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What books comprise the Lives of the Mayfair Witches?
This particular series includes three books: The Witching Hour, Lasher, and Taltos.
The three additional books that combine the Mayfair Witches with the Vampire Chronicles are Merrick, Blackwood Farm,
and Blood Canticle.
Below is a brief synopsis of each book in the series from various sources,
such as Amazon.com and Books-a-Million. The cover art in the images of each book are from the hardcover, trade paperback
and mass market paperback editions. The paperback editions are shown in a tablet and a smartphone.
My purchase of these six books from Amazon Kindle can be verified if necessary.
Library of Congress Cataloging data comes from both the print and Kindle editions referenced on this website.
ISBN numbers are taken directly from my print copies of the books.
eISBN numbers are taken directly from my Amazon Kindle-purchased copies.
In addition to being the recommended reading order, the jump menu above
is designed to help you to easily navigate this page.
Merrick can be read at any point as it does not directly
involve the First Street Mayfairs. However, if the order is to be exact, it is between Taltos and Blackwood Farm.
To read Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle as part of The Vampire Chronicles, it's not really necessary
to read the Lives of the Mayfair Witches first. However, to understand how Mona Mayfair came to be in a place where
she crosses paths with Quinn Blackwood, reading the three books in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches explains this plot
point thoroughly.
The Witching Hour
"The doctor woke up afraid."
~WH pg. 3, Mass Market 1993 and Amazon Kindle Editions
This short sentence opens the long and detailed Lives of the Mayfair Witches as the first sentence of the first book.
From the First Edition Dust Jacket:
The author of the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles--Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and The
Queen of the Damned-- gives us a huge, hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries.
Demonstrating, once again, her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us
a great dynasty of witches--a family given to poetry and to incest, to murder and to philosophy; a family that, over the ages,
is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.
On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking . . . and The Witching Hour
begins.
It begins in our time with a rescue at sea. Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery--aware
that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches--finds the drowned body of a man off
the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood
by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a
sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.
As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and--in passionate alliance--set out to solve the mystery of her
past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago
Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV. An intricate tale of evil unfolds--an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century
Scotland, where the first "witch," Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher . . . a creation that spells
her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.
From the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power
is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien--the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers--provides
for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness
and healing. And always--through peril and escape, tension and release--there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war:
innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death. With a dreamlike power, the novel
draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless
game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its
startling climax.
Another Synopsis:
Rowan Mayfair has grown up in a life of wealth and privilege in San Francisco. A neurosurgeon with an unusual gift for healing
patients, Rowan knows nothing of her family, the Mayfairs of New Orleans.
Michael Curry grew up in New Orleans but moved to San Francisco after high school and never returned. A firefighter's son,
he had the opportunity to go to college, then build a successful business restoring historic Victorian homes.
An accident at sea brings Rowan and Michael together. After Rowan rescues Michael from drowning in San Francisco Bay, Michael
wakes up with a psychic power in his hands and an urgent mission that sends him back to New Orleans. Just as he leaves, Rowan
gets a call telling her that her birth mother has died. Rowan immediately arranges to leave San Francisco for New Orleans
and when she gets there, her and Michael's destinies merge in one gloomy old mansion and a ghost that has haunted the Mayfair
family for over 300 years.
From the Parlor's Copies:
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-91905
ISBN: 0-345-38446-6
eISBN: 978-0-307-57595-1
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Lasher
From the First Edition Dust Jacket:
From the day her first Vampire Chronicle was published, critics and readers--readers by the hundreds of thousands--have been
mesmerized by the writings of Anne Rice. And with the publication of The Witching Hour, she created for us yet another
world and legend, and both the chorus of praise and the multitudes of her readers once more increased.
Now, Anne Rice brings us again--even more magically--into the midst of the dynasty of witches she introduced in The Witching
Hour.
At the center: the brilliant and beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, and Lasher, the darkly compelling demon whom
she finds irresistible and from whose evil spell and vision she must now flee. She takes with her their terrifying and exquisite
child, one of "a brood of children born knowing, able to stand and talk on the first day."
Rowan's attempt to escape Lasher and his pursuit of her and their child are at the heart of this extraordinary saga. It is
a novel that moves around the globe, backward and forward through time, and between the human and demonic worlds. Its many
voices--of women, of men, of demons and angels, present and past--haunt and enchant us. With a dreamlike power, the novel
draws us through twilight paths, telling a chillingly hypnotic story of occult and spiritual aspirations and passion.
Another Synopsis:
Lasher, the ghost that has haunted the Mayfair family for thirteen generations, has been born in the flesh to Rowan Mayfair.
With Rowan as his captive, Lasher manages to stay several steps ahead of the massive international manhunt initiated by the
powerful Mayfair family.
As the investigation continues, Mayfair women are dying of a strange hemorrhage due to miscarriage of an embryo that might
not even be human. Genetic testing is quickly revealing that many members of the Mayfair family possess an extra set of chromosomes
that lie dormant unless two people with the extra set of chromosomes reproduce.
As more and more evidence of a possibly heretofore unknown species emerges, including samples sent in secret by Rowan herself,
trouble brews in the Talamasca that makes things dangerous for those members already involved with the Mayfair family.
On top of that, massive funds from the Mayfair accounts are being withdrawn, and as it becomes clear that Rowan's signature
was forged on more than one occasion, and as reports come in of Rowan's declining health, and with more and more women dying,
it becomes a matter of extreme urgency that Rowan be found...and that Lasher be stopped.
From the Parlor's Copies:
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-12246
ISBN: 0-345-39781-9
eISBN: 978-0-307-57586-9
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Taltos
From the First Edition Dust Jacket:
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 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 power 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 Taltos and their mythic Lost Land to the moral crises 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 mortality and immortality, justice
and guilt. Once again Anne Rice has created new worlds, brilliantly imagined; she holds us mesmerized and enchanted.
Another Synopsis:
Lasher is dead; Rowan is alive and healing slowly. A tentative peace has been restored to the Mayfair family, until Talamasca
scholar and Mayfair bridegroom Aaron Lightner is murdered by a hit-and-run motorist. This causes Rowan to immediately come
out of her state of catatonic grief, and initiate a search for the persons responsible for Aaron Lightner's death.
Before Rowan and Michael leave for London, it is discovered that Mona Mayfair, the 13-year-old Designee of the Mayfair Legacy
upon Rowan's death, is pregnant. Mona had seduced Michael during Rowan's captivity with Lasher, and it looks like Mona is
Michael's last chance to have children.
As Mona's pregnancy progresses at an alarmingly fast rate, Rowan and Michael close in on Aaron's killers. They meet Ash Templeton,
who aides Rowan and Michael on their quest to get to the bottom of the unrest in the Talamasca and avenge Aaron. Ash then
tells them the long and violent history of the Taltos, all the while keeping it secret from them that he knows who Mona is...
From the Parlor's Copies:
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-96245
ISBN: 0-345-39471-2
eISBN: 978-0-307-57592-0
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Merrick
The Vampire Chronicles Book 7
From the First Edition Dust Jacket:
In her mesmerizing new novel, the author of The Vampire Chronicles and the saga of the Mayfair Witches demonstrates once again
her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of myth and magic. Here, in a magnificent tale of sorcery and the
occult, she makes real for us a hitherto unexplored world of witchcraft.
At the center is the beautiful, unconquerable witch Merrick. She is a descendant of the gens de couleur libres, a society
of New Orleans octoroons and quadroons steeped in the lore and ceremony of voodoo, who reign in the shadowy world where African
and French--the dark and the white--intermingle. Her ancestors are the great Mayfair witches, of whom she knows nothing--and
from whom she inherits the power and the magical knowledge of a Circe.
Into this exotic realm comes David Talbot--hero, storyteller, adventurer, almost-mortal vampire, visitor from another dark
realm. It is he who recounts Merrick's haunting tale--a tale that takes us from the New Orleans of past and present to the
jungles of Guatemala, from the Maya ruins of a century ago to ancient civilizations not yet explored.
Anne Rice's richly told novel weaves an irresistible story of two worlds: the witches' world and the vampires' world, where
magical powers and otherworldly fascinations are locked together in a dance of seduction, death, and rebirth.
From Books-a-Million:
At the center of Anne Rice's new novel is the beautiful, unconquerable Merrick, a child--a witch with the power and magical
knowledge of a Medea and a Circe. She is a Mayfair of New Orleans, descendent of a family rich in its French and Spanish past,
steeped in the age-old tradition of voodoo. Into this strange and exotic world comes David Talbot, hero, storyteller, adventurer,
almost-mortal vampire, a visitor from another realm of the dark world.
From the Parlor's Copies:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: 99-088556
ISBN: 0-679-45448-9
eISBN: 978-0-375-41270-7
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Blackwood Farm
The Vampire Chronicles Book 9
From the First Edition Dust Jacket:
In her new novel, Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative—-her vampire legend and her lore of
the Mayfair witches—to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets.
Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing rooms, bright, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of
the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious
doppelgänger, “Goblin,” a spirit from a dream world that Quinn can’t escape and that prevents him from belonging
anywhere. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger
becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself.
As the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Quinn’s boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans,
from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from
the spectre that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds.
Like her much-loved novel The Witching Hour, Blackwood Farm is a family saga--capturing both the dramas and
subtleties of family as it tells its story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny.
It is Anne Rice at her best.
Another Synopsis:
The Blackwood family has owned Blackwood Farm since Manfred Blackwood built his empire in the 19th century. The present day
family has no belief in ghosts, witches, or vampires but Quinn Blackwood has had a doppelganger as his playmate, friend and
confidante all his life.
When Quinn inherits Blackwood Farm upon the deaths of his grandparents, he sets about administering the estate with the help
of Jasmine and her family, who have worked at Blackwood Farm for generations. When Quinn finds the old Hermitage at Sugar
Devil Island, deep in Sugar Devil Swamp, he provokes the wrath of Petronia, a mysterious androgyne who wants the Hermitage
to herself.
A series of violent encounters puts Quinn in the hospital at Mayfair Medical, where he meets Mona Mayfair, who is the only
other person in his life who can see Goblin, his doppelganger. Quinn and Mona quickly fall in love, and he meets Rowan and
Michael, who warn him that Mona is very sick and that any sex between the two must be protected. The child Mona bore Michael
had been a Taltos who disappeared with Ash Templeton, but the birth left Mona critically ill.
When Quinn goes on a three year tour of Europe, he and Mona stay in touch by email until Mona becomes so ill that she can
no longer use a computer. Shortly after Quinn returns to Blackwood Farm, Petronia attacks him, abducts him and turns him
into a vampire.
As a vampire, Quinn has to make a difficult choice - find Mona and tell her what he's become or shield her from it? But a
bigger problem is brewing: Goblin is becoming more and more violent and dangerous. Unable to stop him, Quinn seeks out the
assistance of Lestat, knowing he is taking a great risk by going into New Orleans, Lestat's protected territory...
From the Parlor's Copies:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
ISBN: 0-345-44368-3
eISBN: 978-1-4000-4020-9
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Blood Canticle
The Vampire Chronicles Book 10
From the First Edition Dust Jacket:
Anne Rice continues her astonishing Vampire Chronicles with the story of Lestat’s passionate quest for redemption, goodness,
and the love of Rowan Mayfair.
Here are all of the brilliantly conceived characters that make up the two worlds of vampires and witches: Mona Mayfair, who’s
come to Blackwood Farm to die and is brought into the realm of the undead...Rowan Mayfair, brilliant neurosurgeon and witch,
who finds herself dangerously drawn to Lestat...her husband, Michael Curry, hero of the Mayfair Chronicles, who seeks Lestat’s
help with the temporary madness of his wife...Patsy, the country-western singer, who returns to avenge her death at the hands
of her son, Quinn Blackwood.
And here is the spirit of Julien Mayfair, guardian of the family, determined to torment Lestat eternally for what he has done
to Mona...the riddle of the five-thousand-year-old Taltos, involving Mona's child...and, at the book's center, the Vampire
Lestat, once the epitome of evil and now--following the transformation set in motion with Memnoch the Devil--struggling
with his vampirism and yearning for goodness, purity and love as he contends with ghosts, legends, secrets and the mystery
of the Taltos, and as he wrestles with the fate of his beloved Rowan Mayfair.
Another Synopsis:
Lestat is back, up from his death sleep on the altar of St. Elizabeth's. After he has helped Quinn send Goblin into the hereafter,
and lost his beloved Merrick in the process, his grief is interrupted by an intense exchange inside Blackwood Manor.
Mona now knows Quinn is a vampire, and Quinn is about to offer the Dark Gift to Mona. Once Lestat has intervened, he meets
Rowan Mayfair, and quite possibly falls in love for the first time in his existence.
Now Lestat has to juggle training two new vampires, and his love for Rowan Mayfair.
From the Parlor's Copies:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
ISBN: 0-375-41200-x6
eISBN: 978-1-4000-4194-7
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