When the vampire Bill Compton walks into Merlotte’s Bar and Grill, Sookie Stackhouse hears nothing. That is new for her. Sookie is a telepathic waitress in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, and she can’t stop hearing people’s thoughts. Charlaine Harris built 13 novels on that meeting, from Dead Until Dark (2001) to Dead Ever After (2013).
This is the most paranormal series on our site, so let’s say it plainly. These novels are a paranormal mystery series, not a cozy. Harris’s own site calls them urban fantasies. Each book has a murder to solve, but also vampires, werewolves, explicit sex and real violence. Below are the novels in order, the extra stories, the HBO show and whom Sookie ends up with.
Sookie Stackhouse Books in Order: All 13 Novels From Dead Until Dark to Dead Ever After
We recommend reading them in order, as they were published. That is how Harris numbers them, and the heroine’s life changes a great deal with each novel. The years are those of the first Ace edition.
- Dead Until Dark (2001)
- Living Dead in Dallas (2002)
- Club Dead (2003)
- Dead to the World (2004)
- Dead as a Doornail (2005)
- Definitely Dead (2006)
- All Together Dead (2007)
- From Dead to Worse (2008)
- Dead and Gone (2009)
- Dead in the Family (2010)
- Dead Reckoning (2011)
- Deadlocked (2012)
- Dead Ever After (2013)
Up to the third book, each one came out as a mass-market paperback original. From book 4 on, each novel appeared first in hardcover. Later reprints were relabelled as the True Blood series to tie in with the TV show. The books are the same under every name.
The Short Stories in Reading Order
Harris has published her own reading order with the Sookie short stories slotted in. None of them is essential, but one helps: “One Word Answer” tells the story of Sookie’s cousin Hadley, which book 6 builds on.
- After book 4: “Fairy Dust” and “Dracula Night”
- After book 5: “One Word Answer”
- After book 8: “Lucky” and “Gift Wrap”
- After book 9: “Two Blondes”
- After book 10: “Small-Town Wedding”, a novella
- After book 11: “If I Had a Hammer”
When the last novel is done, After Dead works as an optional epilogue.
How Many Sookie Stackhouse Books Are There?
There are 13 Sookie Stackhouse novels. Harris’s site numbers the 13 books from #1 to #13 and calls the last one the final Sookie Stackhouse novel. It came out on May 7, 2013, a year after Harris announced the ending, and went straight to No. 1 on the US bestseller list.
The count leaves out the companion, the story collections and the anthology, which are listed below. As of November 2026 Harris has not announced a new Sookie novel. Her next book, Hold My Spellbook (February 2027), starts a different series. Book 1 was reissued in June 2026. Ace also sold an 8-copy boxed set of books 1 to 8 in 2009.
Are There Sookie Stackhouse Books Outside the Main Series?
Yes, five, and only one of them is by other writers. Two collect Harris’s own short stories:
- A Touch of Dead (2009) – five Sookie stories, from “Fairy Dust” to “Gift Wrap”.
- The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories (2017) – all of Harris’s Sookie stories in one volume, with a new introduction. For one extra book, this is the simplest choice.
The Sookie Stackhouse Companion, After Dead and Dead but Not Forgotten
The other three are a guide, an epilogue and an anthology.
The Companion (2011)
A guide to the series. It also holds the novella “Small-Town Wedding”, which fits in after book 10.
After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse (2013)
Short epilogues for the characters, in alphabetical order. It tells what happened to them after the final novel.
Stories by other writers (2014)
The anthology Dead but Not Forgotten holds fifteen new stories set in the Sookieverse, by other writers chosen by Harris.
What Are the Southern Vampire Mysteries About?
Vampires have come out of the coffin. A synthetic blood means they no longer need human blood, so they now live openly. Sookie treats her mind-reading as a disability until she meets Bill. With him, for once, the noise stops.
Each novel has a crime at its centre, and Sookie ends up as the sleuth. The cases pull her deeper into the vampire community of Louisiana and beyond. Werewolves, shapeshifters and fairies join the cast throughout the series. The mysteries are real, but so is the danger. In the opening novel alone, women are strangled and Sookie is badly beaten. The sex scenes are explicit.
Main Characters in the Sookie Stackhouse Series
Sookie narrates every book herself. Around her:
- Bill Compton is a vampire and Civil War veteran, and her first love.
- Eric Northman is a Viking vampire over 1,000 years old. He is sheriff of Area Five and owns the bar Fangtasia in Shreveport.
- Sam Merlotte owns Merlotte’s. He is her boss, her friend and a shapeshifter.
- Jason Stackhouse is Sookie’s older brother, a ladies’ man.
- Alcide Herveaux is a werewolf who runs a surveying company.
- Pam is Eric’s sarcastic second-in-command and one of the few vampires Sookie counts as a friend.
- Sophie-Anne Leclerq is the vampire queen of Louisiana. Her trial at the vampire summit drives All Together Dead.
- Quinn is a weretiger and event planner, a later love interest.
Who Is Charlaine Harris, the Author of the Sookie Stackhouse Series?
Charlaine Harris was born in 1951 in Tunica, Mississippi, and grew up in the Mississippi Delta. She was a mystery writer long before Sookie. Her first series, about a Georgia librarian, began in 1990, and its first book was an Agatha Award nominee. The Lily Bard books followed, the much darker Shakespeare mysteries.
Harris launched Sookie in 2001, after publishers had turned down the first book for about two years. It won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original and was a finalist for the Agatha Awards. In 2021 the Mystery Writers of America named her a Grand Master.
Who Did Sookie End Up With?
Spoiler warning: this answer gives away the end of the series.
By the end of book 13, Sookie is with Sam, not Bill or Eric. They decide to take it slowly, and she thinks they will be together by Christmas. Eric goes ahead with his plan to become the consort of a vampire queen, set up in Deadlocked.
Some fans were unhappy with the ending. After Dead, published that October, tells what came next for each character.
On Screen: What Is True Blood Based On?
The HBO series is based on Charlaine Harris‘s Southern Vampire Mysteries. Alan Ball created the show, and it ran from September 7, 2008, to August 24, 2014: 7 seasons and 80 episodes. Ball ran seasons 1 to 5, and Brian Buckner took over for the last two.
Anna Paquin played Sookie, Stephen Moyer played Bill and Alexander Skarsgård played Eric. Sam Trammell was Sam, Ryan Kwanten was Jason, Joe Manganiello was Alcide, and Nelsan Ellis played Lafayette.
The show is loosely based on the novels. Season 1 mostly follows book 1. Season 2 loosely follows Living Dead in Dallas, and season 3 loosely follows Club Dead.
How the TV Show Differs From the Books
- Lafayette dies in book 2. The show changed the story to keep him.
- Tara Thornton is a minor figure in the books. On TV she is Sookie’s best friend and a main character.
- Jessica Hamby, Bill’s young vampire, exists only on TV.
- The synthetic blood gets a brand name on TV: Tru Blood.
- Spoiler: the books end with Sookie and Sam. The TV finale ends with Sookie staking Bill at his request, then a pregnant Sookie with a partner the show never names.
In 2011 Harris said that Anna Paquin is “just not my Sookie”. The town in the show is fictional too. Much of the first two seasons, though, was filmed at real Louisiana locations in Shreveport and Baton Rouge.
Is There a True Blood Reboot? Where to Watch the Show
No. HBO announced a reboot in December 2020, with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa writing and Alan Ball as executive producer. In February 2023 HBO dropped it. HBO chief Casey Bloys said of the scripts that “nothing … felt like it got there”. As of November 2026 HBO has not named a new series.
In the US, all seven seasons stream on HBO Max as of November 2026. The show is also on Hulu and on the HBO Max channel on Amazon. You can buy episodes on Amazon Video, Apple TV and Fandango at Home. Outside the US, availability varies by country.
Harris’s later Midnight, Texas books also became a TV show (NBC, 2017–2018), but that is a different series. Two Sookie characters, the telepath Barry and the weretiger Quinn, turn up in those books.
Where to Start: Dead Until Dark
The place to begin is book 1. The first short story only fits in after book 4, so the opener is the one way in. It brings Sookie and Bill together, gives her a first murder case and is the book season 1 of the show follows. Our Dead Until Dark review covers what to expect, including how dark it gets.
Sookie Stackhouse Books Reviewed on This Site
Series Like Sookie Stackhouse
For more magic with your murders, these pages are a good next step:
- Enchanted Bay Mysteries – Esme Addison’s water witches run an herbal apothecary in Bellamy Bay, North Carolina. Much gentler than Sookie, and a true cozy.
- Harper Connelly – another paranormal series by Harris, about a woman who can find the dead. Read our Grave Sight review.
- Aurora Teagarden – Harris’s cozier series, set near Atlanta. Read our Real Murders review.
Our paranormal cozy mysteries page lists more ghost, psychic and magical series, and the witch cozy mysteries page has the witches.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have to read the series in order?
Yes. It is best to read them in order. Each book has its own case, but her relationships, enemies and family secrets build from one novel to the next.
Is Sookie Stackhouse a cozy mystery?
No. It is a paranormal mystery with romance, and it sits closer to urban fantasy novels than to a cozy.
Is Bon Temps, Louisiana a real town?
No, it is fictional. The books place it in northern Louisiana, not far from Shreveport.
Is Sookie Stackhouse the same as The Vampire Diaries?
No. The Vampire Diaries is L. J. Smith’s young-adult series, which begins with The Awakening (1991), and it has no link to Sookie.
Is the Sookie Stackhouse series finished?
Yes. The 13th novel, published in 2013, is the last one, and Harris now writes other series.