Vampires are much more complex creatures than Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Twilight, True Blood, or scores of other movies and television shows would have you believe. Even in America. American vampire lore has its roots in the beliefs and fears of the diverse peoples and nationalities that make up our country, and reflects the rich tapestry of their varied perspectives. The vampires that lurk in the American darkness come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can produce some surprising results. Vampires in North Carolina are vastly different from those in South Carolina, and even more different from those in New York State. Moreover, not all of them are human in form, and they can’t necessarily be warded off by the sight of a crucifix or a bulb of garlic. Dr. Bob Curran visits the Louisiana bayous, the back streets of New York City, the hills of Tennessee, the Sierras of California, the deserts of Arizona, and many more locations in a bid to track down the vampire creatures that lurk there. Join him if you dare! This is not Hollywood’s version of the vampire—these entities are real!

Presents a history of vampire lore in America and focuses on its popular culture impact in print and film.

Buffalo, New York--Thundering waterfalls, great sports teams . . . and a treacherous vampire lord who is slowly losing his mind. New York City vampire Rajmund Gregor is the undisputed master of The Big Apple. He bows to no one but his Sire, the Vampire Lord Krystof, who has ruled the Northeast for hundreds of years. But when Krystof summons Rajmund to his headquarters in Buffalo, Raj finds his master slowly descending into madness and his territory crumbling around him. Raj is the only one of Krystof's children strong enough to seize power, but he'll have to save his master before he can destroy him. Several women have gone missing, and the local police are convinced a vampire is behind it. Is Krystof so lost to reality that he's capturing and murdering human women? Is a rogue vampire moving into Krystof's territory for the kill? Or is it something far more insidious, something that could threaten the existence of vampires everywhere? Sarah Stratton is living a lie. Her past holds a secret she shares with no one--not even her good friend Cynthia Leighton, the West Coast vampire lord's mate. It's a secret that could destroy her carefully constructed life as a professor at a Buffalo university. It's also a secret that could save the lives of the missing women. To save them, however, she must enter Buffalo's vampire community and put herself into the care of Rajmund Gregor. But can she trust Raj, the dangerously seductive vampire who wants to lay claim to far more than her secrets?

In the first story, series mainstays Skinner Sweet, Pearl, and company return to Hollywood in the 50s during the Red Scare. In a time where America was on the lookout for the next Communist threat, was the real danger something far more insidious? A major turning point in American Vampire lore begins here! In the second tale, familiar face and vampire hunter Felicia Book is "retired" from vampire hunting when she gets called back into action to track down and kill the most powerful vampire of all time. The hunt takes our heroes through post-war Europe, behind the Iron Curtain and into the heart of Russia to track this deadly enemy. Includes American Vampire: Lord of Nightmares #1-5.

“Vampires. Why do we care? In these pages you will find what is very simply, the most literate, imaginative, and just plain fascinating answer to that question ever written.” ?Whitley Strieber In a culture that does not do death particularly well, we are obsessed with mortality. Margot Adler writes, “Vampires let us play with death and the issue of mortality. They let us ponder what it would mean to be truly long lived. Would the long view allow us to see the world differently, imagine social structures differently? Would it increase or decrease our reverence for the planet? Vampires allow us to ask questions we usually bury.” As Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and question asker, sat vigil at her dying husband’s bedside, she found herself newly drawn to vampire novels and their explorations of mortality. Over the next four years—by now she has read more than 270 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic—she began to see just how each era creates the vampires it needs. Dracula, an Eastern European monster, was the perfect vehicle for 19th-century England’s fear of outsiders and of disease seeping in through its large ports. In 1960s America, Dark Shadows gave us the morally conflicted vampire struggling against his own predatory nature, who still enthralls us today. Think Spike and Angel, Stefan and Damon, Bill and Eric, the Cullens. Vampires Are Us explores the issues of power, politics, morality, identity, and even the fate of the planet that show up in vampire novels today. Perhaps, Adler suggests, our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps vampires are us.

Vampire Henry Sturges returns in the highly anticipated sequel to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter-a sweeping, alternate history of twentieth-century America by New York Times bestselling author Seth Grahame-Smith. THE LAST AMERICAN VAMPIRE In Reconstruction-era America, vampire Henry Sturges is searching for renewed purpose in the wake of his friend Abraham Lincoln's shocking death. Henry's will be an expansive journey that first sends him to England for an unexpected encounter with Jack the Ripper, then to New York City for the birth of a new American century, the dawn of the electric era of Tesla and Edison, and the blazing disaster of the 1937 Hindenburg crash. Along the way, Henry goes on the road in a Kerouac-influenced trip as Seth Grahame-Smith ingeniously weaves vampire history through Russia's October Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, and the JFK assassination. Expansive in scope and serious in execution, THE LAST AMERICAN VAMPIRE is sure to appeal to the passionate readers who made Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter a runaway success.

"D.B Reynolds has delivered a master class in what paranormal romance is meant to be." - KT Book Reviews on LUCIFER The perfect gift for those vampire lovers who just can't get enough! RT and EPIC award-winning author D. B. Reynolds brings to print the stories her readers have been waiting for. Ten Vampire Vignettes, including five brand new stories and five reader favorites from her blog, all in print for the first time. They range from the wild and dusty streets of post-Gold Rush San Francisco, to the vicious halls of the U.S. Capitol today, and every place along the way. These are the stories in between the books, the slices of life that happen as the vampires of North America defend their lives, uncover secrets, and sometimes, simply take a moment to romance the women they love. As always, be forewarned, there is sex in these stories. But Reynolds's readers wouldn't have it any other way! D. B. Reynolds is the RT and EPIC Award-Winning author of the Vampires in America series of paranormal romance, and an Emmy-nominated television sound editor. She lives in a flammable canyon near Los Angeles, and when she's not writing her own books, she can usually be found reading someone else's. Visit her blog at www.dbreynolds.com for details on all of her books and more.