Book 1:  Guilty Pleasures, ©1993
Book 2:  The Laughing Corpse, ©1994
Book 3:  Circus of the Damned, ©1995
Book 4:  The Lunatic Cafe, ©1996
Book 5:  Bloody Bones, ©1996
Book 6:  The Killing Dance, ©1997
Book 7:  Burnt Offerings, ©1998
Book 8:  Blue Moon, ©1998
Book 9:  Obsidian Butterfly, ©2000

Published by:  Ace Fantasy

On a d20, these books roll a...

Readability		Inspiration Factor
20		18

Synopsis:

St. Louis, modern times. Three years ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that vampires had rights and that you had to have a warrant to legally kill them. What's a vampire slayer to do?

Anita Blake has earned herself the nickname of 'The Executioner' from the blood-suckers, most of whom would like to either eliminate her or make her one of them. Meanwhile, one of the most powerful vampires in the city wants her to be his girlfriend. It's enough to keep a girl up nights.

Role-Playing Inspirations:

• Vampires

  Lots and lots of them. Throughout the series we get to meet a myriad of vampiric personalities, from the newly undead but still sniveling two-bit snitch to the Master of the City. Some of the vampires embrace their new legal status (even only taking blood from willing donors) and even exploit it, marketing their undead status through such mainstream venues as religion, restaurants and nightclubs. Other vampires desire a return to the old ways when they lived on the fringes of society, hunted and killed humans and only the strongest and most intelligent vampires survived the fearful retaliations of mankind.

• Werewolf social structure

  Lycanthropy is a disease, much like AIDS in that it has no known cure and is spread through bodily fluid, especially tainted blood and saliva. Even though there are laws against it, folks still discriminate against lycanthropes - go figure.

  We meet werewolves (along with wererats & wereleopards and other lycanthropes) throughout the series, but two books, 'The Lunatic Cafe' and 'Blue Moon' feature our fuzzy friends. Anita eventually gets dragged into the pack's eternal power struggles.

• Great characters and villains

  It's amazing the way that Laurell Hamilton keeps coming up with great antagonists. Each of the books features a new main monster but each continues to develop the bountiful minor characters that really bring these books alive. You'll find plenty of material for NPCs for your campaign here.

• How to play a non-evil necromancer

  Even though she's been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church due to her talents as an 'animator', (she became an Episcopalian) Anita Blake has a somewhat respectable career for the company, "Animators, Inc." where they raise the dead as zombies in order to do such legalisms as settling wills and estates.

  She also uses her talents to help the police in murder cases involving vampires and werewolves and has been licensed by the state as an official vampire executioner for those times when a warrant is issued for the death of a rogue vampire.

• A lesson in concealed weapons (& fashion)

  So you want to look cool yet still carry three large knives and two guns and still keep all of your weapons concealed so as not to raise suspicions or frighten the locals at the restaurant or the nightclub? Then consider this series a training manual.