**The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty: A Novel**  
Anne Rice  
A. N. Roquelaure

Before E.L. James’ _Fifty Shades of Grey_ and Sylvia Day's _Bared to You_, there was Anne Rice’s New York Times best seller _The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty_.  
In the traditional folktale of "Sleeping Beauty," the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a Prince. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious.

**In the first book of the series, Anne Rice (author of _Beauty's Kingdom_), writing as A.N. Roquelaure, retells the Beauty story and probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire.** Here the Prince awakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty's complete and total enslavement to him . . . as Anne Rice explores the world of erotic yearning and fantasy in a classic that becomes, with her skillful pen, a compelling experience.

Readers of _Fifty Shades of Grey_ will indulge in Rice’s deft storytelling and imaginative eroticism, a sure-to-be classic for years to come.

> “Articulate, baroque, and fashionably pornographic.” —Playboy  
> “Something very special . . . at once so light and yet so haunting.” —The Advocate