82 Books Like Vampires Today

Religion and Its Monsters started this whole conversation.

Timothy Beal successfully transitioned from an author of academic books to an author of trade books, and this one shows how he did it. He selected two unexpectedly compatible subjects and demonstrated that they lurk in the same mental spaces.

I was inspired by this book to allow myself to reclaim my childhood interest in monsters as an adult. If serious scholars wrote about such things, why shouldn’t I read about them?

Unfortunately, Beal never followed up with another book on the topic.

Thinking of this book still leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I can’t say precisely why, but this book by a Jesuit monk discussing horror struck me as intelligent and deeply personal.

Conversant with many kinds of scary stories associated with religion, this is the most academic book on my list. The fact that Edward Ingebretsen discusses Stephen King really gives readers something to think about. This isn’t the only book to discuss Stephen King and religion—Douglas Cowan also wrote a book about this—but it does so in a way that brings some “aha moments” to your reading.

This book opened my eyes to how a scholar of religion could engage with horror films. I sat in my hotel room and started reading it the day I purchased it because I couldn’t wait until I got back home to start it.

Douglas Cowan deftly demonstrates how horror films engage in conversation with religion and he does this in non-technical language. In a culture where religion, or at least organized religion, is in decline, it still has incredible power in pop culture.

Many religious people avoid horror like they would a real monster. Sacred Terror, apart from suggesting a title for my book, shows horror and religion both benefit from the discussion. Cowan has written other good books on the subject as well.

Brandon Grafius is a prolific author in this area and I found this book to be a very good interaction between someone who is a Christian minister and a horror movie fan.

While this isn’t Grafius’ first book on the subject, it is his first to attempt to explain “why”—why would a normal, upstanding citizen watch horror? It helps debunk the idea that only social outcasts or disgruntled individuals watch horror. (Surveys indicate well over half of people in the United States admit to liking horror films.)

This coming out of the horror closet is a personal and very readable account.

Montague Summers was a really unusual fellow for the early twentieth century. He was a closeted gay man (closeted because homosexuality was brutally repressed at the time) who was obsessed with the occult and liked to present himself as a religious witch hunter/demonologist. Reportedly he was often seen leaving libraries with a big black file that read “Vampires” across the front where everyone could see it.

Despite being a colorful character, Summers is one of the best early scholars of vampire lore. His work is even more interesting because it reflects the occult revival underway at the end of the nineteenth century. Occult groups such as the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Golden Dawn were reimagining what vampires could be. They hypothesized that vampires could be real but are perhaps more akin to invisible ghosts that feed on human life force. Summers also discusses things like… show more.

Although this book focuses on just the most famous vampire narrative of all, you don’t need to look far into Dracula to find universal vampire themes: sexuality, paranoia, misogyny, xenophobia, psychoanalysis, and the sacred power of blood. This collection of essays also sets Stoker’s tale within the wider context of the Victorian vampire boom, and looks at what became of his tale on stage and screen. It shows how Stoker was tapping into richer, deeper seams than even he realised, making Dracula “one of the most obsessional texts of all time, a black hole of the imagination”, in horror expert David Skal’s words. “The most frightening thing about Dracula’, says Skal, “is the strong probability that it meant far less to Bram Stoker than it has come to mean for us.”

After a near-death experience, PI Harper Blaine gains the ability to navigate the occult world of magic. But the realm between our world and the next is filled with monsters. Some are malicious, but some are looking to hire. The concept of the Grey is fascinating and slightly terrifying to me. Harper deserves to be on this list because only a true badass could survive her client list.

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.

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?