I've already read Salem's Lot, Fevre Dream, I am Legend, The Passage, and Enter,Night. I need the opposite of Twilight. Thanks!
Less of a horror novel and more of a historical fiction with vampires, but The Quick by Lauren Owen is excellent!
I love both movies, the original Swedish one and the American remake, and I also enjoyed the translated book. Both movie versions intelligently left out the zombie-body part, which was intense but would have been very strange and distracting in the movies.
Different might be The Vampyre by John Polidori, although it's the first 'modern vampire' story ever.
Those Who Hunt the Night, by Barbara Hambly. Not horror, as in very scary, but a good vampire tale without romance.
There's Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's classic Carmilla, but that's actually a lesbian romance if I remember right. Nobody sparkles though, and vampires are scary monsters of the night, not yuppie vegans. This is straight-up erotic-oriented Gothic vampire stuff, sometimes considered a companion-piece to Dracula.
Just ran across this: Vampire Classics Collection: Dracula, Dracula's Guest, The Vampyre, Carmilla Think I might need to add some vampire fiction to my collection. Here's a little factoid concerning The Vampyre: "The Vampyre" is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. A little more searching turns this up: Includes all the stories in the other book except Dracula, and many more as well.
Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles are not "romance based", not in my book. Sure, there's erotica enough, not romance.
"Necroscope," by Brian Lumley. I'd second "Let the Right One In." I know there's a definite kid crush aspect to it, but it's done properly. If you liked King's "Salem's Lot" (and you should), you'll probably like Lindqvist. There's also George RR's "Fevre Dream." It's a "cross between King and Twain," says one of the reviewers. That's pretty accurate. Don't let the terrible modern cover fool you. From a distance it looks like sword and sorcery, but it's not. I think they did that on purpose. Those marketing weasels are strangers to integrity.
I looked into Carmilla a bit, because I hardly remember it, and apparently the idea of it being erotic or lesbian is mostly hype. It's a Victorian novel, and it was common at the time for women to address each other with what are today considered very strong terms of affection. The same was true for men as well—especially in letters, where they frequently proclaimed their great undying love for one another. It was after all the era of the Romantic poets. Plus words like passion and arouse have since taken on strongly sexual connotations they didn't have then. So don't get your hopes up too high. But then, it is the story Bram Stoker used as inspiration when he wrote Dracula.
Found this list on goodreads for vampire horror: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9955.Best_Vampire_HORROR_Novels Only ones I've read recently weren't exactly horror horror. For instance "Bubba the Monster Hunter" (https://www.amazon.com/Scattered-Smothered-Chunked-Monster-Hunter-ebook/dp/B00A6DT0P2) and "Monster Hunter International" (https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Hunter-International-Hunters-Book-ebook/dp/B00APAH7PQ)
I haven't checked the lists posted but there's also The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. I'm not sure if it'd count as 'horror' in the most straightforward sense but I really liked the angle it took.