Each subsequent book about Sookie Stackhouse, telepathic Louisiana barmaid and friend to vampires, werewolves, and various other odd creatures, was very successful in many languages. Not a traditional mystery, nor yet pure science fiction or romance, Dead Until Dark broke genre boundaries to appeal to a wide audience of people who simply enjoy a good adventure. When Charlaine began to realize that neither of those series was ever going to set the literary world on fire, she regrouped and decided to write the book she’d always wanted to write. The books, set in Shakespeare, Arkansas, feature a heroine who has survived a terrible attack and is learning to live with its consequences. Soon Charlaine was looking for another challenge, and the result was the much darker Lily Bard series. Her first Teagarden, Real Murders, garnered an Agatha nomination. After a child-producing sabbatical, Charlaine latched on to the trend of series, and soon had her own traditional mystery books about a Georgia librarian, Aurora Teagarden. The resulting two stand-alones were published by Houghton Mifflin. After holding down some low-level jobs, her husband Hal gave her the opportunity to stay home and write. Though her early output consisted largely of ghost stories, by the time she hit college (Rhodes, in Memphis) Charlaine was writing poetry and plays. Charlaine lives in Texas now, and all of her children and grandchildren are within easy driving distance.

A native of the Mississippi Delta, she grew up in the middle of a cotton field. Charlaine Harris has been a published novelist for over thirty-five years.

Sookie stackhouse dead to the world