe. These men are revered as idols-and, at the same time, scorned for all they are not.
3. Servant of the Bones (1996) – This is the story of Azriel, Servant of the Bones. He is a ghost, genii, demon, angel – pure spirit made visible. He pours his heart out to us as he journeys from an ancient Babylon of royal plottings and religious upheavals to Europe of the Black Death and on to the modern world.
   There he finds himself, amidst the towers of Manhattan, in confrontation with his own human origins and the dark forces that have sought to condemn him to a life of evil and destruction.
4. Violin (1997) – This is the story of Triana, who once dreamed of becoming a great musician, and the demonic fiddler Stefan, the tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who begins to prey upon her, using his magic violin first to enchant, then to dominate and draw her into a state of madness through the music she loves.
   But Triana understands the power of the music perhaps even more than does Stefan–and she sets out to resist Stefan and to fight not only for her sanity but for her life.

Sleeping Beauty (under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure)

1. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983) – A retteling of the Sleepy Beauty where the Prince awakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty’s complete and total enslavement to him . . .
2. Beauty’s Punishment (1984) – Now Beauty, having indulged in a secret and forbidden infatuation with the rebellious slave Prince Tristan, is sent away from the Satyricon-like world of the Castle. Sold at auction, she will soon experience the tantalizing punishments of “the village,” as her education in love, cruelty, dominance, submission, and tenderness is turned over to the brazenly handsome Captain of the Guard.
3. Beauty’s Release (1985) – Beauty’s adventures on the dark side of sexuality make her the bound captive of an Eastern Sultan and a prisoner in the exotic confines of the harem.
4. Beauty’s Kingdom (2015) – When the great queen is reported dead, Beauty and Laurent return to the kingdom they left twenty years before. Beauty agrees to take the throne, but she insists that all erotic servitude be voluntary. Countless eager princes, princesses, lords, ladies, and commoners journey to Beauty’s realm, where she and her husband usher in a new era of desire, longing, and ecstasy.

Under the pseudonym Anne Rampling

1. Exit to Eden (1985) – They call her the Perfectionist. A stunning, mysterious, and fearless sexual adventurer, Lisa is founder and supreme mistress of The Club-an exclusive island resort where forbidden fantasy meets willing flesh. Here eager participants who can afford life’s most exquisite luxuries can experience the breathtaking pleasures of surrender and submission. A thrill-seeking photojournalist, Elliott risks his life daily in the most dangerous, war-torn regions on Earth. Now he has come to Paradise to explore his most savage and vulnerable sexual self, committed to the ultimate plunge into personal risk.
2. Belinda (1986) – Belinda is the ultimate fantasy. A golden-haired object of desire, fresh and uninhibited. But to Jeremy Walker, a handsome and famous 44-year old illustrator of children’s books, Belinda is a forbidden passion, both beguiling and bewitching.

Non-fiction

• Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (2008) – Beginning with her New Orleans childhood, in a vividly experienced world of storytelling and ritual, Rice’s faith was formed. As a teenager, struggling to reconcile her faith with her hunger for knowledge and understanding of the modern world, she turned her back to the religion of her childhood and lost her belief in God.
  Years later, after the tragic passing of her daughter, she wrote Interview with the Vampire, a lament for her lost faith. Rice describes a turning point in 1998, when, after nearly four decades as an atheist, she returned to the religion of her childhood.
  Hers is a faith that has survived even her husband’s death and the divisive nature of the contemporary religious debate. This is her spiritual confession.

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A contributing writer here, Carole is in charge of comicbooktreasury.com, our sister website dedicated to comic book reading orders. She likes reading Fantasy books, classical literature, and non-fiction about how Victorians died (but also lived), Her favorite authors are Terry Pratchett, Jane Austen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Robin Hobb. Follow her on Twitter.