Books like A Draught of Ash and Wine — picked by fans

Johnathan Newman is a novice hunter who teams up with a five-hundred-year-old vampire named Vic on a dangerous mission.

The town is plagued by mythological creatures in need of saving and they work together to solve the mystery. However, Vic’s secrets bring trouble, and their mutual attraction doesn’t make things any easier.

A Bargain of Blood and Gold is one of the best-written books I’ve ever read. There hasn’t been a book where every word was chosen so perfectly to my liking. It has the exact amount of descriptions and dialogue. The style is simply perfect.

Additionally, the characters were so vivid and fun to read. John and Vic had such distinguished ways of expressing themselves that I knew every time who was talking without being told.

They are easily one of my favorite M/M couples.

When I received this book I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. But after the first few pages I was hooked!

The book starts off with an attack on the main character's home and the action doesn’t stop there! I loved the interaction between the main male and female characters. I couldn’t get enough of them! If you love vampires, hidden royals, and sass for days this one’s for you! 

A world exists around us that we never knew existed. When all you want is to be accepted, it is hard to find love.

I found that two people can find love regardless of what creature bore them. Family may not always understand what you want, but as long as there is trust and a little bit of humor, anything is possible. 

Karen is a phenomenal world builder and effortlessly blends the supernatural with the everyday world.

She creates characters you fall in love with and an action packed story line that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. I can still read these books all these years later as if I’m reading it for the first time!

This is one of the first books to introduce me to Horror films beyond Britain and the US – it might even have been where I first heard Mario Bava’s name alongside directors like Jess Franco and Jean Rollin.

It obviously looks at vampire films more broadly but introduced me to a body of films I wanted to know more about. It’s also a beautifully illustrated and intelligent book, essential reading for anyone interested in vampires. 

McGahan is one of my all-time favourites for numerous reasons. When I was a baby writer just getting started, I was so excited to have McGahan writing about my home city of Brisbane, showing all its scars and burn marks. He has an incredible knack for writing across genres, something that I think more writers should aspire to. In this case he turns his hand to an elegant take on the supernatural thriller. The supernatural elements here are uniquely and beautifully presented. There are no vampires or magic, just nature in a primal and anthropomorphic capacity. Many books are described as ‘man vs nature,’ but that relationship has never been more savagely explored than in this book. It also has the most bittersweet author’s note I’ve ever read. Gets me every time. 

Don’t let this quirky cover fool you. The pages of this book are smoking hot at times. This is book 1 in a novella series dedicated to hooking up paranormals. It kicks off a dating series with an opposites attract trope, featuring two paranormal beings who couldn’t be more different—a witch and a vampire. This is a light-hearted romance that leaves you thirsty for book 2 and wanting to know what otherworldly beings will be featured.

When I watched Blood: The Last Vampire, a Japanese horror film based on manga by Mamoru Oshii, I was hooked. I discovered Saya, and manga. Saya is a fierce and beautiful vampire killer who wears a modest Japanese school uniform while hunting. The vampires mostly look like normal people. Some are scared and run, others fight back. Either way, they die. I liked the contradicting image of the innocent-looking schoolgirl who is a ferocious killer, but the story was also thought-provoking. When Saya makes a mistake and kills an innocent person, it showed a dilemma most ‘hero’ stories don’t address. Are we either completely good or always evil? Saya is the inspiration for Shoko, the lead character in my novels, and she struggles with this. Can you serve the gods and also be a killer?

Simon Raven had a marked fascination for the supernatural that first manifested in an early novel Doctors Wear Scarlet, which was cited by Karl Edward Wagner (himself an award-winning American writer, poet, editor and publisher of horror and writer of numerous dark fantasy and horror stories), as one of the thirteen best supernatural novels. The story is set against Raven’s customary background of academia and University life and has a distinctly macabre and spine-chilling theme. It starts harmlessly enough with a young man’s infatuation for a beautiful Greek girl, but Chriseis is no ordinary holiday love affair; three friends track down their missing companion across the Aegean, where it becomes increasingly obvious that their relationship is strange to say the least. Despite dispatching Chriseis in the remote mountains of Crete and not without cost to themselves, the missing scholar is returned to his University – but the curse of… show more.

I admit. I stalked Quinn at Dragon Con. It took me all day to finally summon the courage to approach her and fangirl out. It was after a panel, and no one else was waiting to talk to her.

A most prolific, brilliant, and underrated author, her Saint-Germain series is astounding and profoundly impacted and inspired me. Her main character is faced against impossible odds, which he resolutely and astutely conquers each time while protecting those he holds dear.

The books’ settings move through the sands of time and across continents, all uniquely accurate. Her PhD in history sings through these historical fiction books (hundreds of them) that don’t quite fit into any one genre. She created her own—a literary goddess.