Read Your Way Around the World invites you to Transylvania. In my youth I thought Transylvania was as real at Atlantis. I hope I wasn’t too old before I realized that it was a real place, populated by real people, many of whom probably do not bite one another to sustain life. Photographic evidence suggests that the “land beyond the forest” is quite pretty with meadows, forests, castles, churches and ski hills. However, today it is the dark, brooding sinister Transylvania (courtesy of Bram Stoker) that we are interested in. Dracula has become a literary industry and we never seem to tire of his creepy, hair-raising tales. Royal Blood(M) by Rhys Bowen. What’s your duty when you are 34th in line to the British throne? Why to represent the family at a Transylvanian wedding. Lady Georgiana Rannoch, penniless, must come up with the means to supply herself with a maid to keep up appearances. They arrive to find a bloody bride, a murder and a mystery waiting be solved. Mina Harker shares her story in Dracula’s tale in Dracula My Love: the secret journals of Mina Harker (M) by Syrie James. In this version of the story a romance exists between Mina Harker and Dracula. We learn of her troubled past and her irresistible attraction to a handsome and dangerous stranger. Mina is torn between her attraction to this man and loyalty to her husband.
The Dead Travel Fast(M) by Deanna Raybourn. Nineteenth century Scottish novelist Theodora Lestrange leaves Scotland and her boring life behind to visit her friend Cosmina in a Transylvanian castle. Theodora falls for the handsome Count Andrei Dragulescu only to fear that his father has returned from the dead as a vampire and has murdered a servant girl. Gothic romance and vampire lore. Dracula the Un-dead(M)by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt. It is 1912 – 25 years after Dracula crumbled to dust. Quincy Harker, son of Mina and Jonathan, stumbles upon his parents’ past in a stage version of Dracula. Dacre Stoker, a descendant of Bram Stoker, has pieced this story together based on the original author’s handwritten notes. Key to Conflict(M) by Talia Gryphon. Gillian Key is a paranormal marine special forces operative who has the ability to relate to the mental stress of non-humans. Her world becomes, perhaps not unpredictably, dangerous, when she travels to Romania to counsel a vampire. Fangland(M) by John Marks. Journalist Evangeline Harker goes missing in Romania where she is meant to be investigating a story on Romanian crime boss Ion Torgu. Months later she reappears in a Romanian monastery although she can remember nothing of what happened to her. N one in her office can understand why the rest of them continue to be tortured by mysterious events. Renfield: slave of Dracula(M) by Barbara Hambly draws on Stoker’s minor character Renfield who is confined to a lunatic asylum and eats creatures in an effort to obtain their life force. He comes under Dracula’s control with the promise of a supply of these creatures. Hambly imagines Renfield’s past through his diaries and letters.
Jack the Ripper meets Dracula in Castle Rouge(M) by Carole Nelson Douglas. Detective Irene Adler is on the case when her biographer and her husband are abducted. Who to search for first? Irene’s helpers are an American prostitute called Pink and theatrical manager Bram Stoker. The clues lead them to a castle in Transylvania and Jack the Ripper.
