Book Spotlight: The Heaven's Rise by Christopher Rice

The Heaven's Rise

Christopher Rice

Gallery Books

Oct. 15, 2013

Genre: Supernatural, thriller

New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice brilliantly conjures the shadowed terrors of the Louisiana bayou—where three friends confront a deadly, ancient evil rising to the surface—in this intense and atmospheric new supernatural thriller.




It’s been a decade since the Delongpre family vanished near Bayou Rabineaux, and still no one can explain the events of that dark and sweltering night. No one except Niquette Delongpre, the survivor who ran away from the mangled stretch of guardrail on Highway 22 where the impossible occurred…and kept on running. Who left behind her best friends, Ben and Anthem, to save them from her newfound capacity for destruction…and who alone knows the source of her very bizarre—and very deadly—abilities: an isolated strip of swampland called Elysium.




An accomplished surgeon, Niquette’s father dreamed of transforming the dense acreage surrounded by murky waters into a palatial compound befitting the name his beloved wife gave to it, Elysium: “the final resting place for the heroic and virtuous.” Then, ten years ago, construction workers dug into a long-hidden well, one that snaked down into the deep, black waters of the Louisiana swamp and stirred something that had been there for centuries—a microscopic parasite that perverts the mind and corrupts the body.




Niquette is living proof that things done can’t be undone. Nothing will put her family back together again. And nothing can save her. But as Niquette, Ben, and Anthem uncover the truth of a devastating parasite that has the potential to alter the future of humankind, Niquette grasps the most chilling truths of all: someone else has been infected too. And unlike her, this man is not content to live in the shadows. He is intent to use his newfound powers for one reason only: revenge.

About the Author

By the age of 30, Christopher Rice had published four New York Times bestselling thrillers, received a Lambda Literary Award and been declared one of People Magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive. His first novel, A DENSITY OF SOULS, was published when he was just 22. The controversial bestseller was greeted with a landslide of media attention, much of it due the fact that Rice’s mother is a legendary vampire chronicler who shares his last name. (He recently published a new e-book edition of A DENSITY OF SOULS, which contains an intimate Afterword about how the novel’s publication changed his life.) He served as a contributing columnist to The Advocate for many years and his additional criticisms and witticisms have been featured in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon.com and his own Facebook page, which currently hails over 120,000 subscribers. The Hetrick Martin Institute honored Rice with an Emery Award for his activism on behalf of LGBT youth, and the New York City Public Advocate’s Office invited him to be their keynote speaker during their annual Gay Pride celebration. The members of the InsightOut Book Club selected his novel BLIND FALL as one of the best novels of 2008, and his noir thriller LIGHT BEFORE DAY was hailed as a “book of the year” by mega-best selling thriller novelist (and Jack Reacher creator), Lee Child. Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster will publish, THE HEAVENS RISE, his latest novel and his first work of supernatural suspense, on October 15, 2013. He recently served on the board of directors of the West Hollywood Library Fund, which was instrumental in securing private funds to build a brand new state-of-the-art library in the heart of the city he now calls home. Now that he’s not 22 anymore, Christopher thought it was time to fulfill his lifelong dream of having a radio show. Together with his best friend, bestselling novelist Eric Shaw Quinn, Christopher recently launched his popular Internet radio show, THE DINNER PARTY SHOW WITH CHRISTOPHER RICE & ERIC SHAW QUINN; the show is always on atwww.TheDinnerPartyShow.com