Seven books to expand your vampire horizons

Jacqueline Holland is a recent graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Kansas. Her short fiction has been published in Hotel Amerika, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Big Fiction Magazine. She was selected as a top-twenty-five finalist for Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers, as well as Sequestrum Magazine's New Writers Award.

Her new novel is The God of Endings.

At Publishers Weekly Holland tagged seven books to up your vampire expertise, including:

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

How’s this for defying the vampire rules? In Butler’s novel, vampires and humans have always co-existed; the relationship between the two species is not one of predator and prey, but of mutually beneficial symbiosis; and one vampire has now been genetically engineered to have Black skin that withstands the deadly effects of sunlight.

Fledgling kicks down the doors of vampire convention by marrying fantasy and science fiction in wildly imaginative ways which also provide thoughtful commentary on societal structures, race, the origins of prejudice, and the power of relationships to mend even the deepest wounds.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Fledgling is among Ruthanna Emrys's five books that tell the monster’s story and Nisi Shawl's five stories about loving everybody.

--Marshal Zeringue