The ENTIRE Vampire Chronicles, in case you were wondering

Vampire Chronicles is a series of 10, count them, 10 novels by Anne Rice that revolves around the fictional character Lestat, a French nobleman made into a vampire in the 18th century.

When I started reading "Interview with the Vampire" I only knew of the first three books (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned), but after doing a little research discovered that this series has been going on for 34 years!

The picture above shows ALL the books in the series in the correct order if you are interested in reading through the entire chronicles but I warn you, that mean you would be reading over 4232 pages of vampire lore and history!

Are you up to the task?

(Maybe I'll read them over the course of the next 34 years, that's fair right?)

Book 1. Interview with the Vampire (1976)
Book 2. The Vampire Lestat (1985)
Book 3. The Queen of the Damned (1988)

1. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE: "This story is a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional low point, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris."


2. THE VAMPIRE LESTAT: "After over a half century underground, Lestat awakens in the 1980s to the cacophony of electronic sounds and images that characterizes the MTV generation. Particularly, he is captivated by a fledgling rock band named Satan's Night Out. Determined both to achieve international fame and end the centuries of self-imposed vampire silence, Lestat takes command of the band (now renamed "The Vampire Lestat") and pens his own autobiography. The remainder of the novel purports to be that autobiography: the vampire traces his mortal youth as the son of a marquis in pre-Revolutionary France, his initiation into vampirism at the hands of Magnus, and his quest for the ultimate origins of his undead species."


3. QUEEN OF THE DAMNED: "Did you ever wonder where all those mischievous vampires roaming the globe in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles came from? In this, the third book in the series, we find out. That raucous rock-star vampire Lestat interrupts the 6,000-year slumber of the mama of all bloodsuckers, Akasha, Queen of the Damned. Akasha was once the queen of the Nile (she has a bit in common with the Egyptian goddess Isis), and it's unwise to rile her now that she's had 60 centuries of practice being undead."

Book 4. The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
Book 5. Memnock the Devil (1995)
Book 6. The Vampire Armand (1998)
Book 7. Merrick (2000)

4. THE TALE OF THE BODY THIEF: The Body Thief is far more psychologically penetrating than its predecessors, with a laser-like focus on a single tormented soul. Lestat is in such despair in this book that he trades his immortal body to a con man named Raglan James, who offers him in return two days of strictly mortal bliss. Lestat gets to experience romance with a nun and orange juice--"thick like blood, but full of sweetness." But Lestat is horrified by an uncommon cold, and his toilet training proves traumatic. He's also got to catch Raglan James, who has no intention of giving up his dishonestly acquired new super powered body.

5. MEMNOCK THE DEVIL: The fifth volume of Rice's Vampire Chronicles is one of her most controversial books. The tale begins in New York with Lestate. Lestat is being stalked by some shadowy guy who turns out to be Memnoch, the devil. From here on, the book might have been called Interview with the Devil (by a Vampire). It's a rousing story interrupted by a long debate with the devil. Memnoch isn't the devil as ordinarily conceived: he got the boot from God because he objected to God's heartless indifference to human misery. Memnoch takes Lestat to heaven, hell, and throughout history. If you like straight-ahead fanged adventure, you'll likely enjoy the first third; if you like Job-like arguments with God, you'll prefer the Memnoch chapters.

6. THE VAMPIRE ARMAND: "Rice has crafted an intriguing plot, one that expands on events from her earlier books, yet stands alone as a compelling exploration of the Cimmerian secrets that have shaded one of her most fascinating characters, Armand. Readers of her 1995 novel, Memnoch the Devil, will recall that the vampire Armand ended his existence by stepping into the sun. Since he was a popular character from earlier tales, a resounding protest from fans followed. In response, Rice concocted a way in this, her seventh Vampire Chronicle since Interview with the Vampire (1976), to raise Armand from the dead."

7. MERRICK: "Just when you thought it was safe for a bloodsucker to go out in the dark in New Orleans, along comes Merrick Mayfair, a sultry, hard-drinking octoroon beauty whose voodoo can turn the toughest vampire into a marionette dancing to her merry, scary tune. In Merrick, Anne Rice brings back three of her most wildly popular characters--the vampires Lestat and Louis and the dead vampire child Claudia--and introduces them to the world of her Mayfair Witches book series."

Book 8. Blood and Gold (2001)
Book 9. Blackwood Farm (2002)
Book 10. Blood Canticle (2003)

8. BLOOD & GOLD: "Time heals all wounds, unless, of course, you're a vampire. Cuts may heal, burns vanish, limbs reattach, but for the "blood god," the wounds of the heart sometimes stay open and raw for centuries. So it is for Marius, Anne Rice's oft-mentioned and beloved scholar. We've heard parts of his tale in past volumes of the Vampire Chronicles, but never so completely and never from his own lips. In Blood and Gold, Rice avoids the danger of treading worn ground as she fills out the life and character of Marius the Lonely, the Disenchanted, the Heartsick--a 2,000-year-old vampire "with all the conviction of a mortal man."


9. BLACKWOOD FARM: "Blackwood Farm introduces Quinn Blackwood, the sexy, eccentric young gentleman who becomes both a vampire and the heir to the Blackwood estate. All his life, Quinn has been haunted by Goblin, a doppelgänger no one else can see--or believe in. But Goblin is real, and he is becoming maliciously tangible, strengthened by the blood that Quinn unwillingly drinks. Quinn's only hope of liberation from his increasingly dangerous doppelgänger is to find the legendary vampire Lestat. But Lestat has vowed to destroy any vampire who sets foot in New Orleans.... "

10. BLOOD CANTIDE: "Taking up where last year's Blackwood Farm ended, the now-doppelganger-free Quinn Blackwood and Lestat save Quinn's true love, the witch Mona Mayfair, from certain death by making her an immortal. In his effort to attain sainthood, Lestat must deal with a lot of metaphysical angst. The complete unification of the Mayfair witch saga with that of the Vampire Chronicles provides either a befitting end or a new beginning for the Queen of the Vampires."

The Vampire Queen herself, Anne Rice.
Creepy.