Literature / The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries

The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, also known as the Southern Vampire Series, are a series of best-selling novels by Charlaine Harris. They take place mostly in and around the town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and are written with a distinctly old school Southern flavor, including some of the consequences of living in that part of the country.

The main character, and the one from whose point of view the stories are told, is Sookie Stackhouse, a very pretty waitress at a popular bar in town, who is also a telepath. Sookie's world is one where, two years before the first book's story begins, the Vampires came forward, introduced themselves to the world at large, and began walking among regular people. Sookie's boyfriend Bill is a vampire, so chosen because she cannot read his mind and thus finds it comforting to be around him. Due to the vampires turning up in Bon Temps, murder soon follows, and Sookie's relationship with Bill and the politics thereof causes her to get mixed up in solving the mysteries.

An HBO series called True Blood has been made (very loosely) based on the books.

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Books and short stories in the series are as follows:

• Dead Until Dark (May 2001)
• Living Dead in Dallas (March 2002)
• Club Dead (May 2003)
• Dead to the World (May 2004)

  • "Fairy Dust" in Powers of Detection (October 2004)—Introduction of Claudine's brother Claude, and posthumous introduction of their sister Claudette.
  • "Dancers in the Dark", a novella in Night's Edge (October 2004) (a Sookie-universe story without the character of Sookie Stackhouse)—Introduction of Sean and Layla, later seen briefly in All Together Dead.[7]
  • "Dracula Night" in Many Bloody Returns (September 2007)

• Dead as a Doornail (May 2005)

  • "One Word Answer" in Bite (2005)—Introduction of Hadley's death & Mr. Cataliades, Waldo, and Sophie-Anne Leclerq.[10]

• Definitely Dead (May 2006)

  • "Tacky" in My Big, Fat Supernatural Wedding (2006) (a Sookie-universe story without the character of Sookie Stackhouse)—Introduction of vampires Dahlia and Taffy, and their husbands Todd and Don. (Dahlia is later seen alone in All Together Dead and with Taffy in "Dahila Underground" and "Bacon".)

• All Together Dead (May 2007)

  • "Dahlia Underground" in Crimes by Moonlight (April 2010) (a Sookie-universe story without the character of Sookie Stackhouse)— Features the vampires Dahlia and Taffy
  • "Lucky" in Unusual Suspects (December 2008)

• From Dead to Worse (May 2008)

  • "Gift Wrap" in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe (October 2008)

• Dead and Gone (May 2009)

  • "Bacon" in Strange Brew (July 2009) (a Sookie-universe story without the character of Sookie Stackhouse)
  • "The Britlingens Go To Hell" in Must Love Hellhounds (September 2009) (a Sookie-universe story without the character of Sookie Stackhouse)—The Britlingens were previously introduced in All Together Dead.

  • A Touch of Dead (October 2009) (a compilation of some of the Sookie-universe short stories: "Fairy Dust", "One Word Answer", "Dracula Night", "Lucky", and "Giftwrap".)
• Dead in the Family (May 2010)

  • "Two Blondes" in Death's Excellent Vacation (August 2010)

• Dead Reckoning (May 2011)
• Deadlocked (May 2012)
• Dead Ever After (May 2013) - The final book in the main series.
  • After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse (October 2013) a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue

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This series contains examples of:

• Accidental Marriage: In book 9 Eric arranges for Sookie to present him with a knife used for weddings in front of the Nevada manager. This in vampire terminology seems to mean that he and Sookie are married. Sookie is not told about what this means ahead of time.
• Achilles' Heel/Kryptonite Factor: Every supernatural creature has one. Garlic and sunlight for vampires, naturally. Silver for both weres and vampires. The Fair Folk are of course weak to Cold Iron, but are even more violently allergic to lemon than vampires are to garlic, something Sookie takes advantage of when a fairy tries to kill her. Demons are apparently weak to steel.
• Action Girl: Sookie. (How badass is killing someone with a garden tool or breaking someone's knee with a baseball bat just to get them to back off?) Pam. Most vampire women, the demon girls...
• All of the Other Reindeer: The rest of Bon Temps, despite being aware that such things as vampires exist, largely disbelieve in Sookie's telepathy, and think she's just weird, crazy, or stupid. Those who do believe think she's a freak and treat her only with civility because it's impolite to do otherwise...or because her talent is useful to them.
• Angsty Surviving Twin: Claude is the last one of his siblings who survives, and develops quite a personality shift; deciding to stay behind on Earth after most fairies decide to go back to their own realm and hangs around with Sookie because she's (almost) the last surviving fairy family member he has left.
• Anyone Can Die: No main characters yet, but as the books go on, supporting cast members are dropping like flies...
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Vampires exist and are known the world over as such, though they've managed to convince people that it's a medical condition and not supernatural in nature. But even with this knowledge, people don't believe in Sookie's telepathy, or in any of the other supernatural entities roaming the earth.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: From Dead to the World:
  "...on Debbie Pelt, whom I despised because she had been cruel to Alcide, insulted me grievously, burned a hole in my favorite wrap and—oh—tried to kill me by proxy. Also she had stupid hair."
• Asshole Victim: Crystal, although the actual people who had crucified her were not the same people she had wronged.
• The Atoner: Godfrey, a child molester vampire, commits suicide by sunlight because he is unable to (un)live with himself.
• Badass Normal: Sookie Stackhouse. Though she doesn't have any supernatural abilities beyond the ability to read human thoughts, she believably comes out on top of countless dangerous situations through practicality, resourcefulness, intelligence and a refusal to back down or sit on her hands.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted in All Together Dead - many of the preternaturally gorgeous vampires are injured to the point of disfigurement.
  • Sookie herself, a blonde beauty, often gets battered to the point of disfigurement. If not for supernatural methods of healing her, anyway.
  • Subverted with Sookie - being human, even with superhuman healing methods, she's often very badly hurt by the end of the book, spending weeks to months in recovery time.
  • Least we not mention Queen Sophie Anne. Poor poor Sophie Anne...
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Bubba is Elvis Presley, albeit a bit brain damaged because of how he was turned into a vampire.
  • Not to mention how drugged-up his body was beforehand.
  • Also, Alexei Romanov, last tsarevich of the Russian Empire, was turned into a vampire by Eric's maker
• Berserk Button: Never EVER call Bubba by his real name (or the name of the guy you think he looks like).
• Black Dude Dies First: The first death in Living Dead in Dallas is Merlotte's black cook, Lafayette.
• Blessed with Suck: Sookie's mind reading not only gets her embroiled in vampire, werewolf and faerie politics in turn - exposing her to horrific violence - it also prevents her from forming close relationships with humans, since she can literally hear every thought that passes through their head and it's extremely hard for her to even dampen the effect.
• Big Fancy House: Belle Rive, the Bellefleur home. It is actually gradually falling apart at the beginning, but Bill finds out that Caroline Bellefleur is a descendant of his, and secretly sends her some money. Caroline has lots of fun restoring Belle Rive to its former glory.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: Sookie finds Bill absolutely entrancing, and it's not because of his glamor - the mental "dead zone" of vampires means she doesn't have to put up mental shields. Fangbangers are also a general example, seeking out vampires.
• Brainless Beauty: JB du Rone, who is at least as attractive as Jason, but is much more dull.
• Brother–Sister Incest: You could easily miss it if you weren't paying attention, but Sookie mentions seeing the two fairies who torture her in Dead and Gone having sex. Claudine later reveals that they're brother and sister.
• Bullying the Dragon: The Fellowship of the Sun likes torturing and killing vampires. Drainers hunt them too, in order to drain their blood and sell it. The fact that vampires have severe weaknesses to silver, sunlight, and wood-to-the-heart (it need not be a stake; stray splinters can kill one) evens odds a bit, though.
• Bury Your Gays: Several examples. Lafayette, Adabelle Yancy, Mel, Hadley Stackhouse (who was probably bisexual, but the trope still stands)...
• Bus Crash: Several characters in After Dead end up this way, many in bizarrely random ways. Terry Bellefleur and his wife are killed in a car accident. Franklin Mott is murdered by a human woman and his grave ransacked. Sarah Newlin, sent to prison in the side-story Small Town Wedding contracts lupus while incarcerated, and dies. The majority of characters have horrific deaths, go through divorces and generally have an unhappy, depressing life.
• Cat Fight: Both played straight and averted, as the people who frequently kick the daylights out of Sookie are either supernatural and consider humans beneath them; or are thugs and bad guys whom the reader's supposed to dislike anyway. But occasionally Sookie goes up against another female and holds her own just fine.
  • She just as often goes up against male opponents and holds her own just fine: Charles, Mickey, Murry... and other female characters go up against male characters and win as well.
• Celebrity Star: Sookie's bodyguard for times when Bill or Eric can't be present to protect her is a famous figure who was turned into a vampire by a fan...but it went poorly, leaving him a bit diminished in mental capacity. Referring to him by the name he had in life is a big no-no, as it upsets him. He is called Bubba to his face, and Sookie usually refers to him in narrative as The Man from Memphis. Readers would recognize him as Elvis Presley.
  • In Dead In The Family, there's Alexei Romanov. Who makes Bubba look incredibly sane and normal. And yet is also a giant Woobie, under the circumstances.
• Chekhov's Gun: Things Sookie says or sees early in the book end up important later.
  • One comes in the form of a borrowed gun in Dead To The World. Sookie uses it to kill Debbie.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Lorena. Good god, Lorena.
• Cold-Blooded Torture
• Costume Porn: Every time Sookie changes clothes, her new outfit is described in loving detail.
• Country Mouse: Sookie is very much the Fish out of Water in the big city when the story takes her there.
• Combo Platter Powers: Subverted, in that when Sookie gets a powerup from drinking or otherwise ingesting vampire blood, it can last anywhere from hours to weeks. It gives her a weaker version of a vampire's abilities, with none of their weaknesses. And the danger is that it is like taking a drug. Humans tend to feel invincible and act like it; which ends up as a fatal reminder that they are not, in fact, invincible.
• Crossover: Lily Bard, from Harris' Shakespeare's mystery novels, shows up in Bon Temps hired by the Pelts to find Debbie.
• Dark Action Girl: Lorena in book 3.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  "'He looked baffled; that's what he looked.'"
• Did Not Die That Way: Sookie and Jason were raised by their grandmother after both parents died during a flood. After discovering that their Gran actually had an affair with a fairy that resulted in their father's birth, it is revealed that a clan of water fairies were responsible for the deaths because their fairy ancestors had been at war for quite some time.
• Disappeared Dad: Both Bill and Eric had children who they had to abandon after being turned into vampires. Bill eventually discovers some descendants who he helps out financially, though.
• Distressed Dude: The Victim of the Week, which Sookie is usually trying to rescue, is often male. Bill, Jason, Farrell, Eric, Sam...
• Doing in the Scientist: In the first book, the vampires are presented as having some sort of basis in real biochemistry who are ultimately human, with the logical gaps and the incompleteness of the explanations of their abilities covered by the protagonist-narrator's own lack of scientific training. The belief that this is so, and that the truBlood is a synthetic that works by science, remains the predominant belief system for the world at large. As the series progresses, it is made increasingly obvious that this is not the case, though the only people that are in on the magic thing are the supernaturals themselves (including Sookie) and a fundamentalist cult bent on exterminating vampires for their inevitably murderous and evil natures.
• Domino Revelation: Vampires exist so why not shifters, were-creatures, fairies, ghosts, and other odd entities.
• Elvis Lives: A fan who happened to be a vampire was working in the morgue when they brought him in and, well...
• Emergency Transformation: Vampirism and vampire blood in general.
• Emotion Eater: Callisto and others of her kind feed on drunkenness and lust.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Claude, who's okay with this, Jason Stackhouse, who is okay with it more or less but may not be so crazy about it when he's the object of desire, and Eric.
• Everything but the Girl: Eric, after getting his memory back.
• Evil Feels Good: Sookie frets about not being a good Christian when she reflects on how little she cares about some of the dark things she's had to do since getting involved with the supernaturals.
• The Fair Folk: Claudine and Claude are both fairies in the supernatural sense. Claudine is, in fact, Sookie's Fairy Godmother. And Sookie's cousin. Fairies seem to be some sort of "base" for other creatures. Claudine mentions that fairies can become demons, angels, brownies, and other things - Claudine herself is sort of apprenticing to become an angel.
• Fantastic Racism: Vampires consider themselves the best, other supernaturals beneath them, and humans the bottom of the barrel; despite having been human once themselves, some vampires are offended if a human dares speak to them in the manner of an equal. Werewolves and ShapeShifters have friction between them, and have been known to comment on how tacky it is if one sleeps with the other. The shifters also have a justified wariness of humans, who they believe will treat them more like animals than people. The faerie are split decision. Some like humans just fine and find them fun; others find them disgusting.
• Fetish: There's an entire subculture of people who dig the idea of sleeping with or getting bitten by vampires. Plus, vampires can put the woogie on most humans (Telepaths like Sookie are immune) to get what they want from them. The "Fangbangers" all dress in black and spend time indoors to look like vampires, or attractive to them.
• Fingore: When Crystal cheats on Jason, shifter rules dictate she must be punished for breaking her marriage vows. Calvin, who vouches for her, takes her place. As Jason is the wronged party, he is the one supposed to administer punishment, but Sookie (the one who vouched for Jason) is pressured into taking his place as well. Sookie smashes Calvin's hand with a brick.
• First-Person Smartass: Sookie.
• Forced Transformation: Bob Jessup, a nerdy witch, gets turned into a cat by Amelia in some sort of magical sexual experimentation gone awry.
• Fur Against Fang: Vampires and shifters predictably do not get along.
• Gambit Roulette: Sookie invokes this trope to shoot down Alcide's suggestion that the plot of Dead to the World might be a plan by Eric to get into Sookie's pants. Alcide is suitably chastened.
• Glamour: Vampires have the ability to hypnotize people. Sookie is immune to this because she's a telepath. It might also be because she's part fairy which is where her telepathic powers come from. Fairies are also ethereally beautiful, and can hold people's rapturous attention simply by being in the room. When both Claudine and Claude enter Merlotte's, everyone stops to stare at the gorgeous siblings. Sookie herself seems enthralled by Niall, her fairy great-great-grandfather, and says that he's the most beautiful creature she's seen.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Sookie, her brother Jason and their cousin Hadley are one eighth faerie by way of an affair their grandmother had with a half human/half faerie hybrid. It is implied that the faerie blood flowing through their veins is why Sookie, Jason, and Hadley seem so attractive to supernatural creatures. The fact that both Sookie and Hunter (Hadley's son) are telepathic is due to Mr. Cataliades, what with being friends with their fairy granddaddy, giving his gift of telepathy to all Fintan's ancestors with the essential "spark"
• Healing Factor: Vampires and shifters are quick healers. Vampires heal even faster if they've had the blood of family. Sookie takes advantage of the healing properties of vampire blood several times, and would probably have died without it.
• Hemo Erotic
• Hired Guns: The Britlingen bodyguards for the King of Kentucky, who show up in All Together Dead. They're really tough, and consequently really expensive.
• Home Porn Movie: Making these is what lands Jason in jail as the prime suspect in the murders of three women in Dead until Dark.
• Honey Trap: It is eventually revealed that Sophie-Anne sent Bill to seduce Sookie so that Sophie-Anne could use her telepathy.
• Hyper-Awareness: Several characters, including Sookie herself (particularly as if she's had vampire blood recently).
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: The reason why Sookie isn't dating Sam. Also because he's probably the only person in town who would want her as an employee.
• Identical Grandson: Jason Stackhouse's looks and personality are identical to that of his half human/half faerie grandfather's fraternal twin brother, Dermot.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming/Theme Naming: As you can see from the list above, all the books have the word "dead" in the title. Note, however, that Dead Over Heels is not a Sookie Stackhouse novel, but one of Harris' older Aurora Teagarden mysteries.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Sookie laments her lack of normal life because of her telepathy. She then laments the fact that her life without the supernatural in it would go back to being what passes for normal for her, while her life with the supernatural in it exposes her to horrific violence. And normal for her was pretty lousy, as she can't have a normal relationship since she's a telepath, and everyone she knows thinks she's a freak.
• Lost Wedding Ring: In "Definitely Dead", Sophie-Anne loses a wedding present from Peter Threadgill, which turns out to have been stolen by her girlfriend Hadley. This was actually an important plot point, as Sophie-Anne and Peter are the Queen of Louisiana and King of Arkansas, respectively. Their marriage was for political and economic reasons, and if Sophie-Anne had turned up at their wedding party without the complete set of gifts Peter had given her, it would have been reason enough to bring suit against Sophie-Anna and bring Louisiana into his domain as compensation. When Threadgill learned about this fact, he had conspired to prevent Sophie-Anne from ever locating the missing bracelet. Thankfully, Sookie discovers that Hadley had it stashed all along somewhere in her apartment.
• I Love the Dead: The murderer in Dead Until Dark turns out to be Rene Lenier, who has sex with the fresh corpses of his murder victims.
• Jerkass: Both Sookie's brother Jason, and Crystal.
  • Several of the town residents are Jerk Asses to Sookie specifically.
  • Claude, though he can turn on the charm when he really wants to.
• Kill It with Fire: Vampire skin lights up like parchment when touched by flame.
• Kiss of the Vampire: The Fangbangers seem to really enjoy getting bitten.
• Land Poor: Sookie, who inherits their grandmothers' land and house but struggles initially to pay the taxes on them.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: A witch, in a failed takeover bid for Fangtasia, curses Eric to lose all memory of who he is. When the curse is lifted, he has no memory of what he did during the curse.
• Law of Conservation of Normality: Sookie may help the vampire population of Louisiana whenever needed, but when they don't need her, she's got to go to work and pay her bills and worry about money like everybody else.
• Line-of-Sight Name: While infiltrating the Fellowship, Sookie's "date" Hugo comes upon the name "Marigold" for her. She is initially blindsided by the choice, until she notices the pot of marigolds nearby and realizes she failed to choose a fake name for herself.

• Literary Work of Magic: A short story reveals that Bram Stoker was one of the vampires who wanted to come out early. His sire, Dracula, wished to be the main character.
• Love Dodecahedron: Sookie is a very desirable woman, and after having vampire blood literally glows. That, plus her telepathy makes her politically desirable for the vampires, but she is the object of romantic affection to Eric, Alcide and Sam besides Bill, at least. Complicated further after she dumps Bill after he cheats on her, she sleeps with a mind-wiped Eric, and gains a new boyfriend in Quinn the weretiger.
  • ... Who she dumps when she figures out he loves his family more. She's with Eric in a real relationship, but ultimately ends up with someone else.
    • Part of her desirability towards vampires is explained when it is revealed that she is part faerie, and faerie blood is highly addictive for vampires.
  • The dodecahedron is finally resolved: Eric dissolves his relationship with Sookie due to not only the events of Dead Ever After and Deadlocked, but he was promised to another vampire by his maker. Sam and Sookie finally get a Relationship Upgrade. After Dead reveals that Bill and Sookie become Amicable Exes, and Alcide marries a werelynx.
• Love Hurts: Sookie is frequently frustrated and upset by Bill's thoughtlessness and lack of consideration. Part of this comes from his vampire nature subsuming his humanity. Part of this comes from the fact that he's been dead since the Civil War and is not quite up to date on how a modern woman prefers to be treated.
  • And part of it comes from finding out that Bill was ordered back to Bon Temps specifically to seduce Sookie so that the Queen could use her telepathy....
• Maybe Ever After: The final book ends with Sookie saying that she and Sam will probably get together, but she wouldn't be destroyed or anything if they don't. The epilogue confirms that they do indeed get together.
• Mad Love: Lorena and Bill.
• Magic Kiss: Dermot is unhinged because of a spell that Niall put on him. Sookie mentions that a kiss can break spells, so she and Claude try it out on Dermot, the two of them kissing him at the same time. And it works!
• Magical Land: the Another Dimension where fairies are from.
• The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Shifters generally find it hard to keep their secret from human lovers.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Sookie never had control of her powers until getting with Bill and the other supernaturals. She is pretty much the personification of this trope.
• Murder the Hypotenuse:
  • Sookie was forced to do it to Bill's vampire sire, Lorena, for whom he unceremoniously dumped Sookie. But it was self defense.
  • Debbie Pelt tried that on Sookie. Her fate was the same as Lorena's.
  • Crystal's other boyfriend tried it on Sookie's brother Jason. Subverted in that Felton did not want Jason dead (and he had plenty of time to kill him), he wanted Jason to be turned into a werepanther. His reasoning was that bitten werepanthers are looked at as inferior breeding partners in comparison to pure werepanthers or ordinary humans. Jason being tainted would destroy his chances of being a rival for Crystal's affections. Strangely enough, he could have saved himself a lot of effort and kept his life if he had just ended it when he abducted Jason.
• Must Be Invited: Vampires can't get into private homes without being invited. Sookie rescinded both Bill and Eric's invitations when she didn't want them around that night, and they had to walk away backwards through the door, which amused Sookie greatly. Naturally, there are ways around it, like either having an agent not weak to sunlight accost them during the day, or more directly, simply burning the house down. Sookie wonders whether it was true for fairies as well, but finds out it isn't when Niall freely enters her house. Amelia does place a ward around the house preventing fairies from entering, but Niall is also exempt because he has been welcomed in before.
• Never One Murder: The Sookie-verse is a very dangerous place.
• No Body Left Behind: Played straight for vampires, who disintegrate. Fairies turn into, well, fairy dust. Inverted for demons, however - their bodies do not decompose, nothing alive will eat them, and they have to be burned.
• No-Sell: Regarding Sookie, both ways: she is immune to vampire glamour, and vampires are immune to her telepathy. Until she gets a temporary power boost from an infusion of vampire blood, that is.
• Not with Them for the Money: The Bellefleur family are well-off and have a famous, beautiful mansion. Andy Bellefleur's wife, Halleigh would rather they just lived in a small house together.
• Our Monsters Are Different
  • Our Vampires Are Different
  • Our Werewolves Are Different
  • Special mention is merited by the Fae, who are mostly Disney-style fairies without any particular reference to coherent Irish legend and additionally get the Bella Swan "smells like dinner to supernaturals" power.
• Parental Abandonment
  • Sookie's parents were killed when she was small. Murdered, we find out in Dead and Gone.
• Police Psychic: One book has a couple of agents come looking for Sookie after she used her Telepathy to direct rescue workers towards buried survivors of a hotel bombing some time previous. They have an idea about using her as a Police Psychic, but she's not keen; she can only hear what people are thinking at that moment, so she'd have to spend a lot of time with very unpleasant people before they happen to think about the information she needs, which is not an enticing prospect. However, to explain that she'd have to admit to having such powers.
• Power Incontinence: None of the telepaths in the series can turn it off, though Sookie has gotten better at shielding.
• The Power of Blood: Vampires derive sustenance from blood, of course. However, vampire blood is magical in and of itself, bestowing enhanced healing and strength to humans. Some can get addicted to the rush of power, and sometimes die when they forget they aren't invincible. Drainers make a living off of kidnapping vampires and "milking" their blood to sell on the black market. Another power blood has is linking a vampire and a human who have shared each other's blood. Sookie's telepathic ability gets a major boost from sharing blood with Eric; normally unable to read the minds of vampires, she is able to in All Together Dead when she consumes enough of Eric's blood. She wisely keeps this to herself, fearing being enslaved or killed if any vampires find out.
• Puberty Superpower: Born shifters, whose other nature manifests at puberty.
• Punk in the Trunk: Sookie has nowhere else to put Bill in after she rescues him, so she stows him in the trunk. Unfortunately, Debbie Pelt pushes her in after him.
• Race for Your Love: Averted. Sookie takes off, angry, after Bill does something thoughtless. Bill does not rush after her.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Considering the series is set mainly in Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina had a massive effect on later volumes' politics.
• Rule of Three: Discussed and ultimately averted; when Bill mentions that he and Sookie have already shared blood three times, and this affects how other vampires see her, Sookie asks if there was something significant about the number three. There isn't.
• Same-Sex Triplets: Averted with siblings Claude, Claudine, and Claudette.
• Sexual Harassment and Rape Tropes:
  • Attempted Rape: If a vampire is deprived of blood to the point of starvation, he will leap on the first victim he encounters. If the victim is also his preferred sexual partner type, the vampire will seek to have sex with the victim whether the victim is willing or not.
  • Near-Rape Experience: Bill actually started with Sookie but she managed to get through to him, and he stopped. Sookie tries to rationalize this, and not to think about it, by turns. This happens to Sookie once before and after, by a human and a vampire. She has the presence of mind to rescind Mickey's invitation just before he could force himself on her.
  • Rape as Backstory: Sookie was molested by an uncle when she was little. When she tells Bill this, said uncle turns up dead the next day.
• Starcrossed Lovers: Kevin and Kenya started out as such, but do not remain so.
• Shapeshifter: Sookie's boss Sam is a Shapeshifter whose preferred form is that of a friendly dog. And he's not the only shapeshifter in the series by a longshot.
• Shout-Out: Anne Rice
  • Dead and Gone opens with an absolutely hilarious parody of "What Not To Wear"
  • Sookie gives Eric the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to watch when he's staying over at her house in Dead to the World.
  • Dead in the Family has everyone at the bar sing the theme song to True Blood.
• Silver Has Mystic Powers: It harms werewolves and vampires, as per tradition. While a silver net isn't very useful for capturing vampires, silver chains are very efficient at restraining them, and they are used as torture by both humans and other vampires.
• Southern Gothic: The series is about the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana and their interactions with vampires as well as other supernatural creatures such as werewolves.
• Suicide by Sunlight: Called "meeting the sun".
• Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious: Fairies are like magical crack to vampires. This is the reason why Sookie, much to her displeasure, is more attractive to vampires than other humans, as she's part fairy. It's also a convenient excuse for why Eric was so enamored with her when he lost her memory, offering to relinquish his power and wealth simply to be with Sookie, but even he doesn't believe it completely.
• Take That!: Rice again. Several vamps (especially those local to New Orleans) express animosity towards Rice for making people expect a certain image of vampires (and contempt for those who consciously try to play to that image)
• Title Drop:
  • Sookie uses the words "Definitely Dead", in the book with the same name, to describe Hadley´s feelings about Sophie-Anne´s marriage.
  • Dead and Gone is mentioned in the book with the same name, but the phrase is first uttered in the preceding book, From Dead to Worse.
  • If you read carefully, you'll find one in every book and a few of the short stories, usually said or thought by Sookie herself.
• Tears of Blood: When a vampire cries.
• The Casanova: Jason
• The Extremist Was Right: The anti-vampire fanatics claim that vampirism is not the result of a virus but a supernatural condition, that synthetic blood will not satisfy most vampires, that vampires can mentally control humans, that vampires have a secret government to which they owe their primary allegiances, and that they are irredeemably evil. All but the last are true, and given that some of the others make them nearly obligate predators of humans, more of them come close to being at least functionally evil than their friends might want to think.
• The Unmasqued World
• Telepathy: Sookie, Barry the Bellhop, and Sookie's kid cousin Hunter.
• Too Many Love Interests: Bill, Eric, Sam, Alcide, Calvin, Quinn...Sookie herself has expressed some discomfort with this.
• Trademark Favorite Food: All of Bon Temps is crazy about Caroline Bellefleur's chocolate cake.
• Vampires Are Rich: "You won't find a vampire in a Ford Aspire", Sookie muses, when she notes the flashy cars vampires own.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: For vampires, sex and feeding are intertwined. Humans find sex with vampires far more enjoyable than normal, and can get addicted to it.
• Vampires Own Night Clubs: Eric and Pam co-own Fangtasia. Members of Stan Davis's nest own The Bat's Wing.
  • The books actually say that some vampires have tried other things, like all-night dry cleaners' or grocery stores, but that they never took off like the vampire bars did.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Fairies are weak to lemons. In a setting where everyone drinks sweet tea. Sookie takes advantage of this fact in Dead and Gone by filling up a squirt gun with lemon juice, which she gets to use when she gets attacked by Breandan's forces. The fairy affected reacted to the lemon juice even worse than when a normal person is splashed with sulfuric acid.
• Weirdness Magnet: Sookie is generally blamed for all the supernatural things popping up in Bon Temps by some of its citizens. Of course, it doesn't help when you're the favorite person of Vampire, Werewolf, and Fairy royalty.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: After Dead is an epilogue book filled with short updates on Sookie and the cast after the events of Dead Ever After.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Alexei Romanov.
  • Jake in All Together Dead is a particularly tragic example. After undergoing an Emergency Transformation to save his life, he winds up becoming some sort of vampire/werewolf hybrid. This causes his former pack-mates, his parents, his girlfriend and basically everyone he has ever known to reject him with varying levels of tact. It gets worse in that all the vampires also reject him and belittle him because of his former species. This eventually drive him into a Face–Heel Turn and he is instrumental in the Fellowship of the Sun's plan to annihilate the vampires at the Summit. Also overlaps with Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal.
• Wunza Plot: She's a telepathic barmaid! He's a slightly asynchronous vampire! They solve murders!
• You Sexy Beast: The series is built on this trope, with vampires. There's even a special term for people who like to have sex with vampires: "fangbangers".

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