Vampire/Werewolf/Paranormal books

ADRIAN PHOENIX

"A Rush of Wings"
Set in the brooding New Orleans area long established as the best location for all things vampiric, Phoenix's lively debut has it all: Rogue [FBI] agents, Bureau-ordered hits, mad-scientist experiments in psychopathology, vampires and fallen angels and a slicing-dicing serial killer. Smart, sexy FBI Special Agent Heather Wallace has been trying to catch the Cross-Country Killer for three years when the trail leads to New Orleans and Club Hell, where Dante Prejean performs with the Inferno, an industrial/goth rock band. Dante is a Cajun and a born vampire whose memories of his terrible past have been erased, leaving him vulnerable to the psychopathic killer, E, who knows all that Dante has forgotten. As E begins targeting Dante's loved ones, Heather must swallow her skepticism and work with Dante's vampiric friends and family to save him. Phoenix alternates romantic homages to gothdom and steamy blood-drinking threesomes with enough terse, fast-paced thriller scenes to satisfy even the most jaded fan.


"In The Blood"
Phoenix trips the dark fantastic in this wild, bloody sequel to 2008's A Rush of Wings. Gifted musician and magic-user Dante Prejean was an experimental patient in a project to create and control murderous sociopaths for the government's covert Shadow Branch. He's also a born vampire and the child of a fallen angel. Shadow Branch agent Caterina Cortini wants to contain him; the formerly angelic Fallen want him to connect Earth and Gehenna; and Portland detective Alex Lyons wants him to cure Alex's schizophrenic twin sister. Arrayed against them are Dante's Nightkind friends; his FBI agent girlfriend, Heather Wallace; and his Fallen father, Lucien de Noir. Although Phoenix's fusion of fantasy and thriller sometimes falters, with the Earth action rather sharper than the Gehenna segments, she keeps the plot thick and the tension high.


Adrian is currently working on the third book in this series. I have actually exchanged e mails with her, and she's sent me autographed bookplates, for each book. Really awesome lady. And I like this series, because it's a little different. It isn't just vampires... but something else.

PATRICIA BRIGGS

The Mercedes Thompson Series is a series of urban fantasy novels written by Patricia Briggs that follow the adventures of Mercedes (Mercy) Thompson, a Native American shapeshifter who was raised by Werewolves. The series is set in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state in an alternate world in which Werewolves and certain types of the fae have been forced to reveal themselves to the public. The series follows Mercy, a VW mechanic by trade, as she learns her true nature and is caught up in the affairs of the local werewolf pack, led by Adam, the Alpha who lives next door, and the local vampire seethe, a member of which she has befriended.

Book 1: Moon Called
Book 2: Blood Bound
Book 3: Iron Kissed
Book 4: Bone Crossed

I'm about 100 pages into book 4 now. Awesome series. Has vampires, werewolves, faes, and the walker (Mercy).

JEANIENE FROST

The Night Huntress series

"Halfway To The Grave"
Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of these deadbeats is her father—the one responsible for ruining her mother's life. Then she's captured by Bones, a vampire bounty hunter, and is forced into an unholy partnership.
In exchange for finding her father, Cat agrees to train with the sexy night stalker until her battle reflexes are as sharp as his fangs. She's amazed she doesn't end up as his dinner—are there actually good vampires? Pretty soon Bones will have her convinced that being half-dead doesn't have to be all bad. But before she can enjoy her newfound status as kick-ass demon hunter, Cat and Bones are pursued by a group of killers. Now Cat will have to choose a side . . . and Bones is turning out to be as tempting as any man with a heartbeat.


"One Foot In The Grave"
You can run from the grave, but you can't hide . . .
Half-vampire Cat Crawfield is now Special Agent Cat Crawfield, working for the government to rid the world of the rogue undead. She's still using everything Bones, her sexy and dangerous ex, taught her, but when Cat is targeted for assassination, the only man who can help her is the vampire she left behind.
Being around him awakens all her emotions, from the adrenaline kick of slaying vamps side by side to the reckless passion that consumed them. But a price on her head—wanted: dead or half-alive—means her survival depends on teaming up with Bones. And no matter how hard she tries to keep things professional between them, she'll find that desire lasts forever . . . and that Bones won't let her get away again.


"At Graves End"
Some things won't stay buried . . . at grave's end.
It should be the best time of half-vampire Cat Crawfield's life. With her undead lover Bones at her side, she's successfully protected mortals from the rogue undead. But though Cat's worn disguise after disguise to keep her true identity a secret from the brazen bloodsuckers, her cover's finally been blown, placing her in terrible danger.
As if that wasn't enough, a woman from Bones's past is determined to bury him once and for all. Caught in the crosshairs of a vengeful vamp, yet determined to help Bones stop a lethal magic from being unleashed, Cat's about to learn the true meaning of bad blood. And the tricks she's learned as a special agent won't help her. She will need to fully embrace her vampire instincts in order to save herself—and Bones—from a fate worse than the grave.


"Destined For An Early Grave"
(To be released July 28, 2009)

These aren't supernatural, but Richard Laymon has a couple of vampire books. He toys with the ideas, but it's left sort of up in the air as to whether they're really vampires or not (Stake is a little more clear on the point). They're more about madness, obsession and lust and that kind of crap.

Stake
Larry Durban, his neighbor Pete and their wives find the body of the young woman hidden in the basement of a ghost-town hotel. Pete persuades Larry, who has started writing a vampire novel, to bring the body home. Hoping for a great PR stunt, Pete plans to film the removal of the stake. But Larry has second thoughts. An old man tried to kill them when they picked up the coffin, suggesting that he, for one, believes in vampires. And Larry starts to have disturbing dreams about his "houseguest," whose finger bears a class ring identifying her as "Bonnie" and a onetime student at the high school that his own teenage daughter, Lane, attends. Even more disturbing is the deepening relationship between Lane and her English teacher, Hal Kramer. Early on, Laymon shows Kramer engaging in a bloody murder, thereby raising the possibility of a connection to Bonnie. By studying old newspaper clippings, Larry learns that numerous young women had disappeared at the same time as Bonnie, but surely, he tells himself, these were innocents, not vampires. By this point, the reader shares Larry's doubts, and the tension becomes electric.The novel's only flaw may be overindulgence in dialogue. But its lighthearted tone sets up some white-knuckle moments, and the ending is more than worthy of Laymon's buildup.

Bite
A kind of sequel to The Stake (1991), the story opens as Santa Monica narrator Sam, 26, is visited by old flame Cat: she wants him to kill Elliot, an unwelcome nightly visitor whom she claims is a vampire. Sam agrees, slaying Elliot with a stake in a scene that, typical for Laymon, is bloody, tinged with eroticism and unfolds a whisker away from black humor. The remainder of the novel details Sam and Cat's violent misadventures, including run-ins with homicidal drifters, as they try to dispose of the body. There's some thematic play about the vampire in us all, and Laymon's writing is as crisp and gleefully malevolent as ever, but the characters are thin and the plotting is too linear, incident piled upon incident, dissipating suspense. Still, Laymon fans won't want to miss this one.

Karla is reading those Twilight books. Loves them. It's funny.

-HECK!

I hated the movie so much I just don't want to bother with the books.

Both of the Richard Laymon books I mentioned above play with a very simple idea, but it's kind of interesting...

So there's a body with a stake through the heart. What happens if you pull it out? In both cases, the circumstances where this question is asked are very different, but it's kind of the high point in both books.