It’s almost Halloween, so, naturally, my thoughts have turned towards vampires. I’m currently halfway through Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, which still has the power to ignite my imagination 130 years after it was first published.
It got me thinking about how many kinds of vampires and how many styles of vampire storytelling we now take for granted.
I have dozens of vampire novels on my shelves. I’ve picked out ten that made an impression on me because of their originality and energy.
For each of them, I’ve provided a summary, an explanation of why I chose them and a link to my review of each novel.
I hope at least one or two of these vampires will catch your eye and help you read yourself into Halloween.
‘The Gathering’ was one of the most original vampire novels I’ve read in recent years. It was a fascinating mix of small-town police procedural and speculative fiction thriller.
It takes place in winter in Deadhart, a remote Alaskan town (population 873 -living) that is about to be cut off from the rest of the world by a fierce snowstorm.
It’s told through the eyes of a lone outsider, Detective Barbara Atkins, a specialist in vampyrs, whose job is to investigate a killing and determine if the local vampyr colony should be culled.
What would you do if one night your whole life changed?
If everything you thought you knew was suddenly turned on its head?
If you had to take your child and keep moving.
Away from the questions, away from the prying eyes, away from everyone you knew.
Because it’s your job to make sure that your daughter can survive.
Even if it means becoming someone you never thought you’d be.
And you know that whatever you do, wherever you go, people will be looking for you both.
Because wherever you go, bodies are left behind.
But you have no choice.
Because you’d do anything to protect your child.
‘Blood Like Mine‘ was a gripping story, cleverly told, that combined a serial killer narrative with a horror narrative and gave both a few twists while delivering an emotional story about the love between a mother and her daughter. It was a story that kept surprising me without making me feel that the narrative was doing gymnastics.
In this delightfully decptive novel, Christopher Buehlman has re-thought the whole vampire thing from the ground up. He doesn’t pull any punches and he isn’t just writing to entertain. He’s writing to talk about how the powerful succeed on preying on the weak, not just because they are powerful but because the weak delude themselves about their own strength and their commitment to survival.’
A half dead daemon. A massacre at my private investigators’ office. Planted evidence that points to me as the main suspect for both crimes.
Yep. All in all, I’m having a very bad week.
I know I’m inexperienced and often naive but I’m going to find out who’s behind these terrible crimes. I’m even prepared to get involved with one of London’s most powerful vampire families and their enigmatic leader if that’s what it takes to get answers.
I might not survive the month. But giving up is not an option.
”Dire Straits’ is the first book in the six-book Bo Blackman series, one of my favourite Urban Fantasy series and one of the few that is fundamentally British.
It had a new and convincing take on Vampires, Witches and Demons; a complicated, well-thought-through plot that kept me hungry to know what would happen next while feeding me a diet of action, tension, and emotional upheaval, and a main character who was engaging as much for her flaws as for her strengths. flaws as for her strengths.
‘We’re All Monsters Here’ was a fast, fun, sometimes gory, often amusing and surprisingly romantic vampire novella.
Anna is a ruthless, lethal predator, but she was still the nicest person at the corporate retreat so I was happy to cheer for her.
The second novella, ‘Show Me Your Teeth‘ is now in my TBR pile.
‘Double Dead‘ was so much fun. I loved the idea of a grouchy, misanthropic vampire having to switch from being an apex predator preying on humans to a shepherd protecting them so that he can stop zombies from eating his food supply.
This is violent, anarchic, original, energetic and funny. AND there are sequels that are equally good.
Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.
One evening after book club, Patricia is viciously attacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing the neighbor’s handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in years. But when children on the other side of town go missing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind—and Patricia has already invited him in.
Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia’s life and try to take everything she took for granted—including the book club—but she won’t surrender without a fight in this blood-soaked tale of neighborly kindness gone wrong.
Don’t be fooled by the cute title. This is a dark novel, overflowing with evil: violence, rape, misogyny, corruption and predation.
Hendrix’s vampire is a lone, ungoverned, insatiable predator who won’t be stopped except by desperate, ordinary people who have nothing to lose, and it won’t be easy.
One of the things that makes it difficult is that ordinary people like you and me, we don’t really believe in vampires any more than we believe in Tinkerbell.
Hendrix poses the question, ‘How do you fight what you believe isn’t real?’
Part of the answer to that question is likely to be ‘Alone’, because who’s going to believe you?
Except maybe the women you meet every week at a book club devoted to discussing serial killers?
The first three paragraohs sold me on this book. They tell you everything about what this book is going to be like, Here they are
“Here are the things you need to know about vampires.
First of all, they don’t dress in black. They’re not high-cultured, well-mannered, nicely groomed of perfectly fucking coifed. Vampires don’t form secret societies and war with other creatures of the night. They don’t hang out in cemeteries and tombs, listening to Bauhaus and Type O Negative and smoking cloves cigarettes and whining about how much eternal life sucks. Vampires don’t have existential crises , because they barely have any thoughts beyond what’s for dinner. They don’t feel love or angst. They’re not romantic. Vampires are not sexy. They don’t look like Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee or Stephen Moyer. They don’t behave like Dracula or Lestat or Edward Cullen.
Vampires do not fucking sparkle.”
One spring night in London, heiress Denise Thorne disappears while partying at a nightclub, never to be seen again. That very same night, Sonja Blue, a tough-as-nails punk vampire/vampire-slayer, conceived in terror and blood, is born from the city’s gutters.
Saved by modern medicine before she could die, she is a living vampire who still possesses a soul and is determined to fight for what remains of her humanity.
In the years since her bizarre resurrection, Sonja Blue travels the globe, hunting down and disposing of those creatures that prey on the innocent while searching for the vampire Noble who created her.
But when she investigates a sleazy televangelist named Catherine Wheele, who is exploiting Denise Thorne’s parents, Sonja finds herself up against a powerful inhuman adversary.
But as dangerous as Catherine Wheele proves to be, Sonja’s greatest foe remains the Other, the demonic personality with whom she is locked in a constant battle for control of their shared body.
Can Sonja Blue overcome her inner demon in time to rescue an innocent man from Catherine Wheele’s unholy clutches?
In 1989, Nancy Collins published her debut novel, ‘Sunglasses After Dark’, winning the Bram Stoker Award and helping to launch the Urban Fantasy genre.
I think her heroine, Sonja Blue, is a wonderful creation: a half-human, half-vampire, leather-clad, kick-ass, punk rocker who relentlessly hunts the vampire who turned her.
It’s a raucous, very visual story that feels like an edgy graphic novel transformed into lean, sharp-edged prose.
It’s the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger and keep his drinking in check, keep his young marriage intact, and keep the nightmares away. Things get even more complicated when his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with her Aunt Heidi and Uncle Duane after a tragedy. But slowly, carefully, guided by Heidi’s love and patience, the three of them are building a family.
Then Minor crosses the wrong John Varley, a criminal with a bloody history and a trail of bodies behind him. Varley, who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia shot through with rage. The two of them are left united by only one the desire for vengeance.
As their quest brings them into the dark orbit of immortal, undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men drawn to Varley’s ferocity, Minor and Julia follow his path of destruction from the gritty al-leyways of 1970s Portland to the desolate highways of the Northwest and the snow-lashed plains of North Dakota – only to have him turn his vicious power back on them. Who will prevail, who will survive, and what remains of our humanity when our thirst for revenge trumps everything else?
‘Coffin Moon‘ was original, bloody, thoughtful, emotionally complex and, of course, more than a little horrifying.
An historical thriller featuring damaged people driven either by irrepressible malice or an almost unquenchable thirst for revenge, this is a dark tale of escalating violence, sacrifice and loss.
The vampires in this book are ferocious, merciless and almost unstoppable.
