So You Want to Read Vampire Fiction: Here’s Where to Start

A former punk rocker turned street hustler, Joe’s transformation into a “vampyre” leads him to a career as a fixer and leg-breaker for New York City’s rival vampyre clans. Joe refuses to swear allegiance to any of them, making him the go-to guy for odd (and bloody) jobs around the city. Joe is a killer with a heart of stone — he’s nobody’s idea of a knight in shining armor. If you see him coming around, then you’d probably better start running.

Rachel Klein’s The Moth Diaries is a gothic novel of toxic friendship and (possibly) the supernatural set at an exclusive girl’s boarding school. The set-up and subtext of this mature tale for younger readers will undoubtedly remind longtime vampire aficionados of Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic story “Carmilla”.

The only purebred vampire left on the planet and the leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, Wrath has a score to settle with the slayers who killed his parents centuries ago. But when his most trusted fighter is killed—orphaning a half-breed daughter unaware of her heritage or her fate—Wrath must put down his dagger and usher the beautiful female into another world.

There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake in years. Sunshine just needed a spot where she could be alone with her thoughts for a minute. But then the vampires found her . . . Now, chained and imprisoned in a once-beautiful decaying mansion, alone but for the vampire, Constantine, shackled next to her, Sunshine realizes that she must call on her own hidden strength if she is to survive. But Constantine is not what she expected of a vampire, and soon Sunshine discovers that it is he who needs her, more than either of them know.

In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks . . . until something extraordinary happens.