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Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles & Mayfair Witches Presented in Order

Books Rice

Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles cross over into the Mayfair Witches series – this is the best order in which to read them.

When I was a little girl, my mother had a well read and worn collection of Anne Rice paperbacks haphazardly arranged on the particle board bookshelf in our den. I was an avid reader even then and would often raid my parent’s bookshelves when I ran out of age-appropriate material. Therefore, I began reading Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles very young. By the time I turned sixteen years old, I had read every book in the series that had already been published. Rice continued to publish Vampire Chronicles for many years thereafter and I read each book as it came out.

Back to the Beginning

In 2019, I decided to finish up the series, but first I went back to the beginning and read the books in order. I began with Interview with the Vampire in late August, and finished with Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis in November. I enjoyed each one as much as I did the first time I read them. The extravagant settings and characters throughout the series are addicting, their stories full of intrigue and suspense. Well, for the most part. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis was out of place – the story itself would have worked much better if it had been removed from the Vampire Chronicles altogether and written as a story of Atlantis.

Not Included

Not included in this particular list are Pandora and Vittorio – Anne Rice’s vampire novels that work with but are not a part of the Vampire Chronicles and thus non-canonical for serious readers. I highly recommend these books, but they are separate from the exercise of reading them in order.

Mayfair Witches

I’ve also included The Witching Hour, the first book in the Mayfair Witches series, as the books crossover into each other at this point and several times thereafter. The Mayfair Witches series as a whole is perhaps my favorite three-book series ever published, and I highly recommend you take a look at The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos when you are done with the Vampire Series. In my case, I read all three Mayfair Witch books before I went back to the Vampire Chronicles. I read The Tale of the Body Thief —> The Witching Hour —> Lasher —> Taltos —> Memnoch the Devil.

These are all mass-market paperbacks and likely reside at a used bookstore near you.

  1. Interview With The Vampire, 1976
  2. The Vampire Lestat, 1985
  3. Queen of the Damned, 1988
  4. Tale of the Body Thief, 1992
  5. Memnoch the Devil, 1995
  6. The Vampire Armand, 1998
  7. Merrick, 2000
  8. Blood and Gold, 2001
  9. Blackwood Farm, 2002
  10. Blood Canticle, 2003
  11. Prince Lestat, 2014
  12. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, 2016
  13. Blood Communion, 2018

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