Modern day zombie books that feature non flesh eating zombies

[Chris]

What i mean is before Romero there used to be all sorts of stories about zombies that didn't eat people. There were zombies who if they tasted meat or salt hurriedly returned to their grave. Or people who were given drugs to turn them into zombies. I am wondering if those tales are still being written.

[Darlene]

Are you thinking something like the steampunk series "Gone with the Respiration" by Lia Habel? The first one is "Dearly Departed". It's a romance with walking dead overtones.

[Darlene]

There is also "Breathers: A Zombie's Lament" by S.G. Browne. They do eat meat but other stuff too.
The most ridiculous (in a good way) book on our list is S.G. Browne's entertaining debut about modern life as a zombie. After Andy Warner dies, he has trouble adjusting to his new life as one of the undead. And who could blame him? He has to live in his parents' wine cellar, isn't allowed to go to the movies or even use the internet, and is constantly harassed by frat boys and other members of the living (aka "Breathers"). Things change after he meets Rita, a recent suicide who eats cosmetics for their formaldehyde content, and Jerry, a car crash victim who loves Renaissance porn, at an Undead Anonymous meeting. Together they learn the delights of devouring human flesh and find new ways to stand up for the rights of zombies everywhere.

[Chris]

I was going for books about zombies who are controlled by someone else and who don't eat flesh. A book that represents these tales well is the anthology Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! Edited by Otto Penzler

[☆Joycedale☆]

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but in Dead in Bed: The Complete Novel they don't eat flesh, they're more of the raping kind.

[Joseph]

Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but not all the zombies in this fun series eat brains or are brainless: Death Warmed Over by Kevin J. Anderson.

[Ingo]

And now for something completely different...
Must throw this in, if you want a book about Zombies, how about a non-fition one, that was the the blueprint for a Horror-Movie?
The Serpent and the Rainbow, made into a great movie, by Wes Craven.
The book even has photos of some of the featured people.
This book and one other by Wade Davis where named in books by Preston&Child (Pendergast) and the Special-X-Series by the pseudonym (different authors together) Michael Slade.

Deeply disturbing, as all the events, people and places exist and have happened.

[Michele]

I think he's looking for the voodoo type, where a zombie is raised specifically as a servant, used to do terrible things for it's master. Not plagues, not hordes of shambling brain eaters, not science gone wrong.

[Aerulan]

The zombies in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series fit this somewhat, they're raised from the dead and closer to the more traditional voodoo idea of zombies than the new popculture infectious versions. But they're a moderately small element of the books the rest is mostly erotica/romance (nothing against that, but worth noting in this case) especially the farther you get into the series.

Not really recommending them for this, but it's worth a mention just because they do sort of fit.