As I said in my previous post about adding some more non-fiction books to the book store, the bibliography of The Science of Vampires had so many interesting books listed that I’ve started searching for them at Amazon and uploading them according to category. I’ve just added a whole bunch to the “fiction: miscellaneous vampires” section. I can’t vouch for all of these, because I haven’t read most of them, and they are quite varied in premise, voice and style.

Carmilla, written by Sheridan Le Fanu even before Dracula, is also the first lesbian vampire story I’m aware of. It’s a very good read, and a must for someone interested in the classics and origins of the genre.

Children of the Night I didn’t like so much. It deals with post Ceauescu Romanian orphanages, AIDs, and is altogether too depressingly modern.

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King is one of my favorites. I know some people find it a little silly, but I avoided Stephen King for years and finally started reading him because of this book. It helps that I’m from New England so I like the flavor of the stories he sets there.

I saw the movie based on The Hunger but didn’t read the book. I didn’t care much for the movie, but books are almost always better than the movies based on them. I found the movie too bloody, the vampires too different from the archetype I was used to, and I was looking forward to seeing David Bowie in it, only to have him age and disappear from the movie about 20 minutes in! So I’m prejudiced. This book and its sequel, The Last Vampire, are considered classics of the genre however, and the author, Whitley Strieber, also wrote Wolfen.

I found out from Ramsland’s book that the TV series Nightstalker was based on the book The Kolchak Papers. I hadn’t realized there was a book behind that show, but I loved the show, so I’m curious to read the book.

Of the remaining books I am most interested in reading Varney the Vampire; I have been reading about this story for years. It was originally published in the Victorian era in the penny dreadfuls, and comes up in just about every non-fiction book about vampires and vampire literature ever written.

I would love to hear from anyone who has read some of the others on this list, and get your opinions. I would be happy to post any reviews you might want to write. You can leave comments on this post, or send me an email and I can upload a file.

There are still several novels from this bibliography that I need to add, but because they each belong to a series, I want to add each series or author as it’s own category. I’ll post here when I get some of those up.

Happy reading!

BB,

Vivienne

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