More than 1,200 entries, The vampire companion offers an insightful exploration, appreciation, and interpretation of all the characters and events, names and places, symbols and themes in the five volumes of The vampire chronicles.

Hundreds of entries discuss various topics related to the Anne Rice series of vampire novels, and include characters, themes, places, and symbolism in the novels

With a foreword by co-creator Kevin Williamson, the fan-favorite Love You to Death series returns with an essential guide to the fifth season of The CW's hit show The Vampire Diaries. As the series hits its 100th-episode milestone, this companion delves headlong into the twists and turns of each episode, exploring the layers of rich history, supernatural mythology, historical and pop culture references, and the complexities of the show's memorable cast of characters. Add chapters on the making of the show, interviews with the people who bring Mystic Falls to life, and the intensely loyal audience that keeps it thriving, and you have a guide as compelling and addictive as the show itself.

The Edgar Award–winning author of Never Trust a Dead Man puts a terrifying spin on what should be a typical night in a small town. Sixteen-year-old Kerry has got a tough night ahead of her. What begins as a simple lost-and-found trip to the laundromat to rescue her little brother’s stuffed koala bear turns into a nightmarish odyssey of murder, vampires, and—quite possibly—true love. “Interview with a Vampire for the learner's permit set.” —The Horn Book “A freshly written thriller, an offbeat love story, an engaging twist on the vampire novel, and an exciting tale of moral complexity . . . . Point [this] book at the Lois Duncan fans as well as Anne Rice followers, and get out of the way.” —The Bulletin “[Vande Velde] is a master at taking traditional fairy-tale-like themes and making them fresh and totally unique. Companions of the Night . . . does that for the vampire story . . . . The narrative is tightly wound, keeping readers ready for excitement and action.” —Emma Carbone, New York Public Library

Since becoming a vampire, Albert’s life has fallen into an unchanging cycle-day to night, bat to vampire, USA to...Japan? After a mishap at a meat-processing plant in Nebraska, bat-Al is flash-frozen alongside his midday snack and shipped to a foreign land! Explaining to police how he really ended up wandering naked is out of the question, not to mention he doesn’t know a word of Japanese! Al will have to rely on the kindness (?) of his new companions if he’s going to get by in Tokyo-that is, if he can convince them he’s the bat!

Anne Rice's fame rests on her supernatural tales, but she is far more than a horror novelist. She goes beyond the genre by changing the classic horror stories into myths, fairy tales, and nightmares in order to explore philosophical questions of life, death, evil, and the meaning of existence. This is the most up-to-date analysis of her work and includes individual chapters on each of her vampire, witch, and mummy novels, including her most recent, Memnoch the Devil (1995). A perfect companion for students and Anne Rice fans, this study also features a biographical chapter and a chapter which discusses her use of the supernatural, horror, and fantasy genres. Smith shows how Rice's five vampire novels interweave to form a complete mythology, a layered universe with its own history and rules, in which her characters act out the question of what it means to be human in an increasingly inhuman world. In the three Witches Chronicles, Smith shows how Rice explores the meaning of power, sexuality, family, and womanhood in the 20th century. Each novel is examined in a separate chapter with subsections on point of view, plot, character, theme, and literary device. Each novel is also examined from an alternative critical approach, such as psychological, myth, and feminist criticism, which offers the reader an alternative perspective from which to read the novel. A complete bibliography of Rice's work, general criticism and biographical sources, and listings of reviews of each novel complete the work. For fans and students, this is the perfect companion to Anne Rice's fiction and is a necessary purchase by secondary school and public libraries.

The spellbinding classic that started it all, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author—the inspiration for the hit television series “A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth—the education of the vampire.”—Chicago Tribune Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly sensual, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force—a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.