Okay, I know this is the last day of the month, but I wanted to get this list together before tomorrow. There are some great titles here, including the new Bone Crossed book by Patricia Briggs and the last installment in the Vampire Huntress series by L.A. Banks.

Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson, Book 4) by Patricia Briggs
Mercy is preparing to marry alpha werewolf Adam Hauptman when an old friend asks her to help fend off a nasty ghost. It’s a good time for Mercy to leave Portland, Oregon because vampire queen Marsilia is after her and her vampire friend Stefan for successfully hunting down a monster that should have killed them. Mercy leaves Adam to negotiate peace with Marsilia and heads to Spokane, Washington to investigate the ghost, an unexpectedly complicated task. Though action supersedes characterization, the preternatural culture of vampire seethes and wolf pack politics is deeply intriguing. Briggs provides plenty of detail about Mercy’s complex world without boring info dumps, satisfying both new and longtime readers.

The Thirteenth (Vampire Huntress Legends) by L.A. Banks
The final story in the now cult favorite Vampire Huntress series.  The entire Neteru Guardian team is on the run, having now been labeled as America’s most-wanted terrorists following the gruesome demon battle that felled the Washington Monument and crashed the front doors of the White House.  The powers of darkness have released the pale horse of the apocalypse and half the Neteru team is pregnant.  Plagues from hell that ravage the country are being cited as stemming from bio-terrorism.  The nation is under martial law.  The Neterus and their team are underground.  If things weren’t bad enough… the Dark Realm breaks the sixth Biblical seal, which plunges the world into perpetual darkness and irrevocably into the Armageddon.

Deader Still by Anton Strout, author of Dead to Me and contributor to The League of Reluctant Adults website.
It’s hard to defeat evil on a budget. Just ask Simon Canderous. It’s been 737 days since the Department of Extraordinary Affairs’ last vampire incursion, but that streak appears to have ended when a boat full of dead lawyers is found in the Hudson River. Using the power of psychometry (the ability to divine the history of an object by touching it) agent Simon Canderous discovers that the booze cruise was crashed by something that sucked all the blood out of the litigators. Now, his workday may never end – until his life does.

Darkling (Sisters of the Moon) by Yasmine Galenorn (Audiobook)
In this third entry in Yasmine Galenorn’s bestselling Sisters of the Moon series, the spotlight is on Menolly, who must face the demons haunting her memories when humans begin turning into vampires.

Many Bloody Returns Multiple Authors: Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Kelley Armstrong, and others. Edited by Toni L. P. Kelner. Now available in paperback.
From cakes to stakes, a celebration of everyone’s favorite bloodsucking subculture by a baker’s dozen of favorite authors. Each of these thirteen original stories offers a fresh and unique take on what birthdays mean to the undead. From Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse attending a birthday party for Dracula to Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden battling bloodsucking party crashers, these suspenseful, surprising, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous stories will ensure paranormal fans will never think of vampires or birthdays quite the same again.

Grave Sins (A Cin Craven Novel) by Jenna Maclaine
The latest in a bold, magical new series that spans the ages, from historical England to modern day America and beyond. Welcome to the legend of Cin Craven—witch, vampire and immortal warrior. In the arms of her lover Michael, Cin Craven has found satisfaction for her most primal longings, reaching heights of pleasure no mere human could ever imagine. She has also found a purpose for her unearthly powers. Cin is a member of The Righteous, a band of slayers that hunts down vampires who inflict evil upon the world. With Michael by her side, Cin’s latest mission brings her face-to-face with Marrakesh, a beautiful, half-mad vampire queen charged with slaughtering humans. If she’s found guilty, Marrakesh will pay with her life. But Cin is convinced that someone (or something) far more ruthless is trying to steal the queen’s throne. It’s a mission that will pit Michael and Cin against each other for the first time, awakening their darkest instincts and testing their love like never before.

Spell Games by T.A. Pratt
Mad sorcerers, psychic vampires, an army of vengeful demons, Marla Mason would rather face them all than a flesh-and-blood ghost from her dysfunctional family past: her con artist brother, Jason. As a chief sorcerer, Marla would ordinarily consider it her duty to protect her town from such an unscrupulous ne’er-do-well. As his sister, things are a lot . . . trickier. Now, as Marla attempts to train an apprentice oracle whose magical wires have gotten crossed, Jason is setting up an elaborate scheme and drawing her ever-so-corruptible partner Rondeau into the ruse. Their patsy is a filthy-rich wannabe mage and their bait is something so valuable, so dangerous, so sought after, it probably doesn’t exist. But now word’s gotten out that it does. It’ll be the mother of all bad trips unless Marla can pull off the ultimate magical switcheroo . . . and somehow live to tell about it.

A Rush of Wings: Book One of The Maker’s Song by Adrian Phoenix
Set in the brooding New Orleans area long established as the best location for all things vampiric, Phoenix’s lively debut has it all: Rogue FBI agents, Bureau-ordered hits, mad-scientist experiments in psychopathology, vampires and fallen angels and a slicing-dicing serial killer. Smart, sexy FBI Special Agent Heather Wallace has been trying to catch the Cross-Country Killer for three years when the trail leads to New Orleans and Club Hell, where Dante Prejean performs with the Inferno, an industrial/goth rock band. Dante is a Cajun and a born vampire whose memories of his terrible past have been erased, leaving him vulnerable to the psychopathic killer, E, who knows all that Dante has forgotten. As E begins targeting Dante’s loved ones, Heather must swallow her skepticism and work with Dante’s vampiric friends and family to save him. Phoenix alternates romantic homages to gothdom and steamy blood-drinking threesomes with enough terse, fast-paced thriller scenes to satisfy even the most jaded fan.

See also: Best Vampire Books of 2008

New Vampire Books for March 2009

Dead and Gone – Sookie Stackhouse Book #9