bNATIONAL BESTSELLER /b bThe tale of iThe Wolf Gift/i continues .../bbrbr In Anne Rice s surprising and compelling best-selling novel, the first of her strange and mythic imagining of the world of wolfen powers ( I devoured these pages . . . As solid and engaging as anything she has written since her early iVampire Chronicles/i fiction Alan Cheuse, iThe Boston Globe/i; A delectable cocktail of old-fashioned lost-race adventure, shape-shifting, and suspense Elizabeth Hand, iThe Washington Post/i), readers were spellbound as Rice conjured up a daring new world set against the wild and beckoning California coast.brbr Now in her new novel, as lush and romantic in detail and atmosphere as it is sleek and steely in storytelling, Anne Rice takes us once again to the rugged coastline of Northern California, to the grand mansion at Nideck Point, and further explores the unearthly education of her transformed Man Wolf.brbr The novel opens on a cold, gray landscape. It is the beginning of December. Oak fires are burning in the stately flickering hearths of Nideck Point. It is Yuletide.br For Reuben Golding, now infused with the Wolf Gift and under the loving tutelage of the Morphenkinder, this promises to be a Christmas like no other . . . brbr The Yuletide season, sacred to much of the human race, has been equally sacred to the Man Wolves, and Reuben soon becomes aware that they, too, steeped in their own profound rituals, will celebrate the ancient Midwinter festival deep within the verdant richness of Nideck forest.brbr From out of the shadows of Nideck comes a ghost tormented, imploring, unable to speak yet able to embrace and desire with desperate affection . . . As Reuben finds himself caught up with and drawn to the passions and yearnings of this spectral presence, and as the swirl of preparations reaches a fever pitch for the Nideck town Christmas festival of music and pageantry, astonishing secrets are revealed; secrets that tell of a strange netherworld, of spirits other than the Morphenkinder, centuries old, who inhabit the dense stretches of redwood and oak that surround the magnificent house at Nideck Point, ageless ones who possess their own fantastical ancient histories and who taunt with their dark magical powers . . .