Dead and Gone recap

The world's shapeshifters and werewolves announce their existence on television, and Sam Merlotte changes shape in front of his own customers. Days later Jason's pregnant wife Crystal is found crucified in the bar's parking lot, and the search for her killer runs through the whole book alongside a far larger danger: a faction of fairies led by Breandan wants every human-blooded descendant of Prince Niall Brigant dead, and Sookie is at the top of the list. Eric marries Sookie by vampire custom to keep her out of the new Nevada regime's hands, and guards are posted around her home, but the fairies kill her protectors one by one, including her fairy godmother Claudine and the werewolf Tray Dawson. Sookie is captured and tortured by Neave and Lochlan before Niall, Bill and Eric reach her. Bill is poisoned killing Neave and is saved by another of his maker's children. Niall kills Breandan, then closes Faery entirely and says goodbye. Crystal's killer proves to be Jason's friend Mel Hart, who is executed by the Hotshot panthers.

Sookie Stackhouse is a telepathic waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana, where vampires live openly and everyone else supernatural does not. She has loved and lost Bill Compton, worked as a telepath for the vampire queen of Louisiana, and become entangled with Eric Northman, the sheriff of her territory, to whom she is bound by a blood bond. A bombing at a vampire summit in Rhodes gutted Louisiana's vampires, and Felipe de Castro, king of Nevada, then invaded the weakened state, killed the queen and took Louisiana, installing the relentlessly cheerful Victor Madden as regent over Eric. Sookie was spared as a useful asset. She has learned that she is part fairy through her great-grandfather Prince Niall Brigant, who has begun visiting her; that Bill first came to Bon Temps under orders to seduce her; and that her dead cousin Hadley left a small son, Hunter, who is telepathic like her. Her brother Jason, a werepanther, is unhappily married to Crystal Norris of the isolated Hotshot community, and the witch Amelia Broadway is still lodging upstairs.

The world's two-natured people announce themselves in a coordinated worldwide broadcast, and Sam Merlotte changes into a collie in front of his own customers to prove it. Bon Temps reacts in every direction at once: some regulars take it calmly, some stop coming, and a few become openly hostile. Sookie, who has known for years, spends her shifts managing other people's shock. Days later, Jason's wife Crystal, pregnant and long estranged from him, is found crucified on a signboard in the bar's parking lot. The murder is a public statement, timed to look like an attack on the newly revealed shapeshifters. The sheriff's office and the Hotshot werepanthers both investigate, and Jason, whose marriage was notoriously bad, is the obvious suspect to everyone but his sister.

The investigation into Crystal's death produces no answer. The panthers of Hotshot conduct their own inquiry with methods the parish sheriff would not approve of, and Jason remains under suspicion in both. Federal agents arrive in Bon Temps wanting to know how Sookie came to survive the Rhodes hotel bombing and what exactly she can do, an attention she cannot afford. Eric grows uneasy: Victor Madden's interest in Sookie is proprietary, and under the new regime a valuable human without a vampire's claim on her is simply available. Niall visits and is evasive in a new way, warning Sookie to be careful without explaining what of. A man who could pass for Jason's twin appears at the edges of events; he is Dermot, Niall's son and Sookie's great-uncle, and nobody can say whose side he is on.

The fairy quarrel comes into the open. Niall's rival Breandan wants the fae to cut every tie to the human world and holds that Niall's human-blooded descendants should be destroyed along with the connection; Sookie is the most obvious target. Eric acts before Victor Madden can: he presents Sookie with a ceremonial knife in front of witnesses, marrying her by vampire custom, which places her formally under his protection and out of the reach of anyone in Felipe de Castro's court. Guards are posted at her house, including the Shreveport werewolf Tray Dawson, and Sookie's life narrows to work, watchfulness and a house full of people carrying weapons. Meanwhile Crystal's murder still has no solution, and the town's temper about the shapeshifters continues to sour.

Breandan's people attack in earnest, and the protections around Sookie fail one at a time. Tray Dawson is killed defending her, and Claudine, her pregnant fairy godmother, is killed as well. Sookie herself is taken. Her captors are Neave and Lochlan, two fairies in Breandan's service who work on her over a period of days with deliberate, unhurried cruelty and no interest in information. She survives by refusing to give them the reaction they want and by holding on to the certainty that Niall and the vampires are looking for her, while the damage they do goes past anything she has suffered before.

Niall, Bill and Eric find Sookie and kill her captors: Bill tears out Neave's throat and Eric finishes Lochlan. Because fairy blood is poison to vampires, Bill is left dying, and Sookie has Eric track down Judith Vardamme, another child of Bill's maker, whose blood restores him. Niall kills Breandan, ending the war, and then tells Sookie that the only permanent protection for her is a closed door: he shuts Faery, stranding Claude, Dermot and the other part-fairies on the human side and taking his leave of Sookie for good. She is left maimed, badly damaged in mind as well as body, and married to Eric by vampire law. In Bon Temps the murder is finally solved: Mel Hart, Jason's quiet drinking companion, was responsible for Crystal's death and helped stage the crucifixion to look like an anti-shifter killing. The Hotshot panthers take him and settle it under their own law.

The fairy war ends with Sookie's rescue and Niall's victory, both paid for heavily. Bill kills Neave and Eric kills Lochlan, but the fairies' blood is poison to vampires and Bill is left dying of it; he survives only because Sookie has Eric find Judith Vardamme, his sister in blood, whose blood heals him. Niall kills Breandan, then tells Sookie that the only way to stop the killing for good is to shut Faery, and closes the doors between the worlds behind him. Sookie loses her fairy godmother Claudine and her bodyguard Tray Dawson in the fighting, and is left physically maimed and badly traumatized by her captivity. Claude and Dermot are among the part-fairies stranded on the human side. In Bon Temps, Mel Hart is exposed as the man responsible for Crystal's death, and the Hotshot panthers deal with him under their own law rather than the state's. Jason is cleared and widowed. Eric's marriage to Sookie by vampire custom stands, which shields her from Felipe de Castro and Victor Madden but binds her further into vampire politics. The two-natured are now public, permanently, and Bon Temps has to decide what it thinks of that.