Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

The fourth book in the Southern Vampire Series is by far my favorite. It starts on New Years Eve. Sookie is waiting tables and her wish for the new year is to NOT be beaten or harmed by supernatural creatures. Her heart is still hurt by what happened with Bill and her body still misses the many pleasures that Bill offered her, but she is not at all sad when Bill announces he is off to Peru to do research for the Queen.
It seems as though Sookie may get her peaceful beatings free year after all. Then on the way she almost runs over Eric-Bills immediate superior in the confusing Vampire hierarchy. Eric has been attacked by witches and has no memory of who he is. Sookie takes him and contacts the local vampires. What follows is very interesting. Sookies brother disappears. Sookie is courted by the patriarch of a small southern town of inbred were-panthers. Sookie falls for Eric. Eric is much nicer, sweeter, vulnerable without his memory. Sookie is lonely and horny and sad over what happened with Bill. He is staying in her house and it all seems to grow from there. I know it can not last, Eric is too important of a character to remain without his memory and it when it comes back I feel very sorry for Sookie.
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

This third novel in the Southern Vampire Series is where it really gets good to me. This book adds other supernaturals in a good way. First, Bill is called away for work-but he has been very distant lately caught up in his work. He is doing some very time intensive secret and possibly dangerous work for the "Queen of Louisiana". Sookie is hurt and bewildered by Bill's seemingly distant behavior. She is also not sure where his disappearance and their odd relationship leaves her in relation to the local vampires-especially Eric who has been not very subtly chasing her since he met her. Bill acted as her protection-kind of-from the interests of local vampires. Then one evening Eric shows up with the news that Bill has disappeared-but before jumping ship he dumped her for his ex. Ouch. Sookie agrees to take on the case of looking for him and in walks Alcide a vbery sexy werewolve who's father owes the local vampires alot of money and is working off his fathers debt by taking Sookie around as his girlfriend to local vampire bars to help her look for Bill.
I like Alcide alot and was never too impressed with Bill. However, the action really gets good when Sookie finds Bill and her "role" as Alcides pretend girlfriend seems to straddle the fence between pretend and reality.
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

This is the second installment in the South Vampire Series and I liked it much, much better than the first.
The last thing Sookie wanted was to find Lafayette Reynold's body in the back Andy Bellefleur's car. Lafayette was the cook at Merlotte's Bar, where Sookie waited on tables. Andy was a police detective who left his car at the bar because he was too drunk to drive it home. Now Bon Temps, Louisiana is a small rural town, where murders are mercifully rare. However, anything like this is bound to be a major headache for Sookie, who is telepathic, and whose boyfriend is Vampire Bill, the town's major predator. Make that ex-predator; Bill is one of the good people, getting his nourishment from artificial blood these days. As does any vampire who wants to fit into the mainstream world.
But a simple murder case is not enough. Before Sookie and Bill can look into Lafayette's death, Eric, the local vampire leader, summons them to Shreveport. Eric has agreed to send them to Dallas, where Sookie's telepathic talents are needed to solve a disappearing vampire problem. Even before they get to Shreveport, stuff happens. Sookie has a run in with a maenad, who wants tribute from Eric, and decides to write him a note about it on Sookie's back. Bill barely gets Sookie to Eric's lair, where she can be healed. Don't expect Dallas to be any better. There, Sookie finds herself in conflict the local anti-vampire club, 'The Fellowship of the Sun,' and scheduled for sacrifice.
This book introduces more characters and more settings and just keeps getting better with each paragraph. The book is easy to read and the characters are simple yet likeable.
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Well, I finally read the Southern Vampire Series-of which this is the first book. I have to say that the series itself for very reasonable, but I did not much care for the first novel.
Sookie Stackhouse is a waitress is a bar in a small southern town in Louisiana-VERY outisde of New Orleans. She is kind of a pariah in her small town, due largely to her "disability"-of being able to read minds. Needless to say it has prevented her from dating, having any real or meaningful sex life and even cut down on her friends. People do not like it when you know what they are thinking-sometimes even before they do.
Sookies parents died when she young and she and her womanizing brother Jason were raised by her grandmother. Sookie still lives with her grandma but her brother lives in the home thier parents left them.
Sookie has been waiting to meet a vampire since they "came out of the coffin" 4 years ago but while they are often in New Orleans they are rarely anywhere in Lousiana. Then one night Bill walks into Sookies restaurant and her life is never quite the same again.
The book was ok and the rest of the series I liked much better. I am not sure if it is the small all white small-minded judgemental southern town. Or that the only non-white characters in the first couple books are a dirty cop and a transvestite cook? Whatever it is something about Harris' writing rubbed me the wrong way in the first novel in this series. They did grow on me.
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!