The Witching Hour

Anne Rice

Nov 2010 · Ballantine Books

About this ebook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved author of the Vampire Chronicles, the first installation of her spellbinding Mayfair Chronicles—the inspiration for the hit television series!

“Extraordinary . . . Anne Rice offers more than just a story; she creates myth.”—The Washington Post Book World
 
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, an intricate tale of evil unfolds.
 
Moving through time from today’s New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the Louis XIV’s France, and 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, The Witching Hour is a luminous, deeply enchanting novel.  

The magic of the Mayfairs continues:
THE WITCHING HOUR • LASHER • TALTOS

Ratings and reviews

I like long books to a certain degree and this book has been challenging to read. When it's good it's good and when it's horrible dull it's horrible dull. There is no middle ground with it and if u skip enough pages or a chapter just to get back to the main plot then u miss out on certain key information. Unfortunately I find it more dull then good with those excessively long drawn out chapters of of the Mayfair history. I like back story but not when it takes this long to get back to the main story.

Best book I've ever! I guess there some don't like the beginning I loved it for all the details. Makes you feel as if you are in the story. But all of her books make you feel as if you are there. Always will be huge fan of her work !

From what I have been able to read this is a good book. In multiple places it has jumped many pages. In one instance it has jumped from page 512 to 531 and I am left with much story missing.

About the author

Anne Rice is the author of thirty-seven books, including the Vampire Chronicles, the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, and the Wolf Gift book series. Rice was born in New Orleans in 1941 and grew up there and in Texas. She lived in San Francisco with her husband, the poet and painter, Stan Rice until 1988, when they returned to New Orleans to live with their son, Christopher. In 2006, Rice moved to Rancho Mirage, California. She died in 2021.