The Lycanthrope Club is a series by Tristan Eifler consisting of two novellas and a collection of short stories, the first two of which chronicle the tale of high schooler Melinda Cooper, who goes on a camping trip with her parents, gets lost in the woods, and is bitten by a werewolf.
The Lycanthrope Club: Book I can be read here
The Lycanthrope Club: Book II can be read here.
The rest of his stories can be read here.
This series provides examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Cynthia. This also doubles as a pun, considering she gets bitten by Yvette, and thus, becomes a werewolf.
- Artistic License – Physics: Discussed in Book II.Melinda had conceded long ago that lycanthropy didn’t - couldn’t - obey the laws of nature. The transition from human to wolf and wolf to human entailed something that would cause the average physicist to scream bloody murder: the creation and destruction of matter on the macroscopic level. It was a flagrant violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. Perhaps it tapped into some unknown source of energy. Perhaps it exploited some undiscovered quirk of the universe - some quantum loophole that allowed matter to come into being from nothing. Whatever the reason, it was close enough to magic as far as Melinda was concerned.
- Extra-Strength Masquerade: At the end of Book 2, Sophie attacks the school dance in her werewolf form and bites some of the students there. The secret still doesn't get out.
- Healing Factor: Except for injuries caused by silver and injuries to the spine and brain, lycanthropes heal from injuries very, very quickly.
- Mugging the Monster: In Book I, the Alpha Bitch cheerleader and her two cohorts choose the exact wrong moment to get grabby with the outcast student who's...well, guess. Subverted in that, while they do wind up becoming werewolves as well, everyone ends up perfectly fine as friends, and at least one of the beta bitches is pretty enthused by the situation.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Aside from the forced transformation on a full moon, a lycanthrope is in full control of his or her transformation, though once they initiate it, they can't stop it, only delay it. The effort to restrain the transformation causes the lycanthrope pain, eventually becoming too strong to resist. Lycanthropes for the most part are in full control of themselves, retaining their full intellect, though their werewolf instincts are severely amplified. Often, strong personality traits become greatly amplified while transformed.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: Those who find out about the existence of lycanthropes are not harmed.
