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September 27 - October 5, 2025
vampires
Also noting its vampireS plural
Summary: “A supernatural thriller set in South Carolina in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious stranger who turns out to be a real monster”—Provided by publisher.
Love a summary
When I was a kid I didn’t take my mom seriously. She was a housewife who was in a book club, and she and her friends were always running errands, and driving car pool, and forcing us to follow rules that didn’t make sense. They just seemed like a bunch of lightweights.
And you were doing..?
This is also a book about vampires. They’re that iconic American archetype of the rambling man, wearing denim, wandering from town to town with no past and no ties. Think Jack Kerouac, think Shane, think Woody Guthrie. Think Ted Bundy.
Because vampires are the original serial killers, stripped of everything that makes us human—they have no friends, no family, no roots, no children. All they have is hunger. They eat and eat but they’re never full.
?
I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.
???
Housewife (n)—a light, worthless woman or girl —Oxford English Dictionary, compact edition, 1971
She tried to look up Alan Paton, the author, in their World Book Encyclopedia but they were missing the P volume. She made a mental note that they needed new encyclopedias.
Grace Cavanaugh, who lived two doors down from Patricia but whom she’d only met once when Grace rang her doorbell and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but you’ve lived here for six months and I need to know: is this the way you intend for your yard to look?”
In the spirit of Mr. Paton’s book, this should be a conversation, not a speech.” Everyone was nodding.
I really don’t know what to say except I’m so, so sorry.” Black crept in around the edges of her vision. A high-pitched tone shrilled in her right ear. “Well,” Marjorie said. “You’re the one who’s lost out, by robbing yourself of what is possibly one of the finest works of world literature. And you’ve robbed all of us of your unique point of view. But what’s done is done. Who else would be willing to lead the discussion?”
“Did anyone actually read this month’s book?” Marjorie asked. Silence. “I cannot believe this,” Marjorie said.
“I’m having some people read a book and come over to my house next month to talk about it. Maryellen’ll be there.” “I couldn’t possibly find the time to belong to two book clubs,” Patricia said. “Trust me,” Kitty said. “After today, Marjorie’s book club is done.”
“Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs,” she said. It took Patricia aback. This was one of those trashy true crime books. But clearly Kitty was reading it and you couldn’t call someone else’s taste in books trashy, even if it was. “I’m not sure that’s my kind of book,” Patricia said. “These two women were best friends and they chopped each other up with axes,” Kitty said. “Don’t pretend you don’t want to know what happened.”
Candy?
Patricia said, “I heard about what happened at recess.” All the light went out inside Korey, and Patricia immediately regretted saying anything, but she had to say something because isn’t that what mothers did? “I don’t know why Chelsea pulled your pants down in front of the class,” Patricia said. “But it was an ugly, mean thing to do. As soon as we get home, I’m calling her mother.”
Patricia wanted to tell Kitty she was only making it worse. “The next time Chelsea Phelps does something like that,” Kitty said, barreling ahead, “you tell everyone at the top of your lungs, ‘Chelsea Phelps spent the night at Merit Scruggs’s house last month and she wet her sleeping bag and blamed it on the dog.’”
Kitty’s husband, Horse.
The following month they read The Michigan Murders: The True Story of the Ypsilanti Ripper’s Reign of Terror, and then A Death in Canaan: A Classic Case of Good and Evil in a Small New England Town, followed by Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder—all of them Kitty’s recommendations.
“so I told him we were a Bible study group.” No one said anything for a full fifteen seconds. Finally, Maryellen spoke. “You told your husband we’ve been reading the Bible?” “It rewards a lifetime of study,” Slick said. The silence stretched on as they looked at each other, incredulous, and then they all burst out laughing. “I’m serious, y’all,” Slick said. “He won’t let me come anymore if he knows.” They realized she was serious.
she’d learned two things: they were all in this together, and if their husbands ever took out a life insurance policy on them they were in trouble.
A framed Audubon print hung over the fireplace, reflecting the room’s pale colonial colors—Raleigh peach and Bruton white—and
Pulling his bedroom door halfway closed, she paused outside Korey’s door and listened to the rise and fall of her daughter’s voice on the telephone. Patricia felt a prick of envy. She hadn’t been popular in high school, but Korey captained or co-captained all her teams, and younger girls showed up at games to cheer her on. Inexplicably, girls being sporty had become popular.
WAsnt she just bullied?
The harsh white beam picked out every detail with unforgiving clarity. The old woman squatted in a pink nightgown, cheeks smeared with red jam, lips bristling with stiff black hairs, chin quivering with clear slime. She crouched over something dark in her lap. Patricia saw a raccoon’s nearly severed head hanging upside down over the old woman’s knees, tongue sticking out between its bared fangs. The old woman reached one gory hand into its open belly and scooped up a fistful of translucent guts. She raised that hand, shiny with animal grease, to her mouth and gnawed on the pale lavender tube
...more
Plz no
Something about her long white hair pulled back in a ponytail, frail neck, and clunky digital watch worn around one wrist snapped into place. “Mrs. Savage?” Patricia said. “Mrs. Savage!” This face hanging over hers, slobbering with mindless hunger, belonged to the woman who, for years, had been the bane of the neighborhood.
It took eleven stitches to close the wound and she had to have a tetanus shot, but they couldn’t reattach her earlobe because Mrs. Savage had swallowed it.
“One of my patients sells costume jewelry,” Carter said. “He gave them to me for free. Just put the other one in the trash and I’ll pick you up something from the Pitt Street Pharmacy.” It was probably the painkillers, but that made her cry even harder.
Wtf
“Patricia?” Grace said. “Grace Cavanaugh. How are you feeling?” For some reason, Grace always introduced herself at the beginning of each phone call. “Sad,” Patricia said. “She bit off my earlobe and swallowed it.” “Of course,” Grace said. “Sadness is one of the stages of grief.” “She swallowed my earring, too,” Patricia said. “The new ones I had on last night. “That is a pity,” Grace said. “It turns out Carter got them for free from a patient,” Patricia said. “He didn’t even buy them.” “Then you didn’t want them anyway,” Grace said. “I spoke with Ben this morning. He said Ann Savage has been
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Overall awk
Patricia leaned over his face and realized, with a tickling in the veins on the inside of her elbows, this was the closest she’d been to a man who wasn’t her husband in nineteen years. Then her dry lips pressed against his chapped ones and formed a seal. She pinched his nose shut and blew three strong breaths into his windpipe.
All the way home Patricia tasted Ann Savage’s nephew on her lips: dusty spices, leather, unfamiliar skin. It made the blood fizz in her veins, and then, overcome with guilt, she brushed her teeth twice, found half of an old bottle of Listerine in the hall closet, and gargled it until her lips tasted like artificial peppermint flavoring. For the rest of the day, she lived in fear that someone would drop by and ask what she’d been doing in Ann Savage’s house.
making sure Blue was studying for his State and Local History exam instead of reading about Adolf Hitler.
True
and barely saw Carter every morning as he dashed out the door (“I promise,” he told her, “as soon as this is over we’ll go to the beach”), and suddenly a week had passed
He sucks
“You know,” Patricia said. “My friend Slick Paley at book club? Her husband, Leland, they’re into real estate. They might be able to tell you something about the situation here.” “You’re in a book club?” James asked. “I love to read.” “Who do you read?” Patricia asked as Carter ignored them and fed his mother, and Blue and Korey continued to stare. “I’m a big Ayn Rand fan,” James Harris said. “Kesey, Ginsburg, Kerouac. Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?” “Are
Obsesed
Carter’s spoon clicked against the bottom of the bowl and he stood up, leaving his bowl on the place mat for her to clean up, not waiting to hear what she had to say. In that moment, Patricia hated her family with a passion. And she wanted to see James Harris again, badly.
“Let’s talk out here,” she said into the dark doorway. All she could see was his big pale hand resting on the edge of the door. “The sun feels so nice.” “Please,” he said, his voice strained. “I have a condition.” Patricia knew genuine distress when she heard it, but she still couldn’t make herself step inside. “Stay or go,” he said, anger edging his voice. “I can’t be in the sun.”
“My wallet was stolen, and my birth certificate and all those kind of things are in storage back home,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’ll take someone to hunt them down. How can I do any of this without them?” An image of Ted Bundy with his arm in a fake cast asking Brenda Ball to help him carry his books to his car flashed across Patricia’s mind. She dismissed it as undignified.
At the Waterworks, they discovered that he had left his wallet at home. He apologized profusely, but she didn’t mind writing the one-hundred-dollar check for the deposit. He promised to pay her back as soon as they got home. At SCE&G they wanted a two-hundred-fifty-dollar deposit, and she hesitated. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this,” James Harris said.
She weighed her sympathy against what Carter would say when he balanced their checkbook. But it was her money, too, wasn’t it? That was what Carter always said when she asked for her own bank account: this money belonged to both of them. She was a grown woman and could use it however she saw fit, even if it was to help another man.
“Three hundred fifty dollars,” he said, counting it out on the table in worn twenties and a ten. He beamed at her,
All cash
“I found it in the crawl space,” he said. “It’s eighty-five thousand dollars. I think it’s Auntie’s life savings.” It felt dangerous. It felt illegal. She wanted to ask him to put it away. She wanted to keep fondling it.
“You can’t keep it here,” she said. “I know,” he said. “I can’t sleep with it in the house. For the past week, I’ve been terrified someone’s going to break in.”
But its been there
“Darlin’, that’s no problem a’tall. You can be the cosigner. You’d be responsible for any overdrafts and have full access, but it’s a good way to start while he waits for his license. Those people at the DMV move like they get paid by the hour.” “Does it show up on our statement at all?” Patricia asked, thinking about how she’d explain this to Carter. “Nah,” Doug said. “I mean, not unless he starts writing bad checks all over town.”
She felt relaxed and complacent, like she’d eaten a huge meal.
Patricia looked at his strong white teeth, gleaming and wet. The ease with which he’d lied made her doubt everything she’d done for him that morning and, for the briefest of moments, she felt like she’d gotten in over her head.
He reminded her of Carter when they’d first gotten married, back when the slightest effort on her part—making coffee in the morning, baking a pecan pie for dessert—had elicited endless hymns of praise.
He wore a plaid shirt tucked into blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and a braided leather belt. She wished he hadn’t
Shes obsessed w grace
“He doesn’t have any family ties, no roots, no past,” Kitty said. “He doesn’t even belong to a church. Very suspicious in today’s world. Did you see the new driver’s licenses? They have a little hologram on them. I remember when they were just a piece of cardboard. We are not a society that lets people roam around with no fixed address. Not anymore.”
Love
“Then he sails into town and do you notice he doesn’t talk to anyone? But he targets this Francesca who’s all alone, because that’s what they do. These men find a vulnerable woman and arrange an ‘accidental’ meeting and they’re so smooth and seductive that she invites him into her home. But when he visits he’s very careful no one sees where he parks his truck. Then he takes her upstairs and does things to her for days.”
“He’s a vegetarian. I don’t think I’ve ever met one of those.” Thanks to Blue, Patricia knew exactly what Kitty was about to say. “Hitler was a vegetarian,” Kitty said, proving her right. “Patricia, would you cheat on Carter with a stranger who showed up on your doorstep, with no people, and told you he was a vegetarian? You’d want to at least check his driver’s license first, wouldn’t you?”
Vegetarian = vampire
Then she noticed Slick staring, too, and realized Grace’s gaze was on the hall door behind her. Full of dread, she turned. “I found your photograph, Hoyt,” Miss Mary said, standing in the doorway, dripping wet and stark naked.
Patricia pried the photograph from between Miss Mary’s fingers. It was an old black-and-white shot of the minister from Miss Mary’s church in Kershaw surrounded by grim-faced children clutching Easter baskets.
