Download Description
Dr. Edward Lewis Weyland is an anthropologist, a professor and student of man. His interest in this field is, however, more than academic, for he is a vampire, not a spirit creature but a perfectly evolved predator: strong, swift, cunning, and aloof. However, when Weyland stalks a woman who proves a more adept hunter than himself, he winds up critically wounded and humbled, and obliged to make a journey toward the greatest threat he's faced yet: empathy for the very creatures he must feed on to survive.

ANNOTATION

An account of the perilous adventures in modern America of vampire Edward Weyland (a biological rather than a supernatural predator), The Vampire Tapestry has received accolades from Stephen King, Peter S. Beagle, Marge Piercy, and many others. One chapter picked up a Locus Award nomination, and another won the Nebula. After nearly two decades of being in and out of print, this book has been revisited by critics on the Internet and in national magazines as an enduring and unsurpassed classic of vampire fiction.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Hailed by Stephen King as "scary and suspenseful" and "unputdownable," and by Peter Beagle, author of THE LAST UNICORN, as "The best vampire novel I have ever read," THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY examines the classic monster as a biological, rather than supernatural, predator who awakens from hibernation every few decades needing to relearn human culture. After years of secret effort, the self-styled Edward Weyland has become a respected anthropology professor and director of a sleep research lab. With reliable access to unsuspecting blood donors, he grows complacent and makes a near-fatal error. First critically wounded by a strong and canny woman, then imprisoned and humiliated by a power-mad Satanist, he is forced on a journey toward an empathy with his prey that threatens the foundations of his survival.

About the Author

Suzy McKee Charnas was born and educated in New York City, attending Barnard College as an Economic History major (1961) and, after a two-year stint in Nigeria with the Peace Corps, New York University (MAT, 1965). She taught at the New Lincoln School in New York until Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital hired her away as a curriculum consultant for their high school drug-abuse treatment program. In 1969 she married and moved to New Mexico, where she began writing fiction full-time. Her first novel, WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD (1974), was a John W. Campbell Award finalist. Her SF and fantasy books and stories published since then have won her the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Mythopoeic Society's Award for young-adult fantasy, and the James Tiptree Jr. Literary Award.

FROM THE CRITICS

Gale Research

Suzy McKee Charnas is, according to Don D'Ammassa in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers, "the author of one of the most original and highly regarded vampire novels of all time," The Vampire Tapestry. The Vampire Tapestry is the story of dream researcher and vampire Dr. Edward Weyland. D'Ammassa finds: "Although there have been numerous attempts to write stories from the vampire's point of view in recent years, most notably by Anne Rice, none rival The Vampire Tapestry's straightforward, intelligent treatment."

Stephen King

Unputdownable

Marge Piercey

On one level Charnas has created a marvelous and compelling page turner of a what-if tale, about a believable and wholly natural vampire. She has asked, what would a successful predator of the human herd be like physically and mentally? On another level she takes a cool fascinating look at prey-predator relations as a focus for what goes on between men and women, between those with power and those without, between the outlaw and the society that at once feeds and hunts him. She has stripped the vampire tale of its Gothic and sado-masochistic elements. As her clever and ironic vampire remarks, it does not do to confuse sex and feeding, and Charnas never does, in a book that is witty and frightening at once.

Richard Bradford

A superb work of the imagination, a rich, deep and intelligent study of a being who looks quite human but is nothing of the sort.

Peter S. Beagle

The best vampire novel I have ever read.Read all 13 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A superb work of the imagination, a rich, deep and intelligent study of a being who looks quite human but is nothing of the sort.
 — Richard Bradford

Unputdownable. — Stephen King