To a distant corner of France comes Christian Dorse to claim his inheritance where, his beauty enhanced by his consumptive pallor, Christian prepares himself to surrender to premature death.

But Christian is close to the forest where the de Lagenays live, a mother and son that both servants and village people mysteriously avoid mentioning. Are they, as he comes to suspect, the children of the wolf? And are they the ones who, when darkness falls, throw out exquisite seductions which he cannot resist?

Award-winning author Tanith Lee's spellbinding novel mixes eroticism and fear in a fantasy laced with surprise, enchantment and the evil of spoilt beauty...

To a distant corner of France comes Christian Dorse to claim his inheritance where, his beauty enhanced by his consumptive pallor, Christian prepares himself to surrender to premature death.

But Christian is close to the forest where the de Lagenays live, a mother and son that both servants and village people mysteriously avoid mentioning. Are they, as he comes to suspect, the children of the wolf? And are they the ones who, when darkness falls, throw out exquisite seductions which he cannot resist?

Award-winning author Tanith Lee's spellbinding novel mixes eroticism and fear in a fantasy laced with surprise, enchantment and the evil of spoilt beauty...

To a distant corner of France comes Christian Dorse to claim his inheritance where, his beauty enhanced by his consumptive pallor, Christian prepares himself to surrender to premature death.

But Christian is close to the forest where the de Lagenays live, a mother and son that both servants and village people mysteriously avoid mentioning. Are they, as he comes to suspect, the children of the wolf? And are they the ones who, when darkness falls, throw out exquisite seductions which he cannot resist?

Award-winning author Tanith Lee's spellbinding novel mixes eroticism and fear in a fantasy laced with surprise, enchantment and the evil of spoilt beauty...

For these, such as Azhrarn, Night's Master, and Uhlumc, Death's Master, the world was a flesh-and-blood playground for all their strangest desires. Hut among those demonic lords, the strangest was the master of madness, Chuz.

The game that Chuz played with a beautiful woman, with an ambitious king, with an ancient imperial city, was a web work of good and evil, of hope and horror. But there was always Azhrarn to interfere—to bend delusion to a different outcome—and it was a century-long conflict between two vain immortals with women and men as their terrified pawns.

TANITH LEE, acclaimed as the "princess-royal of high fantasy," winner of the prestigious August Derleth Award, now presents a new novel of brilliant coloration and sparkling imagination.