Saturday, November 24, 2012

The Da Vinci Code

by Dan Brown

Synopsis:
While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.
In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth...

Angels and Demons

by Dan Brown

Synopsis:
An ancient secret brotherhood.
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
An unthinkable target.
When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.
Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.
Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.
An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.

READ: http://anotepad.com/notes/1366100

Friday, November 23, 2012

The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned

by Anne Rice

Synopsis:
"The reader is held captive, and, ultimately, seduced."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Ramses the Great has awakened in Edwardian London. Having drunk the elixir of life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied. Although he pursues voluptuous aristocrat Julie Stratford, the woman for whom he desperately longs is Cleopatra. And his intense longing for her, undiminished over the centuries, will force him to commit an act that will place everyone around him in the gravest danger....

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Servant of the Bones


Servant of the Bones

Synopsis:
Departing from her Vampire and Mayfair Witches chronicles, the bestselling author takes us into the Biblical world of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the destruction of Solomon's temple, to tell the story of Azriel, Servant of the Bones. Journeying from ancient Babylon to the Europe of the Black Death and into the modern world, Azriel—ghost, genii, demon, angel, and pure spirit made visible—pours out his heart to us as he confronts his human origins and the terrible, dark forces that seek to condemn him to a life of evil and destruction.




Exit To Eden

by Anne Rice

Synopsis:

We all dream of the forbidden but some of us make those dreams come true...
With the same mystery, menace and intensity as her Vampire books, Exit to Eden explores the forbidden by taking us to The Club, a vacation paradise where no aspect of sexual pleasure is taboo. Just as The Story of O shocked the Sixties by speaking about what had only been whispered, Exit to Eden gives voices to the sexual secrets of the Eighties.


Belinda

by Anne Rice, writing as Anne Rampling


Synopsis:

Belinda is the ultimate fantasy. A golden-haired object of desire, fresh and uninhibited. But to Jeremy Walker, a handsome and famous 44-year-old illustrator of children's books, Belinda is a forbidden passion. She's sweet sixteen - and the most seductive woman he's ever known.




Mayfair Witches Series


by Anne Rice


The Witching Hour
(Mayfair Witches Series #1)

Synopsis:
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.




Lasher
(Mayfair Witches Series #2)

Synopsis:
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 an 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.




Taltos
(Mayfair Witches Series #3)

Synopsis:
"ANNE RICE WILL LIVE ON THROUGH THE AGES OF LITERATURE."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"TALTOS IS THE THIRD BOOK IN A SERIES KNOWN AS THE LIVES OF THE MAYFAIR WITCHES . . . Their haunted heritage has brought the family great wealth, which is exercised from a New Orleans manse with Southern gentility; but of course such power cannot escape notice . . . or challenge. . . Rice is a formidable talent. . .
[Taltos] is a curious amalgam of gothic, glamour fiction, alternate history, and high soap opera."
—The Washington Post Book World
"AN INTRICATE, STUNNING IMAGINATION."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"SPELLBINDING . . . MYTHICAL . . . Anne Rice is a pure storyteller."
—Cosmopolitan
"BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Her power of invention seems boundless. . . . She has made a masterpiece of the morbid, worthy of Poe's daughter. . . . It is hard to praise sufficiently the originality of Miss Rice."
—The Wall Street Journal


New Tales of the Vampires Series


New Tales of the Vampires Series


Pandora
(New Tales of the Vampires Series #1)

Synopsis:
Anne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead. The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded cafe, where David meets Pandora. She is 2,000 years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life. Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to 18th-century France to 20th-century Paris and New Orleans.




Vittorio the Vampire
(New Tales of the Vampires Series #2)

Synopsis:
Renaissance-born vampire Vittorio, Cosimo de Medici, and the lush city of Florence, Italy, at the height of its glory are all brought to vivid life in Vittorio: The Vampire, the latest in Anne Rice's New Tales of the Vampires series. Rice continues her fascinating and gorgeously written saga of the voluptuaries of the undead, and the beloved vampire in question tastes life in a way we can only imagine -- with Rice at her best!



Sleeping Beauty Series

Sleeping Beauty Series


The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
(Sleeping Beauty Series #1)

Synopsis:
The first of the Classic Erotic Trilogy of Sleeping Beauty
In the traditional folktale of "Sleeping Beauty," the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a Prince. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious. Now Anne Rice's retelling of the Beauty story probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the Prince awakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty's complete and total enslavement to him . . . as Anne Rice explores the world of erotic yearning and fantasy in a classic that becomes, with her skillful pen, a compelling experience.

"Something very special . . . at once so light and yet so haunting."
—The Advocate

"Articulate, baroque, and fashionably pornographic."
—Playboy




Beauty's Punishment
(Sleeping Beauty Series #2)

Synopsis:
The Second of the Classic Erotic Trilogy of Sleeping Beauty This sequel to The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, the first of Anne Rice's elegantly written volumes of erotica, continues her explicit, teasing exploration of the psychology of human desire. Now Beauty, having indulged in a secret and forbidden infatuation with the rebellious slave Prince Tristan, is sent away from the Satyricon-like world of the Castle. Sold at auction, she will soon experience the tantalizing punishments of "the village," as her education in love, cruelty, dominance, submission, and tenderness is turned over to the brazenly handsome Captain of the Guard. And once again Rice's fabulous tale of pleasure and pain dares to explore the most primal and well-hidden desires of the human heart.




Beauty's Release
(Sleeping Beauty Series #3)

Synopsis:
The Conclusion to the Classic Erotic Trilogy of Sleeping Beauty In the final volume of Anne Rice's deliciously tantalizing erotic trilogy, Beauty's adventures on the dark side of sexuality make her the bound captive of an Eastern Sultan and a prisoner in the exotic confines of the harem. As this voluptuous adult fairy tale moves toward conclusion, all Beauty's encounters with the myriad variations of sexual fantasy are presented in a sensuous, rich prose that intensifies this exquisite rendition of Love's secret world, and makes the Beauty series and incomparable study of erotica. In it, Anne Rice makes the forbidden side of passion a doorway into the hidden regions of the psyche and the heart.


Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Series

by Charlaine Harris

Dead until Dark
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #1)

Synopsis:
Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out....
Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.


*****


Living Dead in Dallas
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #2)

Synopsis:
This is the second book in Charlaine Harris' popular Southern Vampire Mysteries series. Telepathic vampire maven (and cocktail waitress) Sookie Stackhouse has been tasked with locating an abducted vampire and suppressing an upstart anti-undead religious cult.


*****

Club Dead
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #3)

Synopsis:
Sookie's boyfriend has been very distant-in another state, distant. Now she's off to Mississippi to mingle with the underworld at Club Dead-a little haunt where the vampire elite go to chill out. But when she finally finds Bill-caught in an act of betrayal-she's not sure whether to save him...or sharpen some stakes.


*****

Dead to the World
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #4)

Synopsis:
When cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse sees a naked man on the side of the road, she doesn't just drive on by. Turns out the poor thing hasn't a clue who he is, but Sookie does. It's Eric the vampire--but now he's a kinder, gentler Eric. And a scared Eric, because whoever took his memory now wants his life.


*****

Dead as a Doornail
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #5)

Synopsis:
Small-town cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse has had more than her share of experience with the supernatural—but now it’s really hitting close to home. When Sookie sees her brother Jason’s eyes start to change, she knows he’s about to turn into a were-panther for the first time—a transformation he embraces more readily than most shapeshifters she knows. But her concern becomes cold fear when a sniper sets his deadly sights on the local changeling population, and Jason’s new panther brethren suspect he may be the shooter. Now, Sookie has until the next full moon to find out who’s behind the attacks—unless the killer decides to find her first…


*****

Definitely Dead
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #6)

Synopsis:
Sixth in the Anthony Award-winning Southern Vampire series. Spiked with a frothy fusion of romance, mystery, and fantasy, this bestselling series sends the supernaturally gifted cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse to New Orleans, where she has to deal with the legacy of one of her own family and a host of potentially dangerous characters.


*****


All Together Dead
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #7)

Synopsis:
Betrayed by her longtime vampire love, Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse must now not only deal with a possible new man in her life-the oh-so-handsome shapeshifter Quinn-but also contend with a long-planned vampire summit. With her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans, the local vampire queen is vulnerable to those hungry for a takeover. Soon, Sookie must decide what side she'll stand with. And her choice may mean the difference between survival and all-out catastrophe.


*****


From Dead to Worse
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #8)

Synopsis:
After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina, and the manmade horror of the explosion at the vampire summit, Sookie Stackhouse is safe but dazed, yearning for things to get back to normal. But her boyfriend Quinn is among the missing. And things are changing, whether the weres and vamps in her corner of Louisiana like it or not. In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death…and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood ceases flowing, her world will be forever altered.


*****


Dead and Gone
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #9)

Synopsis:
Now an HBO original series, True Blood-the New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series continues. Except for Sookie Stackhouse, folks in Bon Temps, Louisiana, know little about vamps-and nothing about weres. Until now. The weres and shifters have finally decided to reveal their existence to the ordinary world. At first all goes well. Then the mutilated body of a were-panther is found near the bar where Sookie works-and she feels compelled to discover who, human or otherwise, did it. But there's a far greater danger threatening Bon Temps. A race of unhuman beings-older, more powerful, and more secretive than vampires or werewolves-is preparing for war. And Sookie finds herself an all-too human pawn in their battle.


*****


Dead in the Family
(Sookie Stackhouse Series #10)

Synopsis:
The #1 New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series- the basis for HBO(r)'s True Blood-continues! After enduring torture and the loss of loved ones during the brief but deadly Faery War, Sookie Stackhouse is hurt and she's angry. Just about the only bright spot in her life is the love she thinks she feels for vampire Eric Northman. But he's under scrutiny by the new Vampire King because of their relationship. And as the political implications of the Shifters coming out are beginning to be felt, Sookie's connection to the Shreveport pack draws her into the debate. Worst of all, though the door to Faery has been closed, there are still some Fae on the human side-and one of them is angry at Sookie. Very, very angry...