The 10 Best Vampire Books

Every vampire story written since 1897 borrows something from Dracula, and Bram Stoker's novel still works as a creeping, clever thriller. It's told through diaries, letters and newspaper clippings, so you piece the threat together alongside Jonathan Harker, Mina and Van Helsing. This Bantam paperback is cheap and opens with a helpful introduction. The middle chapters, full of blood transfusions and travel plans, drag for many modern readers.

Readers who want a vampire with a conscience should start with Interview with the Vampire. Anne Rice's first novel has Louis telling a young reporter about two centuries of undead life, from a Louisiana plantation to Paris, bound to the cruel Lestat and the child vampire Claudia. Its lush, mournful voice changed how the genre sounds. Long stretches of brooding slow the story, and the plot can feel thin.

Stephen King's second novel, 'Salem's Lot, drops an old evil into a small Maine town and lets the dread spread house by house. A writer comes home to face his past just as a stranger buys the spooky mansion on the hill, and neighbors start to vanish. The town feels so real that every loss stings. It takes its time setting up a big cast, and the violence late in the book is grim.

Let the Right One In pairs a bullied 12-year-old with the strange child who moves in next door, in a gray Stockholm suburb in the early 1980s. John Ajvide Lindqvist makes their friendship tender and the killings brutal, and that mix is hard to shake. Ebba Segerberg's English translation reads smoothly. It includes graphic violence and the sexual abuse of a child, so it isn't for sensitive readers.

Picture a Mississippi steamboat race with vampires aboard, and you have Fevre Dream, George R.R. Martin's novel from long before his dragons. In 1857, a gruff riverboat captain takes on a pale, rich partner who pays for a grand new boat and keeps strange night hours. The river towns and the captain's voice carry it. The pacing feels old-fashioned, with long stretches on the water between the scares.

Patient readers who like history mixed into their horror tend to sink into The Historian. Elizabeth Kostova follows a young woman tracing her father's hunt for the real Dracula through old libraries, monasteries and archives across Europe. The research and the travel are the draw, and the fear builds quietly. It's very long, and its narrators, all scholars writing letters, can sound too much alike.

For a lighter bite, Dead Until Dark mixes a small-town murder mystery with a Southern romance. Sookie Stackhouse, a Louisiana waitress who can hear people's thoughts, falls for a vampire named Bill just as women in town start turning up dead. It's funny, quick and the first of a long series that became the show True Blood. Some critics find it fluffy, and it has adult sexual content.

In The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, a bored Charleston housewife in the 1990s starts to suspect her charming new neighbor of something far worse than bad manners. Grady Hendrix writes her true-crime book club with sharp humor about marriage and motherhood, then lets the horror turn vicious. A handful of scenes are gruesome, and some readers find the violence too much. This link is for the Kindle edition.

Robin McKinley's Sunshine stars a baker, not a hunter. Rae Seddon spends her days making famous cinnamon rolls at a coffee shop, until vampires grab her and chain her beside a captive vampire named Constantine. Their uneasy alliance drives a dark, inventive fantasy with a voice all its own. Rae's rambling thoughts slow the opening chapters, and the book stands alone with a few threads left hanging.

The book that started a craze, Twilight is a teen romance first and a vampire tale second. Bella Swan moves to rainy Forks, Washington, and falls for Edward Cullen, a classmate who is a vampire trying hard not to hurt her. It reads fast and suits younger teens, with little gore. Critics often call the writing overearnest, and Bella's all-consuming devotion to Edward bothers some readers.