安妮•赖斯(Anne Rice，1941—)

吸血鬼之母，哥特文学女王，吸血鬼家族在世间的代言人，她以一己之力复活了哥特文学类型，并将之推到了主流文学世界。同时，她也是美国基督教文学、恐怖与情欲小说的桂冠作家。其作品全球总销量超过1亿册，让她成为美国历史上最受欢迎的作家之一。

赖斯的作品以其华丽、充满感性的散文风格著称，并加入了大量形而上的哲学思辨。小说的主题多为历史背景下人的离群索居及对自我的追求，小说中的人物总是苦苦追求自我、追求美好，却始终被社会排斥在外。《狼的恩赐》是继《夜访吸血鬼》后，安妮•赖斯对哥特文化的再一次大胆探索，是对狼人故事的重新定义，也是对生命本质与爱欲的探讨。

想了解更多关于安妮•赖斯的信息，可关注她的官方网站：http://www.annerice.com/

A daring new departure from the inspired creator of The Vampire Chronicles (“unrelentingly erotic . . . unforgettable”— The Washington Post ), Lives of the Mayfair Witches (“Anne Rice will live on through the ages of literature”— San Francisco Chronicle ), and the angels of The Songs of the Seraphim (“remarkable”—Associated Press). A whole new world—modern, sleek, high-tech—and at its center, a story as old and compelling as history: the making of a werewolf, reimagined and reinvented as only Anne Rice, teller of mesmerizing tales, conjurer extraordinaire of other realms, could create.

The time is the present.

The place, the rugged coast of Northern California. A bluff high above the Pacific. A grand mansion full of beauty and tantalizing history set against a towering redwood forest.

A young reporter on assignment from the San Francisco Observer . . . An older woman welcoming him into her magnificent family home that he has been sent to write about and that she must sell with some urgency . . . A chance encounter between two unlikely people . . . An idyllic night—shattered by horrific unimaginable violence, the young man inexplicably attacked—bitten—by a beast he cannot see in the rural darkness . . . A violent episode that sets in motion a terrifying yet seductive transformation, as the young man, caught between ecstasy and horror, between embracing who he is evolving into and fearing what he will become, soon experiences the thrill of the wolf gift.

As he resists the paradoxical pleasure and enthrallment of his wolfen savagery and delights in the power and (surprising) capacity for good, he is caught up in a strange and dangerous rescue and is desperately hunted as “the Man Wolf” by authorities, the media, and scientists (evidence of DNA threatens to reveal his dual existence) . . . As a new and profound love enfolds him, questions emerge that propel him deeper into his mysterious new world: questions of why and how he has been given this gift; of its true nature and the curious but satisfying pull towards goodness; of the profound realization that there may be others like him who are watching—guardian creatures who have existed throughout time who possess ancient secrets and alchemical knowledge. And throughout it all, the search for salvation for a soul tormented by a new realm of temptations, and the fraught, exhilarating journey, still to come, of being and becoming, fully, both wolf and man.