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Start hereDracula · Start here
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"Come freely. Go safely. And leave something of the happiness you bring" — so the Count greets his guest at the threshold of the Carpathians, and the great door shuts behind. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is the wellspring of the modern vampire: the account of a centuries-old Transylvanian nobleman who quits his crumbling castle for the crowded lodging-houses of London, and the handful of ordinary people — a young solicitor, a doctor of the mad, a professor of stranger learning — who must piece together what he is before he makes the whole city his fold. It is told wholly in fragments: journal entries, letters, telegrams, ships' logs, phonograph cylinders, each hand recording only its own sliver of the dark. Around that single novel a whole crypt of continuations has grown, raised by many writers across a century. Fred Saberhagen's Dracula Sequence hands the Count the microphone, retelling the old events from his own wry, aggrieved lips and following him into later intrigues. Robert Lory's brisk 1970s Dracula Horror Series revives him as a reluctant weapon turned against fouler things; Peter Tremayne's trilogy reaches back along his bloodline; and further sequels, a Quincey Morris spin-off, and Dracula's Children carry the shadow onward. This is a loose shared world built upon a public-domain figure, not one governed continuity — each author remakes him as villain, antihero, or sympathetic narrator. Begin, always, with Stoker's original; the letters and the mounting dread stand entirely on their own. From there follow whichever door tempts you — Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape for the monster's own confession, Lory or Tremayne for tales that never glance back at the Borgo Pass again.
series3 books1975
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Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to discover that its residents are being turned into vampires by a newly arrived stranger. It transplants Gothic vampire horror into a small New England community, tracking that community's collapse under a supernatural siege. It is a single, self-contained novel.
Richard Mathesonstandalone novel1954
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The last human survivor of the vampire epidemic has to maintain his defences against their onslaught, while attempting to research the cause and possibly solution to the plague. Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can a man survive like this?
series15 books1976
completed
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The Vampire Chronicles is a series of Gothic vampire novels and a media franchise, created by American author Anne Rice, that revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century.
series3 books2010
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The Passage is a novel series by Justin Cronin. There are three published books in the series. The film rights were acquired by Fox Entertainment Group in 2007 for adaptation into a film trilogy, but after 12 years of development and planning, it was changed to a television series, which premiered in January 2019 and was canceled after the first season.
George R. R. Martinstandalone novel1982
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Fevre Dream is a 1982 vampire novel written by American author George R. R. Martin. It is set on the antebellum Mississippi River, beginning in 1857, and has been described by critics and Martin himself as "Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain". About writing the novel, Martin said that "It was strongly influenced by the time I spent in Dubuque, Iowa, where river steamboats were once built".
series26 books1982
completed
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Brian Lumley's Necroscope opens an eighteen-book horror saga (1982-2017) centered on Harry Keogh, a man who can speak with the dead. Harry turns that gift against Thibor Ferenczy, a vampire buried since the Middle Ages, and against Ferenczy's agent Boris Dragosani, a Soviet spy who has learned to tear secrets from corpses in pursuit of world domination. Later volumes follow Harry's descendants and successors through further wars against the vampiric Wamphyri, across sequel trilogies and story collections.
Dan Simmonsstandalone novel1989
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Carrion Comfort is a science fiction/horror novel by American writer Dan Simmons, published in 1989 in hardcover by Dark Harvest and in 1990 in paperback by Warner Books. It won the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Poll Award for Best Horror Novel, and the August Derleth Award for Best Novel. It is based on a novelette of the same title, published in 1983 in the magazine Omni. The first half of the novelette makes up chapter 1 of the novel, while the second half forms chapter 3.
series3 books2009
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When a Boeing 777 lands at JFK Airport with nearly everyone aboard dead, CDC epidemiologist Ephraim Goodweather is called in and instead uncovers a vampiric plague beginning to spread through New York City. Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain trilogy follows Goodweather and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian as they race to stop an ancient vampire, the Master, from subjugating humanity, while Goodweather also tries to keep his own family safe from the outbreak. The story runs across The Strain, The Fall, and The Night Eternal.
series2 books1981
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In Robert R. McCammon's They Thirst, an ancient vampire prince arrives in Los Angeles and, in a matter of nights, begins turning the city into a stronghold for the undead, with Disneyland as an eerie staging ground for his conquest. A homicide detective, a reporter, and a small band of ordinary Angelenos piece together what's happening after a chilling séance warning, racing to stop the infestation before it spreads beyond the city. It's a large-canvas, multi-character vampire-apocalypse novel in the vein of McCammon's early horror work.
series17 books1992
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The Anno Dracula series is an alternative history-horror novel series by English author Kim Newman, which is named after the first book in the series: Anno Dracula (1992). The series is based on characters from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897), though in Newman's interpretation they fail to stop Count Dracula's conquest of Britain, resulting in a world where vampires are common and increasingly dominant in society. While Dracula is a central figure in the events of the series, he is a minor character in the books and usually appears in only a few climactic pages of each book. While many of the characters from Newman's Diogenes Club stories appear in the Anno Dracula novels, they are not the same as the ones in those stories, nor is the Diogenes Club itself the same.
Annette Curtis Klausestandalone novel1990
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The Silver Kiss is a young adult, romance and horror novel written by Annette Curtis Klause; it is printed in hardcover and paperback versions. The novel was Klause's first; it was published on September 1, 1990, and was re-issued in 2009 with two bonus short stories by Klause. The Silver Kiss was inspired by Klause's poems and her teenage fantasy about romancing with a vampire. It is set in a suburban area near the east coast, in the late 80s and explores themes of belonging, death, and loss through the romance between a young woman—Zoë Sutcliff—and Simon, an English vampire who was turned since he was a nineteen-year-old youth. During the story, Zoë's mother is in hospital dying from cancer. Zoë and Simon come to terms with their own mortality and the loss of their loved ones through their growing relationship and their battle with an evil vampire named Christopher.
series2 books1987
completed
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Live Girls is Ray Garton's best-known novel, a horror title that earned a Bram Stoker Award nomination among the roughly 68 books he wrote across a long horror-fiction career. Night Life continues the same series with a second entry published nearly two decades later.
series3 books1981
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Whitley Strieber's The Hunger centers on Miriam Blaylock, a beautiful, wealthy vampire who takes human lovers and transforms them into vampire-human hybrids, feeding off them across centuries. Two later novels, The Last Vampire and Lilith's Dream, continue Miriam's story into the modern era.
series5 books1977
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Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining follows the Torrance family as winter caretakers of the isolated, malevolent Overlook Hotel, where father Jack is gradually consumed by the hotel's influence while his young son Danny's psychic "shining" draws its attention. Doctor Sleep (2013) picks up the story decades later, following Danny as an adult still marked by that childhood ordeal. Together the two form a horror duology spanning nearly forty years of real-world publication.
Simon Ravenstandalone novel1960
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What happened to Richard Fountain, successful archaeologist? From the claustrophobic atmosphere of a college to the sun-drenched, remote hills of Greece, haunted by a disturbing presence, the investigation and the discovery of the protagonist by a handful of colleagues and friends will prove not without breathtaking twists. A race against time in which the protagonists will have to confront the dark myth of vampirism, which seems like an invention of literature and cinema but instead intertwines its roots with the arcane rites of a civilization that has been accustomed to hiding its secrets for centuries. [adapted from the Italian translation]
Elizabeth Kostovastandalone novel2005
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The Historian is the 2005 debut novel of American author Elizabeth Kostova. The plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula. Kostova's father told her stories about Dracula when she was a child, and later in life she was inspired to turn the experience into a novel. She worked on the book for ten years and then sold it within a few months to Little, Brown and Company, which bought it for US$2 million.
Richard Laymonstandalone novel1996
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It's almost midnight. Cat's on the bed, facedown and naked. She's Sam's former girlfriend, the only woman he's ever loved. Sam's in the closet, with a hammer in one hand and a wooden stake in the other. Together they wait as the clock ticks down because ... the vampire is coming.When Cat first appeared at Sam's door he couldn't believe his eyes. He hadn't seen her in ten years, but he'd never forgotten her. Not for a second. But before this night is through, Sam will enter a nightmare of blood and fear that he'll never be able to forget -- no matter how hard he tries.
S. E. Hintonstandalone novel2004
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Hawkes Harbor is a 2004 novel by American writer S. E. Hinton.
Florence Marryatstandalone novel1897
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The Blood of the Vampire is a Gothic novel by Florence Marryat, published in 1897. The protagonist, Harriet Brandt, is a mixed-race psychic vampire who kills unintentionally. The novel follows Harriet after she leaves a Jamaican convent for Europe, and her ill-fated attempts to integrate with Victorian society.
Lucius Shepardstandalone novel1993
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Deviating from traditional tales that feature lonely vampires who prowl through human society in search of victims or solace, this account of vampires flourishing in their own "inhuman society" takes place in the year 1860, when their centuries-long breeding experiments have finally produced "The Golden," a mortal whose blood is perfect and powerful. Mobilized by the news of this discovery, aristocratic vampire clans arrive at the looming Castle Banat, where they plan to partake of the sublime blood. To their shock, the guests find that The Golden, a young girl, has been brutally murdered and her blood already drained. The story also follows the Inspector Michael Beheim—a recent vampire—assigned to track down the killer. Recounted in full 19th-century literary style with gothic elements and foreshadowing, the inspector navigates his way through the vampire world and the crime therein.