title: Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today
author:  Katherine Ramsland 
description: Katherine Ramsland sets <I>Piercing the Darkness</I> up as a story about Susan Walsh, a wannabe journalist who mysteriously disappeared while researching "real" vampires. While that story line ultimately sees less light than the vampires themselves, Ramsland's rambunctious, rambling tales of nightclubbing, international travel, and meticulous wardrobe selection among the creatures of the night provide ample entertainment. The book traces her circuitous route through AOL chat rooms, Paris's underground tunnels, and any number of goth and "vampyre" clubs, pursuing leads and hunches that seem to materialize from thin air. What the story might lack in integrity, it more than makes up for in sheer strangeness.
zlib_text: Dead and Gone
  
  by Charlaine Harris
  
  Chapter 1
  
  'Caucasian vampires should never wear white,' the television announcer
  intoned. 'We've been secretly filming Devon Dawn, who's been a vampire for
  only a decade, as she gets dressed for a night on the town. Look at that
  outfit! It's all wrong for her!'
  
  'What was she thinking?' said an acidic female voice. 'Talk about stuck in the
  nineties! Look at that
  
  blouse, if that's what you call it. Her skin just cries out for contrasting
  color, and what is she putting on?
  
  Ivory! It makes her skin look like a Hefty bag.'
  
  I paused in the act of tying my shoe to watch what happened next as the two
  vampire fashionistas burst
  
  in on the hapless victim oh, excuse me, the lucky vampire who was about to get
  an unsolicited
  
  makeover. She'd have the additional pleasure of realizing her friends had
  turned her in to the fashion
  
  police.
  
  'I don't think this is going to end well,' Octavia Fant said. Though my
  housemate Amelia Broadway
  
  had sort of slid Octavia