Here are 80 books that The Vampyre fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a comic book writer, novelist, and vampire aficionado. I always want to learn the truth of a matter. I’ve moved in and out of the gothic subculture for years and spent time with members of the vampire subculture. I’ve found that most people’s understanding of vampires (and really, everything) is influenced by fiction. Even if you point out that their beliefs are only as accurate as a movie, they will still argue for them. As much as I love a good vampire movie, I want to shatter illusions and explore the myths and folklore that reflect our human experience in all of its horror and glory.
This book has engendered controversy for almost forcefully bridging the gap between the 15th Century Wallachian Prince Vlad III or Vlad the Impaler or Dracula. Stoker had already constructed his character, called “Count Wampyr,” before he learned of his future namesake. However, he quite clearly establishes a connection between the two through an explanation provided by Abraham Van Helsing. The Dracula of the eponymous novel is a heavily fictionalized version of the real-life figure, but so are most similarly positioned characters in literature, film, and television. Florescu and McNally provide a cursory overview of Slavic and Balkan vampire folklore, a biographical sketch of Vlad the Impaler, and illuminate the process by which Stoker adapted this violent, cunning, and sometimes brilliant nationalist and military tactician into a fictional monster.
The true story behind the legend of Dracula - a biography of Prince Vlad of Transylvania, better known as Vlad the Impaler. This revised edition now includes entries from Bram Stoker's recently discovered diaries, the amazing tale of Nicolae Ceausescu's attempt to make Vlad a national hero, and an examination of recent adaptations in fiction, stage and screen.
As a queer, nonbinary author and lover of historical fiction, I’ve spent countless hours thinking about how to tell stories I care about in a genre that has traditionally excluded people like me. We all know that life was hard for LGBTQ+ folks growing up in, well, basically any time in recent history. There’s a time and place for realistic depictions of those hardships, but we also need space to imagine ourselves in more joyful, fantastical depictions of the past. After all, if straight people can enjoy Jane Austen without thinking too hard about the legal rights of women during that era, why can’t queer people do the same?
Have you ever read Dracula and thought, “What if the vampire were a lady? An extremely gay lady?” That’s Carmilla in a nutshell!
The story actually predates Bram Stoker’s tale by several years, making it a neat little literary artifact on its own, but this isn’t some dry historical text. It is, in fact, super heckin’ horny, to the point that I would strongly advise against listening to the audiobook with, say, your parents or other unsuspecting cishets in the room. It’s gonna get awkward.
It’s also fairly short, making for an easy, steamy bedtime read for anyone who’d like to imagine themself as a waifish little lass ravaged nightly by your lesbian vampire BFF.
In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest - the beautiful Carmilla.
So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion. But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day...
Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.
I started my professional writing career in 1987 having founded the small press writers’ magazine, Quartos, which ran for nine years until its merger with Acclaim in 1996 to become The New Writer, as well as authoring several creative writing how-to books – including Horror Upon Horror. In addition to acting as judge for national writing competitions, I've also tutored at writers’ workshops including The Annual Writers’ Conference (Winchester College), The Summer School (University of Wales), Horncastle College (Lincolnshire), and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. Having been a staunch supporter of the Gothic Society and a regular contributor to its quarterly magazine, Udolpho, I have also created the series of The Vampyre’s Tale novels.
Another sultry beauty worthy of note is Barbara, Count Kotor’s vampire daughter in The Vampires of Alfama, and an even more alarming creature. A "magnificent gossamer blonde," she is highly intelligent, coldly calculating and we know that even when under attack by the Inquisition that she will survive. The most erotic scenes in the book belong to Barbara and we are left with no doubt that she uses her body and mind to ensnare her willing victims. Kast has created a vampire being with life in its veins, set against a backdrop of terror-inspired medievalism that would endure for centuries ."Her special gift, which she had received as her share, was the strength of magnetic and hypnotic suggestion, a subject of endless discussions with her father... On several occasions, Barbara used her power to suck the blood of boys and girls who were more victims than accomplices. When Kotor…
I started my professional writing career in 1987 having founded the small press writers’ magazine, Quartos, which ran for nine years until its merger with Acclaim in 1996 to become The New Writer, as well as authoring several creative writing how-to books – including Horror Upon Horror. In addition to acting as judge for national writing competitions, I've also tutored at writers’ workshops including The Annual Writers’ Conference (Winchester College), The Summer School (University of Wales), Horncastle College (Lincolnshire), and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. Having been a staunch supporter of the Gothic Society and a regular contributor to its quarterly magazine, Udolpho, I have also created the series of The Vampyre’s Tale novels.
Simon Raven had a marked fascination for the supernatural that first manifested in an early novel Doctors Wear Scarlet, which was cited by Karl Edward Wagner (himself an award-winning American writer, poet, editor and publisher of horror and writer of numerous dark fantasy and horror stories), as one of the thirteen best supernatural novels. The story is set against Raven’s customary background of academia and University life and has a distinctly macabre and spine-chilling theme. It starts harmlessly enough with a young man’s infatuation for a beautiful Greek girl, but Chriseis is no ordinary holiday love affair; three friends track down their missing companion across the Aegean, where it becomes increasingly obvious that their relationship is strange to say the least. Despite dispatching Chriseis in the remote mountains of Crete and not without cost to themselves, the missing scholar is returned to his University – but the curse of…
Richard Fountain, a promising young Cambridge scholar, went to the island of Crete to study ancient rites and pagan rituals before suddenly and inexplicably breaking off all contact with the outside world. Disturbing rumors have filtered their way back to England, whisperings of blasphemous rituals and obscene orgies, hints of terrible crimes and wanton murder . . .
Three of Richard’s friends travel to Greece to find him and bring him back. Following a grim progression of ominous clues, they will arrive at last at an abandoned fortress high in the wild and desolate White Mountains, where they will discover…
At about age fifteen, I fell in love with nineteenth-century Gothic horror. I read all the classics in just a few months: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Edgar Allen Poe… And then I ran out. Most twentieth-century horror lacked the understanding that evil’s true target is not the body but the soul. Horror fiction, more than any other genre, is the laboratory of the soul, the place where we can experiment with good and evil to follow the consequences of each to their fullest and therefore truest conclusions. And since I ran out of such books to read—I wrote one.
Tim Powers is an acknowledged modern master of the preternatural, but many readers probably don’t know he’s also a practicing Catholic. In Hide Me Among the Graves, his passion for the Romantic poets brings poor Christina Rossetti, her family, and others both historical and fictional under the sway of her vampire-uncle John Polidori, author of The Vampyre. Powers’s wild imagination casts the Thames River as Purgatory, songbirds as soul-catchers, and vampires as the ancient Biblical Nephilim. It’s a kitchen sink approach to fantasy that will keep readers guessing until the end.
From Last Call to On Stranger Tides to Declare to Three Days to Never, any book by the inimitable Tim Powers is a wonder. With Hide Me Among the Graves, it’s possible that the uniquely ingenious Powers has surpassed even himself. A breathtaking historical thriller in which art and the supernatural collide, Hide Me Among the Graves transports readers back to mid-19th century London and features a reformed ex-prostitute, a veterinarian, and the vampire ghost of Lord Byron’s onetime physician, uncle to poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A novel that, like all his others,…
I’m a writer of all genres that’s found a lot of love, particularly in fantasy and thrillers. My love for epic fantasies first began when I was young, and like all young readers, was introduced to Harry Potter and the Magic Tree House series. The idea of being whisked away to a magical world captivated me, and so, I started to create my own stories to keep that magic alive.
In Grey, Gabrian doesn’t believe in magic. She’s a psychologist, and proud to be one. She bases her life on logic, but when things start to happen that she can’t explain, she finds herself in a whirlwind of magic. The way that Gabrian slowly comes to the truth is probably my favorite part of this book. As a Borrower, she’s considered not just a magical being, but a dangerous one. At first, she doesn’t handle this well and takes on the role of an anti-hero, nearly villain which was an interesting way to not only build Gabrian’s character but to introduce the truth of the magical world as well.
And skeletons—all dressed in their finest secrets—will come out to dance.
Raised in urban downtown New York, Gabrian holds no grand illusions of how life really works. And legends of magic and vampires, nothing more than a bunch of hocus pocus stuffed within book pages or painted on the big screen.
But when a woman, no one else can see, enters her office and delivers a riddle filled warning about her intended fate, Gabrian's grip on sanity takes a big hit—terrified she is falling into madness.
My two passions in life have always been music and reading. I was a punk rock girl, with wildly colored hair and a plethora of tattoos, who has never missed a chance to lose herself in a romance novel. I love it when my two favorite things collide in wonderful ways. I still read whatever I can get my hands on, but now I write some of those beloved books as well. Several of them have been bestsellers and many are published in various languages. My mosh-pit days are long gone, but you can still find me at a Social Distortion concert whenever they come to town. If you’ve got a rebellious heart and an ear for music that isn’t as mainstream, I’m sure you will love these books I recommended as much as I do.
A Rush of Wings has literally so many different types of romance in it. Technically, it's an Urban Fantasy romance, but really, it has romantic suspense elements, paranormal romance elements, contemporary romance elements, rockstar romance elements. It is so freaking good. And the reason it fits this list so well is that the hero is not only a moody, mouthy vampire who looks like someone in his early twenties, he is 100% based on Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. Complete with leather pants, boots, and torn t-shirts. Plus allllll the goth accessories.
I love the dichotomy of having a grungy-goth rockstar and an FBI agent as the protagonist. I love that it’s set in New Orleans and the club scene it portrays. The overall vibe is very dense and dark, which fits really well with the main character and his band. I also loved that the heroine is an…
Special Agent Heather Wallace is a strong, compassionate woman who believes in justice and being a voice for the dead. When she trails a serial-killing sexual sadist to New Orleans, an unexpected twist leads her to a man who goes by the name Dante. Dante is a gorgeous, talented rock star, and a vampire. He's also the killer's next target.
Heather soon finds herself in a deadly world of vampires, fallen angels, and secret government-funded experiments in sociopathology. Caught in a web of deception stretching to the FBI and beyond, Heather runs a desperate race against time, against other agents,…
I’ve always been a fan of dark comedies. Fargo. Heathers. Fight Club. There’s something about being able to laugh about tragedy that feels both cathartic and as if you might get struck down by lightning. But I also grew up on a steady diet of supernatural horror à la Stephen King, Peter Straub, and early Dean Koontz. So combining the supernatural and dark comedy into my writing seemed like a natural fit. While I’m drawn to dark comedies of all sorts in both fiction and film, I have a soft spot for those with a supernatural element that involves death, either in the literal sense or as a character.
Ten years before What We Do in the Shadows comically imagined what everyday life might be like for vampires, David Sosnowski published Vamped. Set in a world where vampires outnumber humans, the story stars a bloodsucking bachelor bored with his existence and all of the modern vampire conveniences, and inconveniences. Like missing coffee. And chocolate. And sunlight. And not having any more fresh humans to hunt. But when our hero stumbles across a human child, his existence gets complicated. A sharp, smart, charming, and occasionally heart-warming black comedy with an anti-hero who you end up rooting for.
So this vampire walks into a bar...Yes, it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but it's just another night in the never-ending life of Marty Kowalski. With his trademark slogan -- "There's a sucker born every minute" -- this blood-drinking bachelor has managed to talk half the mortal world into joining the graveyard shift. Now vampires outnumber humans, and Marty is so bored he could die -- again. With modern conveniences like synthetic blood and Mr. Plasma machines, the thrill of the hunt is gone. Especially for Marty, who's starting to wonder if he should just settle down,…
I think all horror authors have at least one coming-of-age novel inside them. I suppose I have some expertise on the topic because I recently finished my first coming-of-age novel, The Dancing Plague. I’ve written stories from the perspectives of children before. One of the challenges I found is getting the voice right. Kids think and talk differently than adults, so it can be a bit tricky finding the right balance between credibility and readability. Nobody wants to read an adult novel that sounds as though it was written by a kid. Conversely, nobody wants to read a novel that’s narrated by a twelve-year-old that sounds as though it was written by an adult.
Even though this book has some major plot issues, when I read it a decade or more ago it instantly became one of my favorites. I don’t think Laymon writes about kids much, but he did a good job with the three friends in The Traveling VampireShow. The budding, awkward romance between the two of them was realistic, and the comic relief that the third provided was great. The story gets a bit wild at the end with the excessive violence and nudity, but that’s what Laymon got off writing about (sadly he passed away a number of years ago), and if you’re okay with those types of things, you’ll certainly enjoy the ride.
On a hot August morning in 1963, the rural town of Grandville is covered with fliers announcing the coming of something extraordinary - a one-night-only performance of The Travelling Vampire Show, featuring Valeria, the only known vampire in captivity. For three local teenagers, it's a show they don't want to miss. The trouble is, the show starts at midnight and they're supposed to be home by then. And in any case, Janks Field, where the show will take place, has been declared off-limits because of its own sinister history. But they can't just sit at home and let Valeria do…
I’ve been an avid reader of MM literature in all its genres and sub-genres, since I was a teenager. Even now, MM fantasy titles are some of my favorite books of all time. I’d love to share my preferences with other readers so they could see the magic I see.
Johnathan Newman is a novice hunter who teams up with a five-hundred-year-old vampire named Vic on a dangerous mission.
The town is plagued by mythological creatures in need of saving and they work together to solve the mystery. However, Vic’s secrets bring trouble, and their mutual attraction doesn’t make things any easier.
A Bargain of Blood and Gold is one of the best-written books I’ve ever read. There hasn’t been a book where every word was chosen so perfectly to my liking. It has the exact amount of descriptions and dialogue. The style is simply perfect.
Additionally, the characters were so vivid and fun to read. John and Vic had such distinguished ways of expressing themselves that I knew every time who was talking without being told.
A novice hunter with a mission. A five-hundred-year-old vampire with a strong sense of irony. A town plagued by creatures in need of saving.
When Johnathan Newman arrives in Cress Haven, the last thing he expects is for his life to be irrevocably changed. Sent by a clandestine league of vampire hunters to investigate a string of murders, signs point to a vampire lurking amid the townsfolk. Johnathan’s attempt to enlist the locals leads him to an unlikely partnership with Vic, the town's most eligible, enigmatic bachelor.
As the pair work to solve the mystery, Vic’s secrets come back to…
