Charlaine Harris‘s Club Dead is the third book in the southern vampire series, which I’m reading for the Sookie Stackhouse Reading Challenge and the Vampire Series Reading Challenge that I’m incredibly behind on.  In this installment, Sookie’s new boyfriend/vampire Bill has become distant and has informed her that he will be taking a “business” trip to Seattle to complete a project for the Queen of Louisiana.  Unfortunately, Sookie soon finds out that after Bill leaves town that her boyfriend’s project places her in the cross hairs of the vampire kingdoms.

“Mama and Daddy died nearly twenty years before vampires had appeared on network television to announce the fact that they were actually present among us, an announcement that had followed on the Japanese development of synthetic blood that actually maintained a vampire’s life without the necessity of drinking from humans.”  (Page 4-5)

Thrown into a new mystery that leads her to Mississippi and a whole new set of vampires with their werewolf and were-animal minions, Sookie has to navigate not only her mixed feelings about Bill and his distance from her, but also the inner politics of the vampire kingdoms.  Harris does an incredible job of weaving in the Southern charm and manners that many readers enjoy in southern fiction with the darker side of vampires and all things supernatural.

“I have never seen one before, but the word ‘goblin’ popped into my mind as if I had a supernatural dictionary printed on the inside of my eyeballs.”  (Page 94)

“‘Bill,’ I said coldly.  Something was Up, with a capital U.  And it wasn’t Bill’s libido.  (Libido had just been on my Word-A-Day calendar.)”  (Page 3)

Club Dead will take readers into the exclusive vampire clubs where humans are merely accessories and into the compounds that resemble the cults on television that are raided by the FBI.  Looking for a fun, suspenseful summer read, check out Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books.

I purchased my copy of Club Dead.

This is the 3rd book I’ve read for the Sookie Stackhouse Reading Challenge.

This is my 2nd book for the 2010 Vampire Series Challenge.