Here are 91 books that Varney the Vampire fans have personally recommended if you like
Varney the Vampire.
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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.
I love this book so much, I have read it at least three times. It is a classic gothic novel with an eerie setting and interesting characters, including those with psychosis that add to the mystery of he novel.
While the film version is undoubtedly a classic, the novel is by far better.
31
authors picked
Dracula
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
17.
What is this book about?
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, and makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England - an unmanned ship is wrecked; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master' - and a determined group of adversaries…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am the founder and principal of Work & Think, LLC., and help clients make complex decisions that include a realistic understanding of uncertainty. My Spangler Ethical Reasoning Assessment® (SERA®) is used across industries and around the world, enabling individuals to combine critical thinking and values to make complex decisions. I am a frequent keynote speaker, a corporate consultant, a researcher, and an author. My new book is Reasoning for Business. Learn more at my website.
I find that Frankenstein transcends eras by posing critical questions about the ways we develop and use new technology.
I first read a comic-book version in elementary school and have returned to Shelly’s novel over the years because it stimulates my critical thinking about technology, particularly the current rise of AI and our response to it. Frankenstein raises a fundamental ethical question about technology in real life: just because humans can create something, should they actually create it?
For me, the novel also creates the opportunity to explore questions about how we engage technology once we choose to invent it. Dr. Frankenstein abandons his creation, and the creature becomes an angry monster. I ask myself, is this an allegory for our own response to technology?
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
What I look for in a book is something that triggers my serious side. So be it if that removes a whole range of fantasy books or those that merely titillate. Because I’ve traveled a lot, ‘feasible fiction’ is what I write and what I look for in other books. A story might be entirely fictitious, but as long as it’s not far-fetched, has a cast of realistic characters, an international or historic location, and keeps me on my toes to the very end, that’s great. If it’s got some politics and science thrown in, that’s even better. I hope my list lives up to expectations.
I like books from guys who’ve traveled and been around a while before sitting down to write them. I suppose I’m one, but Graham Greene remains a hero of mine even though he died over twenty years ago. In this book, Greene masterfully creates the atmosphere of dark, damp, smoky post-war side streets in post-war Vienna.
That the criminal element involves a crime syndicate selling diluted penicillin also appeals to me, as I’ve written three novels about fraud and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry.
Green’s book led to a series of films, and this book's signature tune still resonates with me.
Rollo Martins' usual line is the writing of cheap paperback Westerns under the name of Buck Dexter. But when his old friend Harry Lime invites him to Vienna, he jumps at the chance. With exactly five pounds in his pocket, he arrives only just in time to make it to his friend's funeral. The victim of an apparently banal street accident, the late Mr. Lime, it seems, had been the focus of a criminal investigation, suspected of nothing less than being "the worst racketeer who ever made a dirty living in this city." Martins is determined to clear his friend's…
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
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.”
A man is sent to visit a mysterious count in his secluded mountaintop fortress, where a diabolical plot unfolds, involving an attack on England using his Angels of Death, women under his hypnotic command. The man finds himself slowly becoming a prisoner, leading to his planning an escape and a race to stop the Count’s plot from unfolding.
Sound familiar? It is, essentially, the plot of Dracula. It is also the plot of Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the tenth James Bond novel. If Count Dracula is the king of vampires, then James Bond is inarguably the king of spies.
I’ve always loved horror stories. At the age of 7 or 8, I’d be reading The Pan Book Of Horror Stories or Aidan Chambers’ Haunted Houses by flashlight with the bed sheets pulled over my head (not because I should have been asleep, but to guard against vampires creeping up on me!) I always found these stories strangely comforting, a world of adventure into which a shy kid like me could retreat. Ghosts and monsters became part of my cultural DNA, constant companions through life. That’s why I write horror today, to make my own tiny contribution to the genre, which has given me so much.
This is a comprehensive anthology of non-Dracula short stories (although it does include Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest!) covering the whole of the nineteenth century and beyond, including John Polidori’s The Vampyre and Sheridan le Fanu’s influential Carmilla.
It even has an extract from the hugely popular Victorian ‘penny dreadful’ Varney The Vampire, which is so awful that it’s hilarious.
They're lurking under the cover of darkness and between the covers of this book. Here, in all their horror and all their glory, are the great vampires of literature: male and female, invisible and metamorphic, doomed and daring.
Their skin deathly pale, their nails curved like claws, their fangs sharpened for the attack, they are gathered for the kill and for the chill, brought frighteningly to life by Bram Stoker, Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Charles L. Grant, Tanith Lee, and other masters of the macabre. Careful they are all crafty enough to steal their way into your imagination…
I’ve always loved horror stories. At the age of 7 or 8, I’d be reading The Pan Book Of Horror Stories or Aidan Chambers’ Haunted Houses by flashlight with the bed sheets pulled over my head (not because I should have been asleep, but to guard against vampires creeping up on me!) I always found these stories strangely comforting, a world of adventure into which a shy kid like me could retreat. Ghosts and monsters became part of my cultural DNA, constant companions through life. That’s why I write horror today, to make my own tiny contribution to the genre, which has given me so much.
If you’re interested in the literary roots of vampires, and Dracula in particular, I’d heartily recommend this nonfiction title. It delves into the origins of characters like the Count in earlier 19th-century texts and examines how and why Dracula became such a long-lasting cultural influence. It’s also very good on Bram Stoker’s life and less famous works.
Christopher Frayling has spent 45 years exploring the history of one of the most enduring figures in the history of mass culture - the vampire. Vampyres is a comprehensive and generously illustrated history and anthology of vampires in literature, from the folklore of Eastern Europe to the Romantics and beyond. Frayling recounts the most significant moments in gothic history, while extracts from a huge range of sources - including Bram Stoker's detailed research notes for Dracula, penny dreadfuls and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber , new to this edition - are contextualized and analysed. This revised and expanded edition brings…
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I am a storyteller and I conceived The Life of Crime as the ‘life story’ of a fascinating and truly diverse genre. I’ve always been intrigued by the ups and downs of literary lives, and the book explores the rollercoaster careers of writers from across the world. The chapter endnotes contain masses of trivia and information, as well as some original research, that I hope readers will find enjoyable as well as interesting. But The Life ofCrimeisn’t an academic text. It’s a love letter to a genre that I’ve adored for as long as I can remember.
I dreamed for many years of writing a book about crime fiction. I’m primarily a crime novelist, but so was Julian Symons, and the experience of writing fiction is invaluable when discussing other writers and understanding what they were trying to do. I approached Oxford University Press, with a view to producing a Companion about the genre, comprising essays by writers including myself. This led to a fruitful meeting with an OUP editor and novelist, Michael Cox, but the project was stillborn when his American colleagues had commissioned just such a book, to be edited by Rosemary Herbert. Rosemary invited me to contribute twenty-odd essays to her Companion, and I found the work of my fellow contributors (including Symons) a delight to read.
This companion is a one-volume, alphabetically arranged encyclopedia exploring the full range of literature suggested by the title. The 672 articles range from brief factual pieces to longer synthetic treatments of topics of central thematic interest.
As a longtime lover of Gothic literature, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on it, which became my book The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption. My second book on the Gothic, Vampire Groomsand Spectre Brides, explored how French and British Gothic authors influenced each other. The City Mysteries novels were part of that influence, as evidenced by how British author Reynolds borrowed the idea to write The Mysteries of London from French author Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris. After reading so many City Mysteriesnovels, I decided to write my own, complete with crossdressers, prostitutes, criminals, innocents, and the genre’s many other signature elements.
British author George W. M. Reynolds had no qualms about stealing Sue’s idea and title and writing his own book called The Mysteries of London (1844-1846). I love this novel for its sensationalism, which caused it to be the ultimate Victorian bestseller, even outselling Dickens.
The novel brings together criminals, women forced into prostitution, murderers, crossdressers, and royalty. At the heart of it is the story of the Markham brothers, one good, one evil. We follow their paths as they interact with all the other people in London and become embroiled in conspiracies. One of them even ends up marrying royalty and ruling a small European country. Reynolds’ bold writing style and mastery of multiple plots makes this 2,500-page novel highly readable and shocking even today.
The government feared him. Rival authors like Charles Dickens, whom he outsold, despised him. The literary establishment did its best to write him out of literary history. But when George W.M. Reynolds, journalist, political reformer, Socialist, and novelist, died in 1879, even his critics were forced to acknowledge the truth of his obituary, which declared that he was the most popular writer of his time. And The Mysteries of London, which was published in 1844 in the "penny dreadful" format of weekly installments sold for a penny each, was his masterpiece and greatest success, selling 50,000 copies a week and…
I’ve always been attracted to the Gothic before I even knew the term. From watching The Munstersas a child to wanting to live in a haunted house and devouring classic Gothic novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho and Dracula, I’ve never been able to get enough of the Gothic. After fully exploring British Gothic in my book The Gothic Wanderer, I discovered the French Gothic tradition, which made me realize how universal the genre is. Everyone can relate to its themes of fear, death, loss, guilt, forgiveness, and redemption. On some level, we are all Gothic wanderers, trying to find meaning in what is too often a nightmarish world.
This little-known French vampire novel, published in 1825, includes the first fully realized female vampire. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, a young Hungarian woman, Alinska, mysteriously turns into a vampire after a French soldier pledges his love to her, then abandons her. After becoming a vampire, she travels to France where her husband Edouard is now remarried and has a family. Unable to stop herself, she preys upon Edouard’s family. The story is remarkable for creating the first sympathetic vampire and being the first to associate vampirism with Eastern Europe. Bram Stoker may have known it or similar French novels. I love the character development here and the possibility that this novel inspired the entire vampire tradition, including Dracula, yet has been largely ignored until recently.
During one of Napoleon's military campaigns, Edouard Delmont, a young officer, promised to marry Alinska, a Hungarian girl. Back in France, he goes back on his vows and marries someone else. Several years later, Alinska suddenly reappears in his life, transformed into an avenging vampire. She threatens to kill his wife and children unless he honors the vows he made to her... In The Virgin Vampire (1825), Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon tells the story of the first, implacable, female vampire. What makes Alinska stand out in the ranks of female vampires is that she is not a predator, but the instrument…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
Louis P. Masur is a cultural historian who has written on a range of topics in American history, from Abraham Lincoln to Bruce Springsteen, from the first World Series to a photograph that shocked the nation. An award-winning teacher, Masur lectures frequently on various topics in American history. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and Slate. The Sum of Our Dreams emerged out a course he teaches on the American Dream, which, somehow, he still believes in.
Loewen’s book, updated since its original publication, explodes some of the many myths and falsehoods contained in textbooks on American history. Whether stories of the first Thanksgiving or America and the Vietnam War, the book challenges interpretations presented as facts and facts that are contested. The result is an indispensable argument for trying to get the facts right when discussing American history.
Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important - and successful - history books of our time. Having sold over two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times in the summer of 2006. For this new edition, Loewen has added a new introduction that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems.
