`VIOLIN' COULD CALL FANS BACK TO RICE.(BOOKS)

Byline: JOY DICKINSON

Ghosts of the past are nothing new for Anne Rice. The author has won millions of devotees with characters whose primary calling is confronting literal and psychological demons.

But with her latest tale, ``Violin,'' Rice pits her blisteringly frank prose against ghosts of a much more personal nature -- those that have haunted her own life -- and in so doing has created her best work since 1990's ``The Witching Hour.''

Many of her previous books have had elements of autobiography, notably the child vampire in ``Interview With the Vampire,'' who mirrored her own daughter, dead at 5 of leukemia, and the character Michael Curry in …