Top Ten Vampire Books

In no particular order, these are my favorite vampire books. I have a real love of the vampire story but I prefer the ones that break out of the mold. What are your faves?

1. Sunshine by Robin McKinley *Recipe for tasty vamp yarn*Place in plot one young Minnesota girl working hard for the money, fold in turf war, vampire kidnappers, charming vampire lord and romantic involvement. Allow to slowly rise. Sprinkle with sardonic wit and a post voodoo war US and bake at 416 pages. This is a clever vamp romance with cinnamon buns what could be tastier.
2. Agyar by Steven Brust - Steven Brust has always written lovely rich characters. He has a penchant for biting humor, noir dialog and twisting traditional genres. Who better than to write The Spy Who Came in from the Cold for the neck biting set. Agyar is an old vampire with old enemies. He is tired after generations of cruelty and horror. He just wants to settle down somewhere and live a quiet life. Saddly, for him but not the reader, this is not to be.
3. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson - Using vampire as the definition of monster, Mr. Matheson crafts a post apocalypse story unlike any other. Blending equal parts horror, thriller and survival tale with a strong dose of science fiction, he creates not only a ripping tale but a calculated examination of what it means to be a monster.
   
4. The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice - Lestat, a bi-sexual eighteenth century French rogue with the morals of a rutting cat, tells what is like to be a vampire from his own charming ego centric point of view. This is a vamp tale with none of the Bram Stoker posturing just a happy serial killer trying to find love in the world. This book and the next virtually started the Romantic Goth movement and paved the way for Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
5. Interview with the Vampire: Anniversary edition (The vampire chronicles) by Anne Rice - This is the Lestat tale from the other side. Though it was written and published before Lestat it feels like its sequel. It is darker, moodier and yes, a good deal more frightening. If Bram Stoker had ever written a sequel to Dracula, after getting drunk on Faulkner and Dashiel Hammet, with a vampiric John Harker as the protagonist, it might sound a lot like this.
6. The Blood Books, Vol. 1 (Blood Price / Blood Trail) by Tanya Huff - It is practically its own genre now, the street savvy detective yarn with the occult oriented protagonist and this is one of the best of the breed. Take one tough street smart lady cop with a fouled up love life add a true prick of a sixteenth century English lord vampire (with a penchant for little boys no less) and you have the makings of one of the best buddy cop teams ever. It is a classic clash of cultures between these two, funny, clever and with just enough pathos. Oh, and the mysteries are good too!
   
7. Sunglasses After Dark (Borealis) by Nancy A. Collins and Thom Ang - If your a vampire and you want to push the envelope don't hunt humans hunt the other vamps. This is a no holds barred dark vampire thriller, in fact a series of them, that places the vampire mythos where it belongs far from mansions, money and the elite and down in the grime and grit, graft, lowlifes and murder. This eighties look at the world is nicely vicious and cool.
8. The Holmes-Dracula File by Fred Saberhagen - The classic meeting between the Great Detective and the original Prince of Darkenes. Move over Moriarity this is the real test of Holmes' intellect.
9. Twilight (Twilight, Book 1) by Stephenie Meyer - It's a natural. There is nothing more teen angst than a vampire romance. Don't think I am knocking it, far from it, if you have to talk about teenage love, use a metaphor, and there is no better one than a romantic encounter with the undead. Twilight just might be the best of its breed here. A somewhat naive, though smart and well read, high school girl, must move in with her dad who lives in the middle of nowhere. There she deals with being an outsider, cut off and unhappy. Unhappy, that is, until she meets Edward. He is one of the most beautiful boys in school but because of a dark secret he is also alone. They immediately bond, beginning a wonderful and tragic love story. Really good read here, I highly recommend it.
   
10. 30 Days of Night Hardcover (30 Days of Night) by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith - It had to happen some day. Those poor vamps condemned to only hunt and kill at night, a measly few hours of darkness, hardly enough time to wet your appetite, let alone, slake an undead thirst. Finally, somebody somewhere, points out the Arctic Circle. A place where it is night for a month or more at a time. And what's more, it is dotted with these little, lonely, out-of-the-way towns just begging to be rampaged by a horde of fierce, ravening killers. This is a true piece of horror fiction, graphic, wicked and savagely vile and best of all it is a graphic novel lavishly illustrated by a master. One of the best.