Anna, white-haired and grey-eyed, is born into the luxurious and mysterious family of Scarabae, a family of inhuman age and consuming passions. As she matures, it becomes clear that she  shares some of their blood, for at three she appears sixteen, and holds knowledge known only to her dead sister Ruth...Suddenly Anna, along with a score of other children, is kidnapped and carried away to the end of the earth to the pyramid hidden in the Southern ice that is home to the terrible immortal named Cain...

From Publishers WeeklyAs World Fantasy Award-winning author Lee ( Dark Dance ) imagines Scarabae, they are men and women of elegance and dark mystery, seductive creatures of few words and many secrets. Among them and yet set apart are Rachaela and her daughter Ruth, each unsure of her place in this lost tribe. Ruth's inner torment has exploded in violence against strangers and, shockingly, against her own kind. Their story, set in modern London, unfolds slowly, with grace and freshness, as Lee avoids cliches and weaves her own vision of the life and, perhaps most intriguing, the morality of the Scarabae. Fabulous scenes of death and destruction mingle with moments of astonishing sensuality. Images leap off the page by virtue of the author's evocative descriptions, though in spots she seems to take a false step, with writing that fails to evoke the desired image ("wolf brown day"). One is left wanting to know much more about this strange, complicated and compelling clan. But this is only the second book in Lee's Blood Opera Sequence, and she presumably will build from here. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Disturbed By Her Song collects the work of Esther Garber & her half-brother Judas Garbah, the mysterious family of writers that Tanith Lee has been channeling for the past few years. Possibly autobiographical, frequently erotic and darkly surreal, their fiction takes place in a variety of eras and places, from Egypt in the 1940s, to England in the grip of the Pre-Raphaelites, to gaslit Paris.

Drawn to the ominous house of Scarabae by the promise of passion, Rachaela soon finds herself a prisoner of her own desire, seduced into a dark and dangerous existence by a lover who bears her family name.From the back coverTHE KISS OF ADAMUSA Mahler symphony plays in this house. Eve tempts Adam in stained glass. A dead mouse, a pink bow around its neck, lies on the dresser. A topaz=eyed cat, as big as a Labrador stalks for food. A madman gallops in the hallway. And Rachaela waits, waits for her lover, her seducer...She worked in a bookstore, a conventional young woman in a conventional life. Then they beckoned Rachaela, using a lawyer as a front, using a variety of ruses, beckoning her to the house on the sea—the house of Scarabae...Now she is here: not a prisoner, but she cannot leave; not a criminal, but stained with sin, seduced...A man's body burns on the beach. Madness cries out in her head. This is her family. This lover bears her family name. He comes to her in black, bearing his passion, his thirst for her blood, his ecstasy—his terrible seed...REVIEWS"ENTHRALLING... top-notch demonology and atmosphere... it is Lee's talent for realizing an exquisite and appalling mingling of lust and horror, sexual pleasure and loathing, yearning and revulsion.”—Kirkus Reviews"Lee writes with lyricism... ominous wit... she is able to effortlessly build to a climax of breathtaking menace with overtones of dislocation and loss."—Publishers Weekly"Lee's seductive prose and sensitivity to nuance restore the 'atmosphere' to a genre too easily overwhelmed by gore."—Library Journal"Lee's creations are so rich that one can savor the details." —Booklist"Restores one's faith in fiction as the expression of imagination and original thought." —The Guardian"STUNNING... Tanith Lee has written some truly remarkable books ... with Lee it is always wise to expect the unexpected... a testament to Lee's extraordinary reputation and skill as a writer."—Starburst"STYLISH, CURIOUS, LANGUID, DIFFERENT... sexual ambiguities, clammy obsessions and eroticpolymorphisms, set forth amid a welter of rich detail."—Kirkus Reviews"Lee upholds her reputation for exotic storytelling... RECOMMENDED!" —Library Journal"Tanith Lee writes in sensual, emotion-rich prose that is given a dark piquancy by a sexuality tending toward the sado-masochistic." —Publishers Weekly"Lee is equally gifted in both novels and shorter works."—Booklist"A dose of glamorous perversity and elegant wit."—Locus