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Top 10 Vampire Novels

There has been a resurgence of interest in vampire stories lately. But despite the teen vampire-lover stories, there are some books that are more hardcore. For some really good vampire reading, here is a list of the top ten vampire novels.

  1. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King – The Master of Horror created a timeless and chilling classic with this book. The town of Salem’s Lot is overrun by vampires. A group of survivors try to take on the master vamp but only two survive the experience.
  2. Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice – Rice has been credited with starting the gothic vampire craze. Her first book featured the life of a vampire as told to a journalist. It was one of the first to picture a vampire as a sympathetic character.
  3. Dracula by Bram Stoker – The original classic book, written in Victorian times, is still a source and inspiration. It tells the tale of the original vampire known as Dracula. When he ensnares a young woman, a group of hunters led by Dr. Van Helsing go after him.
  4. Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons – This book introduces us to vampires that feed off a victim’s psyche instead of their blood. They have this mysterious Ability that they also use to control others. There are lots of power struggles and lots of used victims die gruesome deaths.
  5. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson – Before Will Smith (or even Charleton Heston), there was the book. The last man on earth is surrounded by mutant vampires. He spends his days trying to find a cure for the disease that caused the plague.
  6. The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice – Arguably better than her first book, Interview With The Vampire. Probably because Lestat is a more interesting character who enjoys being a vampire. The book is full of gothic melancholy and creates a whole vampire history.
  7. Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite – The vampires in this book are different from other books. Instead of transformed humans, they are a separate race. A young orphaned vampire is picked up by a band of vampires and has to fight to keep from losing his soul.
  8. Those Who Hunt The Night by Barbara Hambly – This is a great vampire mystery book. In gaslight London, an investigator is hired by a vampire to find out who is killing his kind. The investigator finds the answers lie with a legendary vampire older than any of his race.
  9. Live Girls by Ray Garton – Who doesn’t like stories about vampire strippers? When a man walks into a sex club in New York called Live Girls, he finds out the strippers have a mean bite. Later he and an investigative reporter track down a murder mystery that leads back to the club.
  10. Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin – A tale about a steamboat in Mississippi during the 1800s. The captain thinks his passengers are vampire hunters but later learns they are the actual vampires. The leader has a potion that will free all vampires from their blood thirst and wants to share it with his kind.
  11. They Thirst by Robert McCammon – This one’s no longer in print and probably won’t be ever again, because McCammon said it was not as professionally written as some of his later novels. But as far as vampire fiction goes, They Thirst is hard to beat.
  12. Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon – This one is so great and so different that I won’t even begin to describe it beyond saying that it’s an epistolary novel that’s nothing like Dracula.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Best Horror Books, Best Horror Writers, Stephen King, Vampires. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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