I know that this genre is currently in vogue and many people have taken up stories with this as a focus. I have not tried all of the newbies yet, though one taste of Stephanie Meyer makes me loathe to try others featuring teen-agers. The vampire stories of Anne Rice, as well, became quite leaden with turgid prose.
Among the newer authors I can definitely recommend Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels. She has wonderful, usually fully-rounded characters. Settings and plots are also very good. I do recommend reading her from the beginning as the story is linear. If a teen-ager wants to read them, I admit that she does have some very erotic content sans the benefit of marriage.
An author who has been writing from around the mid-1970s, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, has a great series of novels featuring the Conte de St. Germaine. The first one was The Hotel Transylvania, which was set in Paris in the later part of the 18th century. In other volumes we go back to when St. Germaine was made a vampire (a few thousand years before the common era), ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, China, India, South America during the time of the Conquistadors, etc. She did not write the novels in order.
Finally, read the original Bram Stoker Dracula.
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The Twilight movie was appalling enough so I haven't read the Twilight books. If that's anything to judge them by, they appeal to me about as much as sticking needles in my eyes. Of course I could just be getting old. :)
There's a new book called Dracula The Un-Dead out, billed as the sequel to the original Bram Stoker classic. Launched on Halloween, it's co-authored by Dacre Stoker, the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoke, and Ian Holt. What's interesting is that handwritten notes of Bram's were used in part for its plot and character construction. I'm looking forward to reading that. (I have a review copy in the pile.)
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