The vampire is one of the great enemies of humanity, a nightmarish figure who feeds on the living in order to sustain themselves. Born from ancient folklore, writers in the nineteenth century gave form to the vampire as we know it today. Still haunting our subconscious in the twentieth century, a new wave of writers continued to develop the imagery and traditions of the vampire - and the vampire continued to evolve. From John Polidori's iconic short story 'The Vampyre' and tales of parasitic female companions to experimental and freshly thrilling takes by Robert Bloch, Angela Carter and Anne Rice, this new collection sets out to present the enrapturing range of the vampire story and our undying fascination with the monster at its heart.

Action-packed and laugh-out-loud funny, the Sasha Urban series is your next binge read! For a limited time, get the first three books in a convenient, discounted bundle. Analyst. Illusionist. Psychic? When Sasha Urban finally gets the chance to perform her magic tricks on live TV, the last thing she expects is to discover that she has very real, very scary powers. Oh, and to be totally humiliated in the process. But being made to look like a fraud is the least of Sasha's problems now that she's been thrust into the dangerous world of the Cognizant. With necromancers, orcs, and moody teenage werewolves out for blood, Sasha will have to rely on her super-strong best friend, surprisingly deadly pet chinchilla, and mysteriously powerful boss to help her survive her first few months as a Cognizant. But will she be able to master her psychic powers in time to save herself when everything goes wrong?

It should have been a normal job, but when psychic police show up and kidnap her best friend, Olivia, Kara the female vampire must become a vigilante and take justice into her own hands. Kara's on her own though, as her kind shuns her for being born with psychic powers. The wars might have ended, but there's bad blood between the blood suckers and the mind readers of the world. To get help and save Olivia, Kara makes a deal with the devil, or the closest equivalent: Vasha, a gangster with ties to vampires and psychics. As Kara works to free her friend, she discovers a storm brewing between the supernatural factions, and hears rumblings of a new war on the horizon. Will Kara save Olivia before she becomes the spark that starts a new conflict, or is it already too late? With a female protagonist and strong female heroines, this action packed vampire series for adults is sure to please.

Drawing from social theory and the anthropology of religion, this book explores popular media's fascination with dreams, vampires, demons, ghosts and spirits. Dreams, Vampires and Ghosts does so in the light of contemporary animist studies of societies in which other-than-human persons are not merely a source of entertainment, but a lived social reality. Films and television programs explored include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twin Peaks, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Truly Madly Deeply and the films of Hitchcock. Louise Child draws attention to how they both depict and challenge ideas and practices rooted in psychology, while quality television has also facilitated a wave of programming that can explore the interaction of characters in complex social worlds over time. In addition to drawing on theories of film from Freudian psychology and feminist theory, Dreams, Vampires and Ghosts uses approaches derived from a combination of Jungian film studies and anthropology that offer fresh insights for exploring film and television. This book draws attention to explicit and subtle ways in which cinematic narratives engage with myth and religion while at the same time exploring collective dimensions to social and personal life. It advances new developments in genre studies and gender as well as contributing to the growing field of implicit religion using in-depth analyses of communicative dreaming, the shadow, and mystical lovers in film and television.

Twelve stories and vignettes, many—but not all—featuring vampires. A vampire and a sorceress take a wrong turn while evading pursuit, ending up someplace they don't want to be. An old man with bad intentions lures two little girls into a deserted playground. On a lighter note, a vampire reluctantly shares his old farmhouse with an eccentric sculptor (she has a lease).

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Jasmine Cavanagh has lived in fear of a vision of her destiny for centuries; The prophetess will lose herself to a wolf like no other. From the very moment Roman Lowe strode through the doors at Sicarius Security, Jasmine has feared that Roman would not only steal a part of her heart but cost her the life she loves so dearly. She will do anything to avoid that fate, even if it means denying the chemistry between her and the sexy wolf. Roman Lowe is an anomaly; a werewolf who cannot change into a wolf. But that doesn’t stop him from being able to handle himself. Working for Sicarius Security is his dream job, even if it does come with having to deal with a sassy, sexy vampire who wants nothing to do with any werewolves, especially him. Roman’s never backed down from a challenge before, even if the challenge is the boss's sister. When the pair are thrust together and forced to try and work out Jasmine’s riddles, the sparks between them are hotter than ever. But the future is only part of the problem when both of their pasts could derail any chance of happiness.

GIFTED AND CURSED Kaitlyn Fairchild has always felt like an outsider in her small hometown. Her haunting eyes and prophetic drawings have earned her a reputation as a witch. But Kait's not a witch: She's a psychic. Tired of being shunned, Kait accepts an invitation to attend the Zetes Institute, where she can have a fresh start and study with other psychic teens. Learning to hone her abilities with four other gifted students, Kait discovers the intensity of her power -- and the joy of having true friends. But those friendships quickly become complicated when Kait finds herself torn between two irresistible guys. Rob is kind and athletic, and heals people with his good energy. Gabriel is aggressive and mysterious, a telepath concealing his true nature as a psychic vampire, feeding off of others' life energy. Together, Rob and Gabriel's opposing forces threaten the group's stability. Then one of the experiments traps the five teens in a psychic link. A link that threatens their sanity and their lives. And Kaitlyn must decide whom to trust...and whom to love.

An ancient vampire, beautiful beyond words, a vulnerable young man drawn to her by a power beyond his understanding, two desperate parents searching across the world for the son they love -- these are the riveting, unexpected elements of Whitley Strieber's extraordinary new novel. Lilith, the ages-old mother of the dying race of vampires, has been forced to come out of her cave deep in the Egyptian desert in search of food -- human blood. But she knows nothing about the modern world. She can't drive a car, rent a room, turn on a TV. She struggles to New York, penniless, vulnerable, and starving, protected only by her beauty and her power to capture men with desire...especially certain very special men. The instant she sees young Ian Ward, she knows that he is part vampire himself. She knows that Ian, if he ever tastes human blood, will belong to her forever. And she needs him desperately, to help her survive and live in this harsh new world of jets and credit cards and guns. She sets out on a campaign of seduction -- as sensuous as it is terrifying -- to touch human blood to Ian's lips, which will then become for him a drug a thousand times more addictive than heroin. Ian's father, Paul Ward, part vampire turned expert and obsessive hunter of vampires, knows that if the blood transforms Ian, Paul will have to kill his own son. The titanic conflict between father and son and seductress, hunter and hunted and huntress, comes to its surprise conclusion in the secret chambers beneath the great pyramids, where the hidden truths of all human history are stored. From its beginning in the dark back alleys of Cairo to its totally unexpected ending, Lilith's Dream draws the reader down seductive new paths of discovery, into places where no novel has ever before. With Lilith's Dream Whitley Strieber has created a vampire so original and a story so new that he has virtually invented a new genre.

Illustrated throughout with rare stills, and organized so as to provide historical context, this book surveys an array of films that have offered us glimpses of a life that is meaningful, free from strife, devoid of pain and privation, and full of harmony in every sense.