As you may know from my profile, I am an avid reader.  I enjoy just about any kind of books and at any given time, I am reading at least two different books at one time.   This is why I decided to pick up Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.  I was hooked instantly and now own the whole series!  At the school where I work, I see everything from lunch boxes, t-shirts, and even cell phone backgrounds that are related to the Twilight series.  This got me thinking about how vampires have been portrayed in literature over the years.  Here is a list of vampire stories and their authors.  I may have missed some, and if so, please feel free to add it in the comments section below!  If you haven’t read any of these, you may want to, they can be enormously entertaining.

    The Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer.  This is considered a juvenile series, but like Harry Potter, every age group from pre-teen and up will enjoy these books.  The series consists of four books, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn.  It follows the story of Bella, a teenage girl who moves to Washington to live with her dad, and Edward and his family, the local vampires in hiding so to speak.   I would not recommend this series for anyone under the age of 11.

   The Circle Trilogy by Nora Roberts.  This is a series of three books, Morrigan’s Cross, Dance Of The Gods, and Valley of Silence.  It follows the story of six unlikely people who come together to fight an army of vampires to save the world.  One of them is a vampire himself and is helping his brother who is a sorcerer, along with a witch, a warrior, a scholar, and a shapeshifter to create an army and defeat Lilith, the queen of the vampires.  

  The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith.  This series currently includes, The Awakening, The Struggle, The Fury, and Dark Reunion.  This series is about a young girl who meets and falls for two brothers who happen to be vampires. 

   Anne Rice is posibly one of the most well known vampire authors.  She has written several books about a group of vampires and follows their “lives” from creation to modern day.  A short list of these is: Interview With A Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of The Damned, The Tale Of The Body Thief, Memnoch The Devil, and The Vampire Armand.

  Salem’s Lot by Stephen King.  If you are looking for a terrifying vampire story this could be it.  This story tells about a small town under attack by pehaps one of the most evil creatures ever made- vampires.  It has been many years since I first read this book but it was one of my favorites.

  I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.   You may have heard of this one, it is about a man who is fighting to remain a human, the last man on earth.  Everyone else has been turned into vamires and they are all after him.

   In writing this article, I discovered that there were many more vampire novels than I originally thought.  To see a complete list of these by title, or by author, check out The Vampire Library on the web. 

    So, what exactly is it about vampires that has so many people hooked?  Could it be the lure of immortality?  It is hard to say. For me, vampires are many different things.  They are at once frightening and romantic. Romantic?  Yes, because they can live forever and see so many different things.  The world changes, wouldn’t it be awesome in some ways to see all those changes for yourself?  While ghost stories frighten and entertain many people, myself included, the thought of an immortal being who drinks the blood of humans, is much more frightening. 

    What is it about those vampires?