The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Grady Hendrix, 2020
Horror Mystery, thriller & crimeFantasyContemporary fiction
A true-crime book club in 1990s Charleston meets a charming newcomer who may be a vampire—and finds the real horror is being dismissed. A warm, funny voice carries you through creeping dread and sharp satire, with a pace that tightens as ordinary domestic worries turn strange.
Feels like dread and wonder. About memory, love and morality.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy horror mixed with suburban satire and a book-club cast whose everyday lives matter. Be ready for grindhouse-style gore and a story that can feel bleak when the women are dismissed.
Why read it
It lets you watch a familiar social world turn uncanny while taking the women's work and fears seriously; the mix of dread and humor gives the horror a sharp point.
A page from the book
What would you do if you realized your whole life was someone else's idea?
Why do you pretend what we do is nothing?” she asked. “Every day, all the chaos and messiness of life happens and every day we clean it all up. Without us, they would just wallow in filth and disorder and nothing of any consequence would ever get done. Who taught you to sneer at that? I’ll tell you who. Someone who took their mother for granted. Grady Hendrix.Hendrix co-founded the New York Asian Film Festival and has written for Playboy; his novels mix suburban domesticity with grindhouse horror.
Books that feel like this
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy horror mixed with suburban satire and a book-club cast whose everyday lives matter. Be ready for grindhouse-style gore and a story that can feel bleak when the women are dismissed.
- What is The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires like?
- A warm, funny voice carries you through creeping dread and sharp satire, with a pace that tightens as ordinary domestic worries turn strange. Feels like dread and wonder. About memory, love and morality.
- What should I read after The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires?
- If you liked The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, try The Green Mile (Stephen King), You (Caroline Kepnes) and The Locked Door (Freida McFadden).
A taste of the feed
The exhaustion of a man who feels everyone else's pain as his own.
I’m rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I’m tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we’s comin from or goin to or why. I’m tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I’m tired of all the times I’ve wanted to help and couldn’t. I’m tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it’s the pain. There’s too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can’t.
The Green Mile · Stephen King
Why finishing a book feels like a breakup.
The problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don’t want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates.
You · Caroline Kepnes
An inventory of a father delivered with terrifying calm.
He is exceptionally charismatic and charming—at least, when he wants to be. He is a narcissist and a psychopath, who likely killed at least thirty women without a trace of remorse. He is insane. He is a monster. He is also my father.
The Locked Door · Freida McFadden
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed