Vittorio, the Vampire

With Pandora, Anne Rice began a magnificent new series of vampire novels. Now, in the second of her New Tales of the Vampires, she tells the mesmerizing story of Vittorio, a vampire in the Italian Age of Gold. Educated in Florence of Cosimo de' Medici, trained in knighthood at his father's mountaintop castle, Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly slendor and country pleasures-a world 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, enterin 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. Against the backdrop of the wonders-both sacred and profane-and the beauty and ferocity of Renaissance Italy, Anne Rice creates a passionate and tragic legend of doomed young love and lost innocence. Copyright 1999 by Anne O'Brien Rice. Published by Ballantine Publishing Group.

Hardcover cover image published by Alfred A. Knopf. Front-of-jacket images (left to right): (detail) Maria de' Medici by Agnolo Bronzino. Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Scala/Art Resource, New York; Francesco de' Medici, Anonymous, seventeenth century. Portraitgalerie, Innsbruck, Austria. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York. Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson.