Loving Vampires


Book Description

Vampire characters are ubiquitous in popular culture, serving as metaphors for society's most sensitive subjects--sexuality, gender roles, race, ethnicity, class--and often channeling widespread fears of immigration, crime, terrorism and addiction. This book explores pop culture's vampires variously as sexual seducers, savage monsters, noble protectors and drainers of human power. The author discusses three real-life role models for vampire characters.




Must Love Vampires


Book Description

Love At First Bite Nightclub dancer Chloe Lamoureaux just met the man of her dreams: Aidan Raines is charming, considerate, rich, and hot. Of course, he's a little mysterious about his age. And his favorite drink. And he's not much for sunlight. But he's asked her to marry him, and she's ready to do it. Sure, she has a few secrets too--but they'll have plenty of time to work things out while they're living happily ever after. Right? Her identical twin sister, Chuck, isn't so sure. Maybe reporting for the local Bigfoot-sighting tabloid doesn't make her an expert, but to Chuck, Aidan and his brother Sebastian look like honest-to-Dracula vampires. Especially Sebastian: beguiling, seductive, and just a hint of dangerous. Maybe she wouldn't mind him taking a little taste. But with Chloe's life in the balance, she has to know--do they want hot love or hot blood? Or maybe. . .a little of both? Praise for The Bite Before Christmas "Enjoyable reading." --Romantic Times "Inventive, gently humorous, and fast-paced, this steamy paranormal anthology offers an alternative to the typical holiday fare; perfect for readers who want their romances on the edgy side." –Library Journal




Real Vampires Have More to Love


Book Description

Read Gerry Bartlett's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community. View our feature on Gerry Bartlett’s Real Vampires Have More to Love. Dangerous curves lie ahead in the latest hilarious novel from the national bestselling author of Real Vampires Hate Their Thighs. Glory St. Clair is a vampire with man trouble. Between her on-again, off-again lover Jeremy Blade, smoking hot rock star Ray Caine, and former bodyguard turned apartment mate Valdez, there's enough man-candy around to make even a gal with a liquid diet feel a sugar rush. Glory's got no time to enjoy it, though, considering that she's in the middle of planning her best friend's wedding. And let's not forget that there happens to be a hit on her head, thanks to when she took out a techno-freak billionaire. Now, between planning a bachelorette party and dodging stakes, Glory has to decide which man she really wants, before her love life meets an early grave...




Love by Night


Book Description

In Raleigh, North Carolina in the 1800s, a prestigious college opens the doors for people of color to attend. That couldn’t have happened at a better time for Adirah Messa, a beautiful young African woman who has migrated to the United States. Pursuing an education in psychology and human science, Adirah aligns herself with the elite students at the university to fit in. All she wants is to earn her degree and be accepted by her peers, so when she is invited to a fraternity party by the in crowd, she jumps at the opportunity. Adirah finds herself smitten with someone of another race, and she is taken on a ride she can never return from. Unbeknownst to her, Adirah’s newfound love interest is not only a master seducer; he is also one of the most powerful figures in the underworld of Vampirism. Tangled up in a web of love, Adirah becomes involved in her lover’s lifestyle in more ways than one. Now, student by day, sultry Vampire Queen by night, she grows stronger by the day as her lover teaches her all she needs to know. When their identities are exposed and she finds herself with child, Adirah must make some quick and serious decisions.




Vampire in Love


Book Description

“Arguably Spain’s most significant contemporary literary figure” (Joanna Kavenna, The New Yorker) Gathered for the first time in English, and spanning his entire career, Vampire in Love offers a selection of the Spanish master Enrique Vila-Matas’s finest short stories. An effeminate, hunchbacked barber on the verge of death falls in love with a choirboy. A fledgling writer on barbiturates visits Marguerite Duras’s Paris apartment and watches his dinner companion slip into the abyss. An unsuspecting man receives a mysterious phone call from a lonely ophthalmologist, visits his abandoned villa, and is privy to a secret. The stories in Vampire in Love, selected and brilliantly translated by the renowned translator Margaret Jull Costa, are all told with Vila-Matas’s signature erudition and wit and his provocative questioning of the interrelation of art and life.




Loving Vampires


Book Description

Vampire characters are ubiquitous in popular culture, serving as metaphors for society's most sensitive subjects--sexuality, gender roles, race, ethnicity, class--and often channeling widespread fears of immigration, crime, terrorism and addiction. This book explores pop culture's vampires variously as sexual seducers, savage monsters, noble protectors and drainers of human power. The author discusses three real-life role models for vampire characters.




Supernatural Lover


Book Description

Valeria was a budding artist fascinated by the myths and mysteries of the underworld. Her art reflected a dark and mystical genre, mostly consisting of vampires and other creatures thought to be simply fantasy. Even though she really wanted to believe that vampires were real, she had always known this world was one of pure imagination and folklore. That was until she met Max. Her deepest dreams and worst fears were realized the moment she found out that vampires really did exist. Not only did they exist but she had met and fallen in love with one, and he with her. What happened next was a dangerous journey into a forbidden realm of sex, secrecy, and deception that brought them to one poignant moment that changed everything.




The Beloved Does Not Bite


Book Description

In this new monograph, author Debra Dudek defines a new era of vampire texts in which vampires have moved from their iconic dark, feared, often seductive figure lingering in alleys, to the beloved and morally sensitive vampire winning the affections of teen protagonists throughout pop culture. Dudek takes a close look at three hugely-popular vampire series for young adults, drawing parallels between the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Twilight Saga novels/films, and The Vampire Diaries TV series/book series. By defining a new era of vampire texts and situating these three series within this transition, The Beloved Does Not Bite signals their significance and lays the groundwork for future scholarship on the flourishing genre of paranormal romances for young adults.




Vampires and Vixens


Book Description

Sink your teeth the dark side with these two delicious paranormal romances by USA Today Bestseller Lauren Smith. The Bite of Winter: Zoey Blake is about as far down on her luck as she can get. A car crash took her parents, leaving her destitute and on the street. When she’s attacked by another homeless person, her lifeblood drains away as her fading vision is filled with the face of a handsome stranger. Ian Kennedy, a century old Irish vampire, never could resist rescuing a stray. As a few drops of his blood heals Zoey’s wounds, he realizes she’s a sweet, tempting, flesh-and-blood woman. But there’s one problem. Connor, who made Ian promise decades ago: no more mortal lovers. After another vampire murdered his soulmate, Connor O’Shea swore never to let a mortal woman pay the price for loving him. Until he feels Zoey’s skin and tastes her lips. She makes him want to break that vow. Zoey finds herself caught in their web of seduction. But as Christmas draws near and her grief deepens, happiness seems far out of reach. And Ian and Connor join forces to prove their love is sacred, special...and forever. His Little Vixen: Sadie Harris doesn’t like immortals. After vampires leave her an orphan, she’s raised by her grandmother at the edge of a werewolf pack’s territory. As a fox shifter, she knows the rules about werewolves: Stay clear of the boundaries, never go out after dark during the full moon and take a vacation far, far away when she goes into her shifter mating heat or else she’ll attract literal “big bad wolves.” But when her flight gets cancelled and her mating heat is coming - so are the wolves. The last thing she expects is to get rescued by a tall, dark and gorgeous man...er...vampire. What’s a vixen to do? Seamus Gallagher might be immortal but his life is full of mortal problems: he’s been framed for the murder of the woman his two best friends loved; he's on a mission to find and kill his sire; and, he has no idea what to do with the feisty red-headed vixen he just rescued from a vicious werewolf pack. He doesn't have time to babysit a skittish shifter who hates vampires, but when he looks at her, Seamus sees trouble. Sexy, sweet, and irresistible trouble. The last thing this vamp needs is to fall in love.




The Psychology of Our Dark Side


Book Description

Tales of the dead feasting on blood and shape-shifting humans prowling around in animal form have been a part of the folklore of human beings for untold generations and all over the world. Vampires and werewolves are universal themes in horror lore. And our fascination with these creatures of the darkness has continued into a twenty-first-century world of space travel, computer technology, and advanced medical science. What is it about these beings that so inspire our fear and our loathing, our desire and our delight? Is there a place deep in our psychological makeup where the dead do not rest and wild beasts howl at the moon? The insights of modern science may help us understand our relationship with those things that both frighten and attract us, and perhaps tame the monsters inside us.