More like Van Helsing
anchored on:19th century
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- The Stress of Her Regard Universe
series3 books1989
similar bydarkvampires19th century+2 more
Tim Powers's The Stress of Her Regard reimagines the lives of Byron, Shelley, and Keats through a secret history in which they are stalked and inspired by a nephilim, a shape-shifting vampiric being that acts as a deadly muse. Physician Michael Crawford is drawn into their orbit after inadvertently marrying himself to one of the creatures, setting off a pursuit across the Alps to break her hold on him. The 2012 sequel, Hide Me Among the Graves, moves the same secret history forward into Victorian London.
- Anita Blake
series42 books1993
similar bydarkvampirestense+1 more
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter is a series of urban fantasy novels, short stories, and comic books by Laurell K. Hamilton. The books have sold more than six million copies; many have made The New York Times Best Seller list.
- James Asher Chronicles
series8 books1988
similar byvampires+4 more
The James Asher Chronicles opens with Those Who Hunt the Night, in which the vampire Don Simon Ysidro coerces a former British spy, Oxford professor James Asher, into finding out who is killing London's vampires in their sleep - forcing Asher and his physician wife Lydia into an uneasy alliance with the undead. Barbara Hambly's series follows the trio across eight books and three decades of settings as new supernatural and human threats draw Asher back into Ysidro's world.
- The Werewolf of Paris
Guy Endorestandalone novel1933
similar byhorrordarkeurope19th centurytense
The Werewolf of Paris (1933) is a Gothic horror novel by American writer Guy Endore. The novel follows Bertrand Caillet, the eponymous werewolf, throughout the tumultuous events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune of 1870–71. Some literature experts have compared this book with Dracula by Bram Stoker and they have identified it as the Dracula of werewolf fiction.
- Twins of Evil
Shaun Hutsonstandalone novel2011
similar byhorrordarkeurope19th centuryvampiresmonster huntingtense
In nineteenth century middle-Europe, orphaned teenage twins Maria and Frieda go to live with their uncle Gustav Weil, who heads the Brotherhood, a vigilante group trying to stamp out vampirism. But their methods are random and misplaced and the only result is a terrorised populace.
- The Blood of the Vampire
Florence Marryatstandalone novel1897
similar byhorrordarkeurope19th centuryvampires
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.
- The Golden
Lucius Shepardstandalone novel1993
similar byhorrordarkeurope19th centuryvampires
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.
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
series4 books1949
similar by+3 more
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) is George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future Britain kept under constant surveillance and thought control, following Winston Smith's doomed attempt at a private rebellion against the ruling Party. Sandra Newman's Julia (2023), written with the Orwell estate's authorization, retells the same events from the point of view of Winston's lover Julia, filling in a life and set of motives the original largely left offstage.
- The Vampire Chronicles
series15 books1976
completed
similar byhorrordarkvampires+1 more
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.
- The Secret Life of Laszlo, Count Dracula
Roderick Anscombestandalone novel1994
similar bydarkeurope19th century+2 more
From the front flap of the Hyperion first edition: "In his mesmerizing fictional debut, psychiatrist Roderick Anscombe takes readers into the fevered mind of Count Dracula the man - aristocrat, doctor, and helpless killer of young women. There are no vampires in this stunningly erotic reinvention of the classic myth, only tormented human beings. Tortured by his own perverse desires, the distinguished Dr. Dracula is drawn to possess and destroy young women, first in Paris where he is studying with the renowned pioneer of hypnosis, Charcot, and then in the Hungarian countryside, as the Count takes over the deteriorating family estate. Even as he maintains the facade of the aristocratic life, Dracula is drawn inexorably into a world of violent emotion, blood lust, and self-loathing. Swirling between the scientific fact and superstition of the day - and propelled into the medical epidemics and politics of the Austro-Hungarian empire - Dracula becomes a public saint and a private savage, and all the while a plausible and pitiable human being."
- The Island of Dr. Moreau
series12 books1896
similar by19th century+2 more
H. G. Wells's 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau follows a shipwrecked man stranded on a remote island where a reclusive scientist creates human-animal hybrids through vivisection, using the scenario to probe questions of cruelty, control, and what separates humanity from the beasts it experiments on. The premise has drawn later reimaginings gathered alongside it here, including Brian Aldiss's Moreau's Other Island and Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, each transplanting Wells's central idea into a new setting and voice. Taken together, the group traces one unsettling premise across more than a century of speculative fiction rather than forming a single ongoing story.
- Fevre Dream
George R. R. Martinstandalone novel1982
similar byhorrordark19th centuryvampires
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".
- Jerusalem's Lot
series3 books1975
similar byhorrordarkvampirestense
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.
- The Invisible Man
series6 books1897
similar by19th century+3 more
The Invisible Man is H. G. Wells's 1897 science fiction novel about Griffin, a scientist who works out how to make living tissue invisible and tests the process on himself, only to discover he has no way to reverse it. Unseen and increasingly cut off from other people, he turns to theft and violence while trying to survive and find a cure, making the book as much about his moral collapse as about the invisibility premise itself. It's a single self-contained novel; the two listed titles here are duplicate editions rather than separate books.
- The Wolf in the Garden
Alfred H. Billstandalone novel1931
similar byhorrordarkeurope19th century+1 more
From the publisher of the 1972 reprint edition: "A series of bizarre and horrifying events besiege the village of New Dortrecht with the advent of the French Comte de Saint Loup and his hound DeRetz. A giant wolf, possessed with evil intelligence and savage fury, sates its desire for blood in a series of horrifying and supernatural killings."
- The Shining
series5 books1977
similar byhorrordarktense
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.
- Vampire Huntress Legend
series15 books2003
completed
similar byvampires+3 more
L. A. Banks's Vampire Huntress Legend opens with Minion, introducing Damali Richards, a spoken-word artist and martial artist who moonlights as a vampire hunter. The urban fantasy series follows Damali across thirteen novels as she confronts escalating supernatural threats.
- Frankenstein
universe128 books1818
Start hereFrankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus · Start here
similar byhorror+2 more
Light a candle against the November dark and consider what a single spark, rightly applied to dead matter, might wake. In a laboratory at Ingolstadt a student named Victor Frankenstein learns the secret of animating lifeless flesh, assembles a being from the harvest of charnel houses and graves, and, at the moment it draws breath, flees the thing he has made. What he abandons does not stay abandoned. This is the world Mary Shelley opened in 1818 with Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: the story of a maker and his unmothered creation, and the long ruin each works upon the other. Shelley's novel arrives as a nest of confessions, an explorer's letters from the frozen north enclosing Victor's account, which in turn encloses the Creature's own, an articulate and wounded voice that has read Milton and wants only not to be alone. From that single volume two centuries of other hands have built outward, not as one continuity but as a gathering of independent returns to the same fire. Dean Koontz transplants the myth to modern New Orleans across a five-book cycle, Prodigal Son through The Dead Town, where the original Creature, now called Deucalion, hunts a Victor who never died. Donald F. Glut's New Adventures and Frank Schildiner's Quest of Frankenstein run the monster through pulp adventure; the mid-century French novels published as Benoit Becker chase him across a ruined Europe; Scott Sonneborn's Frankenstein Journals and the comic Frankenstein's Aunt turn the legend toward younger and lighter readers. What binds them is the question the book asks and never settles: which is the monster, the forsaken creature who kills, or the man whose ambition and cowardice made and abandoned him? Expect little comfort and few clean villains; the abiding note is grief, sublime and articulate, set against Alpine ice and candlelit hubris. Begin where it began, with Shelley's own novel; the later cycles reward you only once you have heard the Creature speak for himself.
- Necroscope
series26 books1982
completed
similar byhorrordarkvampirestense
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.
- I Am Legend
Richard Mathesonstandalone novel1954
similar byhorrordarkvampirestense
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?
