Taltos

The legend-building storytelling power that has won Anne Rice her millions of devoted readers is enthrallingly present in Taltos. Her new novel continues the epic of the Mayfair witches, the hypnotic saga of the occult that began with The Witching Hour and Lasher. Meet Mr. Ash, quiet-spoken, tall, unfailingly kind-sole survivor of an ancient species, the Taltos-thriving among humankind as he has always done, now the head of a great corporate empire. As the novel opens, he is stunned to learn from an old and mysterious friend that another Taltos has been seen-in the very same Scottish glen where centuries ago, long before the coming of the Romans, Ash ruled his clan. At once he is propelled into the world of Rowan Mayfair, and into the mysteries of the Mayfair family-the New Orleans dynasty of witches forever besieged by ghosts, spirits, and the dizzying powers of his own species-a family intimately involved with the heritage of the Taltos, a family of unique, brilliant, and troubled souls struggling as they have for centuries to use both science and magic in their battle for greatness, even survival. At the heart of the novel is the Talamasca, a secular order of psychic scholars, the only organization in existence which may understand Ash, his Taltos past, and the dilemma of the Mayfair witches. The story of the Mayfair family continues, moving from London to Donnelaith, Scotland, to New Orleans, back and forth through time-from the origins of the Taltosand their mythic Lost Landto the moral crisis of the present day. In a swirling universe filled with death and life, corruption and innocence, the novel takes us on a wondrous journey back through the centuries to a civilization half human, of wholly mysterious origin, at odds with morality and immortality, justice and guilt. Once again Anne Rice has created new worlds, brilliantly imagined; she holds us mesmerized and echanted. Copyright 1994 Anne O'Brien Rice. Published by Ballantine Publishing Group.

Hardcover cover image published by Knopf. Jacket image: The Temptation of Christ. Capital (attributed to Gislebertus) at Cathedral of St. Lazarus, Autun, France. Foto Marburg/Art Resource, New York. Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson.