The author who made vampires literary. Anne Rice transformed horror fiction with lyrical prose, philosophical depth, and villains more human than the humans who fear them.
About Anne Rice
Anne Rice (1941–2021) reinvented the vampire novel with Interview with the Vampire in 1976, turning what had been a creature of pulp horror into a vehicle for existential meditation. The book was inspired by the death of her daughter Michele from leukaemia.
Rice's Vampire Chronicles span 13 novels and follow Louis, Lestat, Armand, and a cast of immortals across centuries and continents. The Mayfair Witches trilogy is a parallel universe of Louisiana witchcraft that occasionally intersects with the vampire world.
AMC's adaptations of Interview with the Vampire (2022) and Mayfair Witches (2023) introduced her work to a new generation. Rice died in December 2021 but her son Christopher has continued the Mayfair universe.
Start Here
Interview with the Vampire
Louis, a plantation owner turned vampire in 1791 New Orleans, tells his story to a reporter. Dark, devastating, and unlike anything that came before it.
Start with Interview with the Vampire. Then The Vampire Lestat, then The Queen of the Damned. The Mayfair Witches trilogy can be read independently or after the first three Chronicles.
The show is a loose adaptation updated to modern New Orleans. It makes Louis and Lestat's relationship more explicitly romantic (which Rice always implied). Fans generally enjoy the show, though it diverges significantly from the plot.
Yes — The Mayfair Witches trilogy, the Sleeping Beauty erotica trilogy (under pen name A.N. Roquelaure), the Christ the Lord novels about Jesus, and several standalone historical novels.
The Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches share a universe — Merrick (Chronicles Book 7) is a direct crossover. Characters occasionally reference each other across series.