A really great vampire noves are those by Tanya Huff (the Blood Chronicles), also if you are looking for diffrent things there are "The Mammonth book of..." Vamire stories, Vampire stories by women, Dracula. As they say "something for everyone". Of course original Dracula and 'Salem's Lot rule forever.
Poppy Z Brite is one of my favorite writers, I think I have read Lost Souls at least 5 times along with Drawing blood and to a lesser extent her books on restaurants.
Bram Stoker's Dracula was just tedious. It was endless letters between Jonathon and Mina(?). So dull.
I enjoyed it, a few dull spots but all in all its a classic, tedious to me is a keeping up with the endless adaptations of Dracula. I think my favorite would have to be Nosferatu, even if it wasn't an official Dracula flick.
You know why Nosferatu was made right? Dracula was still under copywrite. On other matters, @Victoria Baye , you need to read Carmilla. Written only a couple of years before Dracula, many of the same themes, epistolary, and extremely subtle allusions to teenage experimental lesbianism. If you're on a e-reader or a laptop you can read it right-the-fuck-now, it's on project gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10007?msg=welcome_stranger
Well aware of the entire Nosferatu/Dracula thing, also how Nosferatu survived after a judge ordered all copies be destroyed... but beyond all that it's a great piece of history.
I love Nosferatu, I saw the film along with live organ playing a couple of Halloweens ago- I found it mostly hammy and what should have been scary was actually quite funny but I still found the scene where he creeps up the stairs unnerving. Amazing how it survived. The only ones I've read are The Strain books by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. It's been adapted into a TV series now but I've only seen the first couple, thought the books were better. If you want something really different, The Fat White Vampire Blues by Andrew Fox is worth a go. Not a shiny vampire fairy in sight.
The "Vampire Files" series by PN Elrod. Features a man who is turned into a vampire but isn't evil. With a partner he becomes a Private Eye. Based in the 1930s. "The President's Vampire" series by Christopher Farnsworth. The "Dracula" series by Fred Saberhagen. The "Dracula Tapes" is a hilarious retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula from the vampire's point of view. The rest are tales of Dracula interacting with the descendants of Mina and other modern day adventures. Oh, and I wrote one too, but I can't mention it here.
Another vote for Let the Right one In. I also liked Guillermo Del Toro's Strain Trilogy, but they're rather...pulpy, I guess? But the actual vampires are quite terrifying.
'Suppose I'll be the first to recommend John Steakley's Vampire$. Extremely badass book involving vampires before they became fetish material with Eurotrash accents for American teenage girls/middle-aged women. Trained killers run an extermination service and seek out vampire infestations in human settlements. They keep one vampire alive to make sure the people who hire them actually pay up. It's really good. Uniqueness alone makes it stand out, no other vampire novel really like it.
Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly, I would add. It's a vampire/mystery novel set in the early 1900s. The vampires are more old-school than Twilight, by far.
