69 books like The Vampire Tapestry

Based on a real historical figure, Hotel Transylvania tells the story of the Compte de Saint-Germain who arrives in the Court of Louis XV in 1743 and falls in love with a young woman named Madelaine de Montalia. The historical Saint-Germain was rumored to be an alchemist who never aged, and some speculated he was a vampire. Yarbro gives us a heroic vampire who must step in and save the woman he loves when she becomes a target for devil-worshiping Paris nobility. I loved how Yarbro spun characters from a historical setting into a suspenseful, thrilling tale leaving us wanting more. Lucky for us Yarbro delivered over twenty sequels.

I recommend all of Anne Rice’s vampire books. Rice’s vampires are attractive, alluring, but dangerous and deadly. The reader can’t trust what Lestat says, as he will say at one point that he only kills evildoers, or only takes small sips from people and leaves them unharmed. Then he tells stories about his actions which completely contradict what he’s said. There’s something worse than vampires in this book, however. A much older vampire, Marius, has been caring for Those Who Must be Kept. These are precursor vampires, more bloodthirsty and far less civilized than the vampires like Lestat. These creatures have slept for centuries, appearing to be statues, but what sleeps can be woken.

Bloodshot is a mystery thriller that tells the story of a vampire thief named Raylene Pendle who is hired by a blind vampire to find and steal records that'll help a doctor restore his sight. The idea that the military would find vampires interesting has always seemed natural and Raylene soon finds herself in a world of military secrets. Although Raylene is a vampire, she cares for the people in her life, particularly the two homeless, human children who have taken up residence in her Seattle lair. Although Raylene is strong and smart, she can be hurt, especially by soldiers who are used to containing vampires. I loved that she needed to use her wits to solve the mystery she's presented.

In this Japanese light novel, vampires are an oppressed people living in a country adjoining a Soviet Union-like country, the Republic of Zirnitra. In this world, almost all of the stories you've heard about vampires being evil and hunting humans are Zirnitran propaganda, but vampires do drink blood and are sensitive to sunlight. Irina is a young vampire woman who volunteers to be a test subject for the Zirnitran space program so she can get closer to the moon, which she loves. The story is based on the real Soviet space program of the 1960s and I rooted for Irina as she overcame her own fears and Zirnitran oppression to fly in orbit and see her beloved moon up close before any human went into orbit.

A story about evil puppets? Sign me up! Oddity is a town only the Addams Family could love, with weird, strange, unusual, and downright wrong things taking place at all hours of the day and night. What I love about this book is the way it manages to give us an entire town of spookiness, and yet still find a plot that is even more spooky. The characters are unforgettable, and the villains are a joyous wonder.

This small-town mystery is the first in a new series. Set in Madeira, New Mexico, newly arrived Tami Montgomery learns the old Victorian home she and her husband purchased has an unsettling history—a number of Madeira’s police chiefs lived in the property, and most met with untimely deaths. Tami’s husband, Jason, is Madeira’s new police chief. 

A former newspaper editor, Tami becomes involved with Madeira’s historical society, a commitment that has her digging into her home’s past and the lives of the people who lived there. Hall weaves elements from the 1800s with the present, sprinkling her plot with lunar legends, dusty history, old grudges, and murder. Though the first in a series, Cold Dark Night delivers a complete story with a satisfying ending.

First of all, this sprawling novel is funny and entertaining, and those qualities would be reason enough that I would recommend it. Yet beyond those qualities, it created a strong sense of place and a real social and political conflict without ever becoming preachy or heavy handed—not an easy feat as I have learned.

The storyline, a conflict over land use and water rights, is repeated again and again throughout the West and Southwest in particular—in this case pitting real estate developers against impoverished locals. But the story is also about a conflict of cultures and how those cultures perceive and connect to the land. Exposing such conflicts is a boon of literature.

Old Cold Cannibal is a bit of an outlier in this list, as it doesn’t fully conform to the Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett style of humor/narration or plotting. But it’s a unique book with an amazing voice. I have a soft spot for harsh 1800s white narrators whose doubling down on arrogance and (historically accurate) racism wrap around from being awful to weirdly and unsettlingly charming. Old Cold Cannibal delivers on that 100% and allows it to infuse some humor into what is otherwise a very dark and disturbing narrative that follows a journey across the pre-Civil War U.S. to find and slay a dragon. It’s a rough, but entertaining read.

This is a nonfiction book and typical of New Mexico, as there are whole chapters of its history nobody really knows about. The (probably) first white American woman to come into the territory was a Jewish woman who accompanied her merchant husband and brothers. Even more interesting, merchants and traders weren’t even the first Jewish people - “Crypto-Jews” who were fleeing the inquisition came to New Mexico long before it was part of the US and kept their identity secret to assimilate. This is depicted with a character in Alburquerque and that perfectly encapsulates one of the overriding things about New Mexico and its tales – a deep sense of connectedness, across people, across the land. 

Bill Gastner is the sort of detective you’d expect to find working the mean streets of an inner city: a rumpled overweight insomniac addicted to coffee and cigarettes. Instead his beat is the Chihuahan Desert of a fictitious county on the border between New and Old Mexico. In Heartshot, Undersheriff Gastner must solve multiple murders related to the illegal drug trade, including the loss of a fellow officer. The killer turns out to be somebody nearly as surprising and dangerous as the place where Gastner finds him. In his first book in the Posadas County series, author Havill skillfully brings to life both the rewards and challenges of life in a harsh yet beautiful place, where the people of two cultures are trying to figure out ways to live with one another.