My Favorite Book(s)...

Club Vampire
by Laurell K. Hamilton

(Courtesy from GoodReads.com)
Club Vampyre brings together the first three Anita Blake novels, this collection looks at the adventures of the woman vampires call The Executioner.

I'm Anita Blake, expert on creatures of the night. Vampires call me The Executioner. What I call them isn't repeatable. Ever since the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights, most people think vampires are just ordinary folks with fangs. I know better. I carry the scars. . . In my job -- I'm an animator; I raise the dead -- I've seen just about everything. I've dined with shapeshifters, danced with werewolves and been wooed, but not won, by Jean-Claude, the most powerful bloodsucker in St. Louis. When a serial killer started murdering vampires, it was Jean-Claude who wanted me to find the killer. Later a rogue vamp named Alejandro hit town and wanted to make me his human servant. A war of the undead had begun. Over me. I'd have been flattered, if my life weren't at stake.

Books in this collection:
* Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Bk 1)
* The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Bk 2)
* Circus of the Damned (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Bk 3)

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The Exquisite Corpse
by Poppy Z. Brite

(Courtesy of GoodReads.com)
To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.

Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London's Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of the New Orleans French Quarter, and punctuated by rants from radio talk show host Lush Rimbaud, a.k.a. Luke Ransom, Tran's ex-lover, who is dying of AIDS and who intends to wreak ultimate havoc before leaving this world, Exquisite Corpse unfolds into a labyrinth of murder and love. Ultimately all four characters converge on a singular bloody night after which their lives will be irrevocably changed — or terminated.

Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. Exquisite Corpse confirms Brite as a writer who defies categorization. It is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one. 

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What are your favorites?
​Let me know!