Moon called - Patricia Briggs

Dracula (1992)

Buffy: the high school years - Faith Erin Hicks

Certain dark things - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Soulless - Gail Carriger

Soulless - Carriger, Gail

Summary: The life of a spinster in Victorian London isn't an easy one on the best of days, but such a life becomes infinitely more complicated when said spinster is "soulless" - a preternatural bridging the gap between the natural and supernatural worlds. Miss Alexia Tarabotti has this unique distinction, and when she is assailed at a formal gathering by a rove vampire, an encounter that results in the death of the half-starved creature, her circumstances become exponentially more complicated indeed! Now caught up in an intrigue with life or death stakes, Alexia must rely on all her talents to outmatch the forces conspiring against her, but it may be the man who has caught her eye - Lord Conall Maccon - and their budding flirtation that truly drives her to her wit's end!

Publishers Weekly Review
*Starred Review* Carriger debuts brilliantly with a blend of Victorian romance, screwball comedy of manners and alternate history. Prickly, stubborn 25-year-old bluestocking Alexia Tarabotti is patently unmarriageable, and not just because she's large-nosed and swarthy. She's also soulless, an oddity and a secret even in a 19th-century London that mostly accepts and integrates werewolf packs, vampire hives and ghosts. The only man who notices her is brash Lord Conall Maccon, a Scottish Alpha werewolf and government official, and (of course) they dislike each other intensely. After Alexia kills a vampire with her parasol at a party—how vulgar!—she and Conall must work together to solve a supernatural mystery that grows quite steampunkishly gruesome. Well-drawn secondary characters round out the story, most notably Lord Akeldama, Alexia's outrageous, italic-wielding gay best vampire friend. This intoxicatingly witty parody will appeal to a wide cross-section of romance, fantasy and steampunk fans.

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What we do in the shadows (DVD)

What we do in the shadows (DVD)

Summary: Vulvus, Viago, and Deacon are vampires who live here, among us. They are real vampires; undead, immortal creatures who stalk the night and search for human blood, preferably virgins. Witness the many horrid, abominable aspects of vampire life, such as hunting and feeding, vampire rivalry and fighting with werewolves, as well as normal night to night aspects that make them not so different from us like keeping the flat clean, jobs, shopping, meeting people and trying to fit in.

Video Librarian Reviews
Created by and co-starring Flight of the Conchords creator-star Jemaine Clement, this New Zealand indie production transcends its unpromising premise—imagine MTV's The Real World, but with vampires—to emerge as not just the funniest vampire mockumentary ever made, but also one of the best horror comedies in memory. A (mostly) unseen New Zealand government documentary film crew—protected by crucifixes, naturally—follows the nocturnal antics of a contentious, all-male household of old-fashioned Eastern European bloodsuckers. These vampires are but four of several hundred creatures of the night (which also include werewolves, zombies, etc.) who are dwelling incognito around Wellington. Their longstanding routine—hunting humans, arguing over who has to clean up the gore in the kitchen—changes when one Nosferatu lookalike vampirizes a modern-day bloke. Although hopeless at vampire etiquette and secrecy, the newcomer ends up dragging his undead flatmates into the realities of the 21st century (or the 20th...or the 19th...). Featuring robust characterizations (full-blooded, one might say) and performances delivered with palpable glee, this seems certain to be an instant cult hit. Highly recommended. (C. Cassady) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2015.

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Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (DVD)

Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (DVD)

Summary: It is 1850 in the beautiful, perfectly-kept town of Wismar. Jonathan Harker is about to leave on a long journey over the Carpathian Mountains to finalize real estate arrangements with a wealthy nobleman. His wife, Lucy, begs him hot to go and is troubled by a strong premonition of danger. Despite her warnings, Jonathan arrives four weeks later at a large, gloomy castle. Out of the mist appears a pale, wraith-like figure with a shaven head and deep-sunken eyes who identifies himself as Count Dracula. The events that transpire slowly convince Harker that he is in the midst of a vampyre. What he doesn't know, however, is the magnitude of danger he, his wife and his town are about to experience as victims of the Nosferatu.

Video Librarian Reviews
Von Sternberg and Dietrich. Hitchcock and Stewart. Ford and Wayne. Scorsese and De Niro. To this list of legendary director-actor collaborations must be added Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. This magnificent six-disc DVD boxed set contains the five (mostly) brilliant films they made together, as well as an illuminating documentary that charts their tempestuous (to say the least) professional and personal relationship. As the accompanying booklet points out, "these two warriors of German cinema would challenge, inspire, and torture each other into creating some of the most enduring and unique experiences of modern film." Included are such masterpieces as the visually stunning conquistador epic Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1973), the production-problem-plagued Fitzcarraldo (1982) and the atmospheric remake of F.W. Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu (1979), as well as Herzog's moving adaptation of Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck (1979), and their final film together, the lesser-known Cobra Verde (1987), based on the life of a 19th century Brazilian bandit. The award-winning documentary, My Best Fiend (2000) is part tribute and part exorcism. Herzog praises Kinski as a "monumental, epochal actor," but adds that he was also "impulsive, unpredictable, half mad." One revealing anecdote corrects a rumor that Herzog directed Kinski while armed with a loaded rifle. Not true, Herzog insists. What happened, he claims, was that Kinski once threatened to leave the set, and Herzog threatened to shoot him with a rifle loaded with nine bullets; eight for Kinski and the ninth for himself. An instant library of world cinema masterworks, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (K. Lee Benson) Copyright 2003 Video Librarian Reviews

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What we do in the shadows (DVD)

What we do in the shadows (DVD)

Summary: Vulvus, Viago, and Deacon are vampires who live here, among us. They are real vampires; undead, immortal creatures who stalk the night and search for human blood, preferably virgins. Witness the many horrid, abominable aspects of vampire life, such as hunting and feeding, vampire rivalry and fighting with werewolves, as well as normal night to night aspects that make them not so different from us like keeping the flat clean, jobs, shopping, meeting people and trying to fit in.

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All souls trilogy - Deborah Harkness

All souls trilogy - Harkness, Deborah

Summary: Witch and Yale historian Diana Bishop discovers an enchanted manuscript, attracting the attention of 1,500-year-old vampire Matthew Clairmont. The orphaned daughter of two powerful witches, Bishop prefers intellect, but relies on magic when her discovery of a palimpsest documenting the origin of supernatural species releases an assortment of undead who threaten, stalk, and harass her.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Diana Bishop is the last of the Bishops, a powerful family of witches, but she has refused her magic ever since her parents died and, instead, has turned to academia. When a new project takes her to Oxford, she is looking forward to several months in the Bodleian, investigating alchemical manuscripts. Her peace is soon interrupted when one of the books she finds in the library turns out to have been lost for 150 years and is wanted desperately by the witch, daemon, and vampire communities—so desperately that many are willing to kill for it. But the very first creature to approach her after her discovery is Matthew, a very old vampire and fellow scholar, who seems only to want to protect her. Harkness creates a compelling and sweeping tale that moves from Oxford to Paris to upstate New York and into both Diana's and Matthew's complex families and histories. All her characters are fully fleshed and unique, which, when combined with the complex and engaging plot, results in one of the better fantasy debuts in recent months. The contemporary setting should help draw a large crossover audience. Try suggesting the novel to readers of literary mysteries like Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series, as well as to those who enjoy epic and fantastic romances including Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series and Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel novels. Essential reading across all these genres. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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Midnight Crossroad - Charlaine Harris

Midnight Crossroad - Harris, Charlaine

Summary: The first book in a new trilogy describes what happens in Midnight, Texas, a dried-up, one traffic light town, when a mysterious new resident, Manfred Bernardo, moves in.




Publishers Weekly Reviews
Bestseller Harris (the Southern Vampire Mysteries, which spawned the HBO series True Blood) introduces the small town of Midnight, Tex., where the locals can all take a day off for a picnic by the river—and discover a corpse. Residents of Midnight include a practicing witch, a telephone "psychic" who has true visions, a minister who tends a pet cemetery, and a vampire who works the night shift at the pawn shop. Even the witch's house cat has his secrets. With polished ease, Harris brings her cast on stage, pairs them off to reveal character through conversation, and ambles the mystery along, as the residents of Midnight tend to their chores and run errands to the big towns of Marthasville and Davy. While not ignoring the downsides of smalltown life, with too-knowing neighbors and teens desperate to get out, Harris also works in its joys and comforts. This is a solid entry in Harris's catalogue and will do very well with her fans.

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Soulless - Gail Carriger

Soulless - Carriger, Gail

Summary: Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.



Publishers Weekly Reviews
Carriger debuts brilliantly with a blend of Victorian romance, screwball comedy of manners and alternate history. Prickly, stubborn 25-year-old bluestocking Alexia Tarabotti is patently unmarriageable, and not just because she's large-nosed and swarthy. She's also soulless, an oddity and a secret even in a 19th-century London that mostly accepts and integrates werewolf packs, vampire hives and ghosts. The only man who notices her is brash Lord Conall Maccon, a Scottish Alpha werewolf and government official, and (of course) they dislike each other intensely. After Alexia kills a vampire with her parasol at a party—how vulgar!—she and Conall must work together to solve a supernatural mystery that grows quite steampunkishly gruesome. Well-drawn secondary characters round out the story, most notably Lord Akeldama, Alexia's outrageous, italic-wielding gay best vampire friend. This intoxicatingly witty parody will appeal to a wide cross-section of romance, fantasy and steampunk fans. (Oct.)

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Let me in - John Ajvide Lindqvist

Let me in - Lindqvist, John Ajvide

Summary: "Twelve-year-old Oskar is obsessed by the murder that's taken place in his neighborhood. Then he meets the new girl from next door. She's a bit weird, though. And she only comes out at night"--Publisher's description.



Kirkus Reviews
Part revenge fantasy, part horror story and part police investigation gone wrong, this debut vampire novel translated from the Swedish sinks its fangs into fresh territory.It is 1981 in a Stockholm suburb, and 12-year-old Oskar is the epitome of a bully's victim: He's a fat little know-it-all who suffers from incontinence and periodic nosebleeds. His life changes when Eli, an astonishingly beautiful but unkempt girl, and her father Hakan move in next door. With her encouragement, Oskar somehow finds the strength to begin striking back at his tormentors. But Eli is no true child; she is a 220-year-old vampire, and her so-called "father" is actually a pedophile who demonstrates his frighteningly obsessive devotion to Eli by anesthetizing young boys, draining their blood and bringing them back to her when she's too weak to hunt for herself. A blunder by Hakan, Eli's advice to Oskar and the vengeance sought by a friend of one of Eli's victims all inevitably lead to tragedy—or triumph, depending on the perspective. Although it does have its grotesque, over-the-top moments, the book is wonderfully bleak and spare. Unlike Anne Rice's hedonistic bloodsuckers, Lundqvist's vampires are sad, lonely creatures who simply want to survive, taking little pleasure in what is required to do so. If there is one complaint, it is that the author sets the book entirely in the fall, and so cannot exploit the obvious advantages and disadvantages of being a Swedish vampire—24-hour darkness during winter, but midnight sun in summer.Worth taking a bite. Copyright Kirkus 2007 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.


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Salem's Lot - Stephen King

Salem's Lot - King, Stephen

Summary: A nightmare of evil grips a small Maine town when a mysterious stranger appears - (Baker & Taylor)




Review
"Stephen King's second book, 'Salem's Lot (1975)--about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil."--Review from www.amazon.com

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Dracula - Bram Stoker

Dracula - Stoker, Bram

Summary: Summary: Having discovered the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire.




Editorial Review:
Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power.

Today's critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality. In it, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.

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Buffy the vampire slayer: Season eight - Joss Whedon

Buffy the vampire slayer: Season eight - Whedon, Joss

Summary: In a direct follow-up to season seven of the smash-hit TV series, the Slayers have gotten organized and are kicking some serious undead butt, but not everything's fun and firearms, as an old enemy reappears and Dawn experiences some serious growing pains. - (Baker & Taylor)



Publishers Weekly Reviews
The newest incarnation of the Buffy comic, written by series creator Whedon, is effectively the new season of the TV series. It plunges right into the show's dense cosmology and doesn't bother to explain anything to neophytes. Regulars will love it, however. "The Long Way Home" establishes the season 8 status quo: demon-killing heroine Buffy Summers is now commanding an army of hundreds of Slayers (and her little sister, Dawn, has been turned into a giant by Whedon's favorite transformative force, sex). Still, there's some creepy unfinished business from the TV show to deal with, and the U.S. Army is coming after her, too. A shorter story, "The Chain," concerns the bittersweet, truncated life of a Buffy look-alike sent underground as a decoy for the forces of evil. Jeanty, Owens and Lee's artwork, understandably, is in a very straightforward mainstream-comics style—the characters look as much as possible like the TV actors—although they manage a few interpretive flourishes, like a Cubist witch seen by one character in a fantasy sequence. The real draw, of course, is Whedon's writing. His dialogue is as snappy as ever, and his plots are hypercompressed and telegraphic. (Nov.)[Page 42]. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.


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Abraham Lincoln: vampire hunter- Seth Grahame-Smith

Abraham Lincoln : vampire hunter- Grahame-Smith, Seth

Summary: Reveals the hidden life of the sixteenth U.S. president, who was actually a vampire-hunter obsessed with the complete elimination of the undead, and uncovers the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of the nation.


Booklist Reviews
Capitalizing on the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), Grahame-Smith introduces an irreverent "biography" of Abraham Lincoln chock-full of that other horror-genre staple: vampires. Everyone knows that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the country from disunion, but very few were privy to the fact that Honest Abe was an honest-to-goodness vampire hunter; that is, until Grahame-Smith unearthed Lincoln's secret journal, an intimate document detailing the lifelong battle he waged against the undead. Motivated by the vampire-initiated death of his mother, 11-year-old Abe vowed to "kill every vampire in America." True to his pledge, he spent the next 50 years honing his skills and stalking his prey. Recognizing an inextricable link between slavery and vampires, he expanded his mission to include destroying the "peculiar institution." And the rest, as they say, is history. Grahame-Smith's breezy narrative style makes this a quick and easy read guaranteed to tickle the funny bone. Vampires are hot, so expect high demand (except from, probably, die-hard history buffs, who may not be amused). Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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