The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

By Grady Hendrix,

Book cover of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Book description

"This funny and fresh take on a classic tale manages to comment on gender roles, racial disparities, and white privilege all while creeping me all the way out. So good."-Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of The Other Black Girl

Now in paperback, Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this New York Times…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This was my first Grady Hendrix, and my first "vampire book" since Anne Rice’s. It’s the story of what a genteel housewife in a proper suburb does when a man she considers dangerous moves to town.

Forget convincing her husband if she can’t even convince her best buds: the women with wildly varied personalities and wildly varied backgrounds in her book club. This book is by turns poignant, heartbreaking, terrifying, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. 

I am a Southern woman, and I have been a part of many a book club full of Southern women. So Hendrix’s book and his spot-on but not stereotypical descriptions of the archetypes of women in these groups is what drew me in, but then, when he brings in vampires – I adore a great vampire book – I was hooked and determined to read through and find out exactly what was going on. Who is to blame? And how do we support – or not support – one another through things we don’t understand? Powerful themes in a captivating…

From ACF's list on mysteries about books.

This is a wonderfully twisted, dark, and eccentric story about bored housewives trying to eliminate a vampire who has moved into their neighbourhood. The narrative is peppered with delicious humour and inherent irony hidden behind sterotypical characters. It is gory and bloodthirsty and witty – just what you need with Halloween around the corner. 

From Dawn's list on escapism on a rainy Autumn evening.

The Nightmarchers

By J. Lincoln Fenn,

Book cover of The Nightmarchers

J. Lincoln Fenn Author Of The Nightmarchers

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.

J.'s book list on horror that will make you cancel your travel plans

What is my book about?

In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.

Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…

The Nightmarchers

By J. Lincoln Fenn,

What is this book about?

From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.

In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?

It all seems like ancient family history to…


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