REVIEW: A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris

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My Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

All Sookie Stackhouse short stories in a single volume. If you want to read all the short stories the author has written about Sookie, but don't want to hunt down all the various anthologies they're found in, then this book is for you. Nearly every Sookie short story is contained in this single volume. (The only short stories not here are the ones that involve secondary characters who don't really play a major role part in Sookie's world.)

I did read most of these myself several years ago as part of other anthologies, but since I collect this series, I had to have this book for my Personal Collection for it to be complete. :) Some of these stories are better than others, and though not required reading for the series, they give you just a little bit extra of Sookie, or Eric, and expand on an event that took place between the books, usually insignificant or otherwise alluded to in the series but without much detail.

Below is the list of stories and what other places you can find them (plus my notes on when I read them). You can also find a more complete list which includes the secondary characters I mentioned above in this Wikipedia article.

• "Fairy Dust" between books 4 and 5, Dead to the World and Dead as a Doornail.
read 11/30/05 as part of Powers of Detection anthology. Reread 10/4/12.

• "Dracula Night" between books 4 and 5, Dead to the World and Dead as a Doornail.
read Sep 2011 from Many Bloody Returns anthology. Reread 10/4/12.

• "One Word Answer" between books 5 and 6, Dead as a Doornail and Definitely Dead.
read 5/16/05 as part of Bite anthology. Reread 10/4/12.

• "Lucky" between books 7 and 8, All Together Dead and From Dead to Worse.
read 10/30/11 as part of Unusual Suspects anthology.

• "Gift Wrap" between books 8 and 9, From Dead to Worse and Dead and Gone.
read 10/3/12 (also part of of Unusual Suspects anthology).

REVIEW: Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 9) by Charlaine Harris

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My Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

This is truly one of my favorite series and Charlaine Harris is a fantastic writer. I've read almost everything she's written including her much older Aurora Teagarden and Lily Bard cozy mystery series, and the first couple from the Harper Connelly series (kinda put Harper aside so I could concentrate on catching up on this and several other series from other authors).

But what can I say other than I LOVE Sookie! (and Eric and Pam). Yet I cannot read this series during the summer when True Blood is on HBO because the TV series has deviated from the books in so many ways, that it can get confusing reading the books during True Blood season.

In this installment, the Weres and Shifters have finally decided to come out. And why not? The Vampires have been pretty successful with their own Great Reveal, so they feel it's high time the human population know the truth: that there's even more supernaturals living among them. Unfortunately, things don't go as smoothly as planned and several Weres close to Sookie lose their lives in a battle that's bigger than all of them.