Vampire Novels for Adults

Fledgling    by  Octavia Butler  

The story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion; she is in fact, a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire.  Forced to discover what she can  about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted – and still wants – to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.

Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hamblyn  

 Someone is killing the vampires of London, England by exposing them to sunlight while they rest and then draining their blood. Simon Ysibro, who has been a vampire since before the Renaissance, wants to know who is responsible for these murders. Because he and his cohorts must avoid daylight, he seeks the assistance of James Asher, former agent for the British government, currently an Oxford professor. To Asher, the vampires are monsters, and deserve their fate. But Asher agrees to search for the murderer, since Ysibro has threatened to harm his wife if he refuses.

Dead Until Dark   by Charlaine Harris 

 This is the first in a highly popular series about a barmaid in Louisiana named Sookie Stackhouse. Sookie is telepathic, which makes her rather unpopular with many people who would rather not have anyone know what is on their minds. Conversely, she seems to attract supernatural beings like bees to pollen and this precipitates the adventures which she tumbles into one book after another. The books can be read as stand-alones, but since story develops over the course of the series, it is best to start with Dead Until Dark and continue sequentially. An HBO series called True Blood and starring Ann Paquin is based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels. For older teens and adults.

The Blood Books (volume 1) by Tanya Huff  

Former Toronto police officer Vicki Nelson who has been forced to resign because of deteriorating eyesight, is currently working as a private detective. When a rather bizarre case comes her way, she ends up enlisting the help of Henry Fitzroy, vamppire (and also King Henry 8’s son). Action and mystery trump romance, although there is a bit of the latter with some sparks between Vicki and Henry and Vicki’s former police partner exhibiting definite signs of jealousy.

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs   by Molly Harper   

The first installment of a funny, smart, and sexy new romantic series by a debut author introduces Jane Jameson, an out-of-work, small-town librarian who is turned into a vampire.

Code Sixty-One    by Donald Harstad   

Investigating the apparent suicide of a colleague’s niece, Iowa Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman uncovers a group that has transformed the dark fantasies of vampire legendinto grisly reality: they ritualistically drink small amounts of one another’s blood. As Houseman and his partner, Hester Gorse, are drawn deeper into this alternate, alien world, they come to the chilling conclusion that the dead young woman may have been the victim of a twenty-first-century Dracula. Their prime suspect, Dan Peal, is a sinister and commanding presence within the group, but without proof to substantiate such a heinous theory, the trail is in danger of running cold. When their suspicions are bolstered by the report of a card-carrying vampire-hunter who is also pursuing Peal, Houseman and Gorse suddenly find themselves scrambling to track the vampire before he kills again.

Salem’s Lot   by Stephen King  

Salem’s Lot is a small New England town with white clapboard houses, tree-lined streets, and solid church steeples. That summer in Salem’s Lot was a summer of homecoming and return; spring burned out and the land lying dry, crackling underfoot. Late that summer, Ben Mears returned to ’salem’s Lot hoping to cast out his own devils and found instead a new, unspeakable horror.   A stranger had also come to the Lot, a stranger with a secret as old as evil, a secret that would wreak irreparable harm on those he touched and in turn on those they loved.  

The Moth Diaries   by Rachel Klein  

Lucy and Ernessa have become inseparable. Ernessa’s taken her over. She’s consuming her. What I saw wasn’t real. And I know it wasn’t a dream. Ernessa is a vampire. At an exclusive girls’ boarding school, a sixteen-year-old girl records her most intimate thoughts in a diary. The object of her growing obsession is her roommate, Lucy Blake, and Lucy’s friendship with their new and disturbing classmate. Ernessa is an enigmatic, moody presence with pale skin and hypnotic eyes. Around her swirl dark rumors, suspicions, and secrets as well as a series of ominous disasters. As fear spreads through the school and Lucy isn’t Lucy anymore, fantasy and reality mingle until what is true and what is dreamed bleed together into a waking nightmare that evokes with gothic menace the anxieties, lusts, and fears of adolescence. And at the center of the diary is the question that haunts all who read it: Is Ernessa really a vampire? Or has the narrator trapped herself in the fevered world of her own imagining?

Daylight    by Elizabeth Knox   

 Brian “Bad” Phelan, a New Zealand policeman and bomb disposal expert, likes to live dangerously. Bad is an expert climber and caver and, while on vacation on the French/Italian border, he helps bring a body out of a rocky, wave-swept cove. Curiously, the dead woman bears striking similarities to a young woman he met years ago, shortly before she disappeared in a flooded French cave. Haunted by the strange connection, Bad is compelled to investigate. In following a series of increasingly eerie leads, Bad learns the story of the Blessed Martine Raimondi, a World War II resistance heroine and martyred nun. He also meets Eve Moskelute, the beautiful widow of a celebrated French artist; Daniel Octave, a Canadian Jesuit who investigates miracles; and most surprisingly, Dawn Moskelute, Eve’s twin sister, who just may be a vampire.

The Historian   by Elizabeth Kostova 

 The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father’s library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: “My dear and unfortunate successor.” When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula–Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century–was still alive.

Revamped    by J.F. Lewis 

Eric has lost his strip club, his Mustang, and even Marilyn, the elderly love of his (mortal) life. Even his body was obliterated. In short, they almost got him. But when you’re a vampire, “almost” is a very important word. With a little magical help from his friends, Eric is restored to corporeal form, but his treasured Mustang gets caught up in the sorcery and winds up with an unlife of its own. Now, along with “Fang the ‘Stang,” he’s out to save Marilyn from one of Void City’s most powerful soul-stealing demons. But salvation comes at a high price, forcing Eric to venture into his own worst nightmare, Vampire High Society, to uncover the truth about the origin of his powers.

Sunshine   by Robin McKinley   

They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion-within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight. She knows that it is a vampire. She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, when light breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day…

Fangland   by John Marks 

An acclaimed novelist and former 60 Minutes producer grandly reinvents the Dracula epic in the halls of a certain television newsmagazine. Written in the form of diary entries, e-mails, therapy journals, and other artifacts of early-twenty-first-century American professional-class life, Fangland manages both to be a genuinely,  in fact, triumphantly, frightening vampire novel in the grand tradition and a, yes, biting commentary on the way we live and work now.

Fevre Dream   by George R. Martin 

When struggling riverboat captain Abner Marsh receives an offer of partnership from a wealthy aristocrat, he suspects something’s amiss. But when he meets the hauntingly pale, steely-eyed Joshua York, he is certain. For York doesn’t care that the icy winter of 1857 has wiped out all but one of Marsh’s dilapidated fleet. Nor does he care that he won’t earn back his investment in a decade. York has his own reasons for wanting to traverse the powerful Mississippi. And they are to be none of Marsh’s concern—no matter how bizarre, arbitrary, or capricious his actions may prove. Marsh meant to turn down York’s offer. It was too full of secrets that spelled danger. But the promise of both gold and a grand new boat that could make history crushed his resolve—coupled with the terrible force of York’s mesmerizing gaze. Not until the maiden voyage of his new sidewheeler Fevre Dream would Marsh realize he had joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare…and mankind’s most impossible dream.

I am Legend    by Richard Matheson   

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth…but he is not alone. Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville’s blood.By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?

Baltimore: or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire    by Michael Mignola 

When Lord Henry Baltimore awakens the wrath of a vampire on the hellish battlefields of World War I, the world is forever changed. For a virulent plague has been unleashed—a plague that even death cannot end. Now the lone soldier in an eternal struggle against darkness, Baltimore summons three old friends to a lonely inn—men whose travels and fantastical experiences incline them to fully believe in the evil that is devouring the soul of mankind.

You Suck    by Christopher Moore 

Being dead sucks. Make that being undead sucks.   Literally. Just ask Thomas C. Flood. Waking up after a fantastic night unlike anything he’s ever experienced, he discovers that his girlfriend, Jody—the woman of his dreams—is a vampire. And surprise! Now he’s one, too.

Anno Dracula    by Kim Newman

In an alternate Victorian England Dracula has not been defeated, and has married the widowed Queen Victoria. But  all is not well in this world. Jack the Ripper is murdering vampire prostitutes and plots are afoot to defeat the vampires who hold power in England.

Bitten to Death   by Jennifer Rardin   

From the author of “Biting the Bullet” comes the fourth Jazz Parks adventure, which takes the martial artist turned vampire-hunting government agent to the ancient Greek city of Patras.

Greywalker   by Kat Richardson  

 Harper Blaine was your average small-time P.I. until a two-bit perp’s savage assault left her dead for two minutes. When she comes to in the hospital, she sees things that can only be described as weird-shapes emerging from a foggy grey mist, snarling teeth, creatures roaring. But Harper’s not crazy. Her “death” has made her a Greywalker- able to move between the human world and the mysterious cross-over zone where things that go bump in the night exist. And her new gift is about to drag her into that strange new realm-whether she likes it or not.

Morrigan’s Cross    by Nora Roberts  

As a storm rages, the tale of a powerful vampire’s lust for destruction-and of the circle of six charged by the goddess Morrigan to stop her-begins. One of the chosen is a medieval sorcerer whose quest will take him through time-and into the arms of a woman courageous enough to link her destiny to his own.

Children of the Night   by Dan Simmons  

Does a Romanian infant’s blood hold the key to a cure for AIDS? The Hugo Award-winning author of Summer of Night brings an evil legacy to life in the ultimate vampire novel.

Vamped   by David Sosnowski 

A hot beach read, Sosnowski’s “Vamped” is the story of a very different world–one where vampires rule and humans are the near-extinct minority

One with the Shadows   by Susan Squires   

Kate Malone makes her living reading Tarot cards and fleecing society’s elite. With no prospect of independence, her own fate looks bleak. But Kate’s fortunes change when she steals a magnificent emerald—and is soon confronted by a mysterious stranger. Kate is sure that the striking gentleman’s attention is a ruse to retrieve the gem. But his presence awakens her to passions she never dreamed of…and to powers she never knew she possessed. nbsp; Gian Urbano is bound by honor to retrieve the mystical stone that can drain a vampire’s power—and drive humans to madness. The willful, stunning Kate has no idea of the emerald’s dark magic, or the lengths Gian’s enemies will go to retrieve it. But soon Gian discovers in Kate a desire more compelling than duty—one that could save them both, or lead them to their downfall…

Dracula: The Undead   by Dacre Stoker    

Someone is stalking the brave band of heroes who defeated the vampire Dracula. Does the legendary monster thought to be destroyed yet remain the un-dead? Dracula: The Un-Dead is set twenty-five years after the close of Bram Stoker’s classic tale. Dark forces are closing in on London. Quincey-son of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray-and his companions, many of them original characters, must join together to do everything in their power to stop them. The only sequel endorsed by the Stoker family

The Last Vampire    by Whitley Strieber    

Miriam Blaylock’s insatiable hunger has never ceased. Her incomparable beauty has made her a legend among the Keepers. Her many lovers have come and gone, crumbling into ash and nothingness.  For centuries she has felt safe. Until now.  He watches. Vampires. Interpol agent Paul Ward knows of them: he has battled and cleansed continents of their exquisite poison. He orchestrated the extermination of an ancient lair in Bangkok, obtained their sacred Book of Names, and knows where they hide and when they feast. He knows their weaknesses. And what’s more, he knows his own…it’s Miriam Blaylock. Elusive and toxic, she has escaped his complex network of hunters for years. Seductive and cunning, she has become his obsession. And now each has set a trap for the other. Now, predator is about to become prey. Killer to become lover. Good and evil will become inexorably entwined. The endgame begins for the last vampire.

Kitty and the Silver Bullet   by Carrie Vaughn   

Kitty’s radio show is as popular as ever and she has a boyfriend who actually seems to understand her. Can she finally settle down to a normal life? Not if this is just the calm before the storm. When her mother falls ill, Kitty rushes back to Denver–and right back to the abusive pack of werewolves she escaped a year ago. To make matters worse, a war is brewing between the city’s two oldest vampires, threatening the whole supernatural community. Though she wants to stay neutral, Kitty is again drawn into a world of politics and violence. To protect her family, her lover, and herself, she’ll have to choose sides. And maybe become what she hates–a killer

Midnight Mass    by F. Paul Wilson 

Vampires have always lived in Eastern Europe. But with the fall of the Soviet Union, they began to spread across the continent, then the world, turning whole populations into vampires-or human cattle. Having overrun India, the far East, and the great cities of North and South America, the forces of Night are now spreading into the countryside to consolidate their conquest. In a town on the New Jersey shore, the vampires have just arrived, along with their human henchmen, the cowboys, who round up human cattle for the overlords in return for the promise of eternal life–later. For the vampires wish only a few of their own kind to rule, and feed. The rest of humanity are to be helpless herds, the source of the blood of life. Falsely accused of abuse, Father Dan is drunk in a basement waiting for the end. His superior has betrayed the local Catholic congregation and become a vampire. Sister Carolyn has become a formidable killer of cowboys and vampires. Dan’s niece, escaped from the conquest of New York, has made her way south to find him. Brought together by Rabbi Zev Wolpin, who is shaken by the vampires’ fear of the cross and holy water, they plan their resistance. Against all odds, they discover that there just might be a way for humanity to really fight back. But first they will have to kill the vampire king of New York.

This list was created by Pat McCaffrey