Anne Rice’s Pandora was the first volume in the “New Tales of the Vampire” series, as Rice’s undead characters David Talbot and Pandora returned from the author’s previous books. It was followed by The Vampire Armand, which told the tale of the eponymous bloodsucker and leader of the Theatre des Vampires across the centuries.

The first volume in a new two-part series, Clive Barker’s Galilee: A Romance was a Southern Gothic involving the eponymous male protagonist whose love affair with Rachel Pallenberg reawakened an old conflict between rival families. While the Gearys were rich and powerful, the Barbarossas were much darker and stranger.

Butterfly, Crystal, Brooke, Raven and Runaways comprised the “Orphans” series by V. C. Andrews® and marked a transition away from horror to young adult fiction for the late author. The story involved four teenage orphans who escaped from an evil foster home. Meanwhile, Music in the Night was the fourth in the Gothic horror “Logan Family” series under the Andrews byline, still probably written by Andrew Neiderman.

Thriller novelist Frederick Forsyth sold the American, Canadian and audio rights for The Phantom in Manhattan to New Millennium Entertainment, a new publisher based in Beverly Hills, for an advance reported to be in the mid-seven-figure area. The novel was a sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version of the Gaston Leroux classic,The Phantom of the Opera. New Millennium also planned to release the book in DVD format, while rumours of a stage version of The Phantom in Manhattan had already been circulating in theatrical circles for over a year. Forsyth had previously said he did not want to write another book, but apparently offered his services to Lloyd Webber at a dinner party in late 1997.