From the back coverTHE BOGTo a small English village, it is a vast organic presence, as ancient as time itself and seething with hidden life and forbidden legends...THE BOGTo its victims, it is a nameless horror beyond description, a razor-toothed evil, rising up from the murky depths to feast on human prey...THE BOGTo archaeologist David Macauley and his family, it is the ultimate scientific mystery—and the ultimate experiment in terror...From Library JournalFor modern-day archaeologist David Macauley, Hovern Bog proves a rich source of bog bodies (ancient human remains preserved intact by chemicals in the peat water) and, ultimately, a near-catastrophic horror show for him, his family, and the nearby villagers of Fenchurch St. Jude. While exploring, Macauley encounters sinister local nobleman Grenville and his blood-thirsty demon, Julia. Grenville and Julia, both seemingly immortal, have terrorized the local countryside since the days of the Celts and the Romans. In that long-ago time Julia used Hovern Bog as a dumping ground; now for the most part, she is content slaughtering sheep. But with the appearance of the snoopy Professor Macauley things at Hovern Bog take a bloody turn for the worse.

From the back coverThey are cool to the touch and alluringly beautiful in their ageless youth. Their laughter seduces, their brilliance beguiles, and their fathomless eyes are the eyes which transfix...The secrets they guard are rendered in the iron doors and gothic traceries of Notre Dame. Their arts and science are the light of civilization. Their consciousness, so old, so vastly superior, stands vigil over human progress. They were the illuminati. They are the vampire.The players in this story are: Dr. John Gladstone, a fashionable London virologist on the verge of altering history; his elder daughter Ursula, enticed by the lure of immortality; his younger daughter Camille, bereft of reason, bestowed with genius; and the Lady Hespeth, whose obsession is a mask of the unimaginable.Their world as they know it will begin to dissolve in illusion and terror from the moment a young Italian falls beneath Dr. Gladstone's carriage. For Niccolo is the androgynous angel painted centuries ago in da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks.Now he beckons. And they must follow him past the certainties of their mortal reality, through mysteries shrouded in horror, into the phantasmagoric eternity of sensuous, heady delight which is the life of the vampire.EARLY PRAISE"THE DELICATE DEPENDENCY is rich with period detail and extraordinary insight. The tension builds page by page to a stunning climax, and the sense of creeping, subterranean horror is truly awesome. I doubt that I will ever forget it."—Whitley Streiber"The past half-decade has seen a glut of vampire novels, but few as ambitious and seriously intended as this one... an impressive book, unflaggingly interesting."—Publishers WeeklyREVIEWS"... one of the most ambitious vampire tales I've ever read... a staggeringly researched historical saga as well as an unerringly learned and intelligent contemplation on the nature of vampirism, driven by unpretentious storytelling magic... the very best novel of its kind."—Fright.com"Talbot's characterizations are top-notch as conflict and ambition and love and deceit vie within human and inhuman alike... I suppose I will always want to read [the] traditional kind of vampire novel, but with The Delicate Dependency, Michael Talbot has written something much more substantial, something special, a unique and engrossing paperback original."—Too Much Horror Fiction

From the Back Cover From a history book about the stately isolated summer mansions of upstate New York: Built between the years 1884 and 1890 by Sarah Balfram, the daughter of an industri­alist and railroad tycoon, LakeHouse is be­lieved to be the largest of the great camps in the Adirondacks. It is thought to contain at least 160 rooms. One of the more intriguing fea­tures of the house is the peculiarity of its wildly Victorian design, abounding with staircases that lead nowhere, rooms with skewed propor­tions, and miles of meandering hallways… But the strangest thing about LakeHouse is the extraordinary amount of bloodshed that has taken place within its walls. Only months after the house’s completion, Sarah Balfram’s fiance, Viktor Oelrich, was shot to death there. In 1923, Hollywood director Desmond Hunt was stabbed to death during a party given at the house by silent-film star Mae Norman. Since then a remarkable number of other murders have occurred at the house: the Krafft family massacre in 1929, the Ponzi murders in 1937, the shooting of Ann and Marie Rouchard by an unknown assailant in 1952, the bludgeoning death': of Wall Street com­modities broker Sol Morgenthau and family in 1964… This summer Lake House has new ten­ants: pretty Lauren Ransom, who has just married the man of her dreams; Stephen Ransom, her famous and wealthy new hus­band; and Lauren’s eleven-year-old son by a first marriage, Garrett, a science buff who knows such alarming facts as “Only animals that hunt at night have eyes that glow in the dark when a beam of light hits them.” The Ransoms are hoping to enjoy a sum­mer they will never forget, and LakeHouse does not plan on disappointing them. For concealed within its walls are many, many surprises, and most of them come out only at night…