100 Books Like The Origins of Dracula

I saw Francis Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, but studied the novel only after I created a photo story, The Ultimate Dracula (Munich, 2012). Next to the images, my book presented the true location Stoker had in mind for his fictitious Castle Dracula (No, not Bram Castle), and the historical person he referred to while speaking about Count Dracula (No, not Vlad the Impaler). The next steps were discovering the true locations of Carfax and the Scholomance, unraveling the backgrounds of the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, and unearthing the first US serialization. I simply love to solve riddles. By now, I am organizing international Dracula conferences.

I saw Francis Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, but studied the novel only after I created a photo story, The Ultimate Dracula (Munich, 2012). Next to the images, my book presented the true location Stoker had in mind for his fictitious Castle Dracula (No, not Bram Castle), and the historical person he referred to while speaking about Count Dracula (No, not Vlad the Impaler). The next steps were discovering the true locations of Carfax and the Scholomance, unraveling the backgrounds of the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, and unearthing the first US serialization. I simply love to solve riddles. By now, I am organizing international Dracula conferences.

I have often been asked why I became an expert on vampires. The answer always goes back to my childhood, when I went to horror and sci-fi movies and watched old vampire movies on TV. In 1976, I published my first book of poetry, The Dracula Poems. My vampire interest eventually combined with my background in Russian literature when I discovered Perkowski’s Vampires of the Slavs. I obtained my Ph.D. in Slavic Folklore from UVA and have kept up my interest in this fascinating subject ever since. I am planning another book on the period known as Magia Posthuma when there were “epidemics” of vampirism around Austro-Hungary. 

I saw Francis Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, but studied the novel only after I created a photo story, The Ultimate Dracula (Munich, 2012). Next to the images, my book presented the true location Stoker had in mind for his fictitious Castle Dracula (No, not Bram Castle), and the historical person he referred to while speaking about Count Dracula (No, not Vlad the Impaler). The next steps were discovering the true locations of Carfax and the Scholomance, unraveling the backgrounds of the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, and unearthing the first US serialization. I simply love to solve riddles. By now, I am organizing international Dracula conferences.

As a queer, nonbinary author and lover of historical fiction, I’ve spent countless hours thinking about how to tell stories I care about in a genre that has traditionally excluded people like me. We all know that life was hard for LGBTQ+ folks growing up in, well, basically any time in recent history. There’s a time and place for realistic depictions of those hardships, but we also need space to imagine ourselves in more joyful, fantastical depictions of the past. After all, if straight people can enjoy Jane Austen without thinking too hard about the legal rights of women during that era, why can’t queer people do the same? 

From an early age, I have been fascinated with anything supernatural and occult. My Aunt would read my palm, and then, as a teenager, I would visit clairvoyants to see what the future held for me. As I grew older, I found I had an ability, a gift of seership, and after reading many books, embarked on my pagan journey, from which I have never looked back, and am now studying Druidry,which is very much nature-based. I hope you love the books on this list as much as I do!  

I was introduced to vampires through Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows fame, but I was a child and found the show boring. But, when I was 15, I was handed the paperback edition of Salem’s Lot and it scared me to death. I was hooked, reading books, and watching movies about vampires whenever the chance arose. When I wrote the first draft of Redemption, it sat for years before I reworked it, reading Dracula again and taking notes, researching Vlad the Impaler, and watching lots of vampire movies before re-writing it. Since then, I’ve continued reading vampire fiction and watching movies and shows about the creatures whenever I can.

I have been writing for more than 40 years, and while I don’t normally write gothic literature, it is a genre that has fascinated me since my early youth. While I have written a couple of gothic or horror short stories, I tend to write other types of literature. However, I was pulled into this novel by something I saw on the TV news, and so I put away the novel I was originally working on and set to work on this one instead. The setting and the characters immediately pulled me in. I hope that it’s mystery and unusual characters will do the same for you.

My name is Christian Klaver, and I’ve had, in turn, many different jobs as a bookseller, martial arts instructor, and bartender before settling into a career in internet security. Books have always been a passion of mine, with science fiction, fantasy, and mystery as my main focus. I’ve been a lifelong fan of Sherlock Holmes and am a proud member of two different Sherlock Holmes Societies.

I'm a writer based in Wisconsin. I write in a genre that exists much like its subjects: lurking in the shadows. It's something I call Gothic Espionage, which is the intersection of the Gothic and Espionage/Spy genres. My first novel, Bite of the Wolf, was the first synthesis of these two worlds, and continues with the follow up, slated for release in September, Operation Frankenstein. Appropriately enough, spies are often referred to as “spooks,” and these selections will highlight both the spooky and the spooks of Gothic Espionage, and I’ll highlight why both horror and spy novels can both be described as “thrillers.”