Many Bloody Returns

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### From Publishers Weekly This patchwork anthology of 13 new vampire stories proves that heavyweight contributors can give some substance to a relatively slight theme. Harris (the Sookie Stackhouse novels), Kelner (the Laura Fleming mysteries) and 11 other writers with serious vamp credentials craft stories around the concept of birthdays for bloodsuckers. Most of the tales only blow out candles in passing, as with P.N. Elrod's Grave-Robbed, which mixes pathos and comedy as vampire PI Jack Fleming busts a phony medium mid-séance, and Tanya Huff's Blood Wrapped, in which Henry Fitzroy's search for the ideal gift for a vampire's 40th mixes with his pursuit of a human kidnapper. Christopher Golden takes birthdays to heart in his poignant coming-of-age story, The Mournful Cry of Owls, while Kelley Armstrong proposes in Twilight that a vampire's real birthday is the date of transformation from mortal to immortal. Fans of the many series vampires on parade here will be undeterred by the variable quality of their adventures. _(Sept.)_ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ### From Experienced genre hands ensure the high quality of 13 stories about birthdays and vampires. The opening story uses Charlaine Harris' series star Sookie Stackhouse, who, as the only nonvampire at a Dracula's birthday ball, finds herself on the menu. Dropping by a role-playing party with his brother's present, Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden must deal with deadly party crashers. A pair of vampires tracks down a serial killer in Toni L. P. Kelner's "How Stella Got Her Grave Back." More chillingly, a vampire knows she must kill to live another year but is strangely reluctant in Kelly Armstrong's "Twilight," and in Elaine Viets' humorous "Vampire Hours," a woman deliberately chooses damnation. Murray, Frieda