title: The Tale of the Body Thief (Vampire Chronicles)
author:  Anne Rice 
description: It's been said that <a href="/exec/obidos/exact-author=Nabokov%2C%20Vladimir/${0}">Vladimir Nabokov</a>'s best novels are the ones he wrote after starting a failed novel. Anne Rice wrote <i>The Body Thief</i>, the fourth thrilling episode of her Vampire Chronicles, right after she spent a long time poring over that most romantic of horror novels, Mary Shelley's <a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553212478/${0}"><i>Frankenstein</i></a>, to research a novel Rice abandoned about an artificial man. Perhaps as a result of Shelley's influence, <i>The Body Thief</i> is far more psychologically penetrating than its predecessors, with a laser-like focus on a single tormented soul. Oh, we meet some wild new characters, and Rice's toothsome vampire-hero Lestat zooms around the globe--as is his magical habit--from Miami to the Gobi desert, but he's in such despair that he trades his immortal body to a con man named Raglan James, who offers him in return two days of strictly mortal bliss.
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  _Pandora, Vittorio, The Vampire, Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire
  Lestat, Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil,
  The Vampire Armand, Merrick, Blood and Gold, Blackwood Farm_ , and _Blood
  Canticle_ are works of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are
  products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
  
  
  A Ballantine eBook Edition
  
  
  _Pandora_ copyright © 1998 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _Vittorio, The Vampire_ copyright © 1999 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _Interview with the Vampire_ copyright © 1976 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _The Vampire Lestat_ copyright © 1985 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _Queen of the Damned_ copyright © 1988 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _The Tale of the Body Thief_ copyright © 1992 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _Memnoch the Devil_ copyright © 1995 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _The Vampire Armand_ copyright © 1998 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _Merrick_ copyright © 2000 by Anne O’Brien Rice  
   _Blood and Go