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The Delicate Dependency (1982)
Michael Talbot
With a new foreword by Jillian Venters

Book Description

They are cool to the touch and alluringly beautiful in their ageless youth. Their laughter seduces, their brilliance beguiles. They guard the secrets of science and history, and the answers to the mysteries of life and death lie within their vastly superior knowledge. In centuries past, they were known as the Illuminati. They are the vampire.

Dr. John Gladstone, a scientist in Victorian London, is thrust into their world after his carriage runs over a young man of angelic beauty named Niccolo. When Niccolo kidnaps Gladstone’s child and vanishes, the doctor must go in pursuit, with the help of his daughter, Ursula, who is enticed by the lure of eternal life, and Lady Hespeth, whose demure exterior hides a dangerous obsession. Why are the vampires taking children, and what is the connection to Gladstone’s experiments with a deadly virus? And how can he possibly prevail against a race of immortal beings with power and intelligence infinitely beyond his own?

Michael Talbot’s The Delicate Dependency (1982) is often cited as one of the best vampire novels ever written. This highly anticipated new edition, the first since the book’s original publication, includes a new foreword by Jillian Venters.



reviews

“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 Weekly

“The tension builds page by page to a stunning climax . . . I doubt that I will ever forget it.” – Whitley Strieber, author of The Hunger and The Wolfen

“[O]ne of the most impressive explorations of a vampire mind ever written . . . a novel of considerable suspense . . . compelling and deeply original.” – Darrell Schweitzer,
Encyclopedia of the Vampire



BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 1954321341
ISBN-13: 978-1954321342

$29.99 US,  382 pp.
Case laminate hardcover
Published 2014

BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 
1941147240
ISBN-13: 978-1941147245
$19.99 US,  382 pp.
Trade paper
Published 2014
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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Michael Talbot was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1953. As a young man, he moved to New York City, where he pursued a career as a freelance writer, publishing articles in Omni, The Village Voice, and others, often exploring the confluence between science and the spiritual.

Talbot published his first novel, The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life as an Avon paperback original in 1982; though never reprinted, it is regarded a classic of the genre, frequently appearing on lists of the best vampire novels ever written, and secondhand copies have long been expensive and hard to find. His other horror titles, both cult classics, are The Bog (1986) and Night Things (1988).

But despite the popularity of his fiction among horror fans, it was for his nonfiction that Talbot was best known, much of it focusing on new age concepts, mysticism, and the paranormal. Arguably his most famous and most significant is The Holographic Universe (1991), which examines the increasingly accepted theory that the entire universe is a hologram; the book remains in print and highly discussed today.

Michael Talbot died of leukemia in 1992 at age 38.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership." 
- Times Literary Supplement

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