Hey, y'all. I discover now, after not writing about books awhile, that I still have things to say about books after all. So I'm back--like your cure for insomnia.

One of my favorite writers of the past few years is Charlaine Harris. She writes series of mysteries, my favorite of which is the Southern Vampire Series.



I had read a couple of Harris's books from her Aurora Teagarden series. I can vividly remember the day I ran across the first books in the vampire series: in the sci-fi/fantasy section of a Bookland (sort of like a Books a Million). Those two were DEAD UNTIL DARK and LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS. They are about a world where vampires are--out of the coffin, so to speak, with nearly equal rights to humans, and other supernatural creatures, such as maenads, shapeshifters, witches, and fairies show up.

The stories are set in the fictional northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps. The first person narrator of the stories is Sookie Stackhouse, a barmaid in her mid-twenties who happens to be able to read minds. Since her "disability" makes it almost impossible to date human men (she can always tell what they're thinking), she is intrigued when a vampire named Bill Compton shows up in the bar where she works; SHE CANNOT READ HIS MIND.

Through her relationship with Bill (and yes, vampires can have "real" sex {at least these vamps can}, although they can't reproduce) Sookie becomes entangled in various investigations of crime--the first being the murder of her grandmother--in which she uses her mindreading skills to gather information. She also becomes a target of the Fellowship of the Sun, a group that wants to annihilate vampires.

I have to say that neither Sookie nor Bill are my favorite characters in the books; my favorite is Eric, the owner of a vampire bar in Shreveport who is also Bill's superior in the vampire hierarchy. Eric was a Viking when he was alive, which probably has something to do with why I prefer him to Bill; I've always had a weakness for Vikings, even though they were not cute or cuddly as humans and aren't any better as vampires. After Sookie and Bill break up, she and Eric are lovers for awhile, but Eric is afflicted with amnesia at the time and cannot remember a bit of it.

The books are funny, especially the first two, as Sookie learns to deal with "supes" and to harness her mindreading abilities so that she can "tune in" when she needs to pick up information and "tune out" when she needs to rest.

Other main characters include Sookie's brother, Jason; Sam, her boss at the bar, who is himself a shapeshifter; Pam, Eric's second in command in his various business dealings; and in the most recent books in the series, Quinn, Sookie's new boyfriend, himself a weretiger; and Amelia, a New Orleans witch who comes to be Sookie's roommate when a spell she works gets her into trouble with her coven. The books seldom mention events in the wider world, although Sookie does talk about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Harris also has provided a tongue in cheek explanation for the tabloid accounts of Elvis sightings: Elvis is now a vampire, but a bit slow-witted, the drugs in his system having interfered in the process of "bringing him across." He turns up in several of the books, doing work for other vamps and very occasionally singing.

The newest book in the series, FROM DEAD TO WORSE, comes out in hardback this month. I'm hoping it comes out in paperback REALLY soon!!

And if anybody comes looking for me, I'll be in a corner somewhere with a book.