Ask a Bookseller: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Yes, we know Halloween was last week, but vampires are an any-time-of-year kind of story, right? Especially for a suspense thriller described as “Steel Magnolias-meets-Dracula.” Bookseller Jonah Barrett of Orca Books Co-op in Olympia, Wash., recommended “The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires” by Grady Hendrix. It's a southern-flavored novel set in the 1990s.Homemaker Patricia Campbell is bored at home, and an initially attractive stranger who moves into the neighborhood is a welcome addition. That is, until children begin to go missing. Suspecting the worst, Campbell enlists her book club into helping her investigate. Reading the book, Barrett said they had to scream into a pillow more than once, following both horror scenes and awkward social. All in all, they called it “a horror thriller for people who don’t like horror.”