Dead Until Dark recap

In small-town Bon Temps, Louisiana, telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse falls for Bill Compton, a Civil War veteran turned vampire who has come home to claim his family's house, and whose mind is blessedly silent to her. Their courtship runs alongside a string of stranglings: local women who have slept with vampires are being murdered, and Sookie's womanizing brother Jason, who knew several of them, becomes the sheriff's favorite suspect. Sookie's grandmother is killed in the family kitchen, apparently in Sookie's place. Bill introduces Sookie to the vampires of Shreveport, including the ancient Eric Northman, who quickly finds uses for her gift. Reading a stray memory, Sookie realizes the murderer is Rene Lenier, who began by killing his own sister for taking a vampire lover. He nearly kills her before he is stopped, and she is saved by vampire blood. In the process she learns that her boss, Sam Merlotte, is a shapeshifter, and that her town has always held far more than she knew.

Sookie Stackhouse waits tables at Merlotte's bar in Bon Temps, a small town in northern Louisiana. She has been telepathic since childhood, hides it as well as she can, and is generally written off locally as slow. Vampires revealed themselves to the world two years earlier, once a synthetic blood made it possible for them to live without preying on people, and Sookie has been hoping one would come to Bon Temps. When Bill Compton walks into the bar she is delighted to discover that his mind gives her nothing at all. She follows a rough couple called the Rattrays outside and interrupts them draining Bill's blood, which sells at high prices as a drug. Days later the Rattrays catch her alone in the parking lot and beat her nearly to death; Bill drives them off and heals her by making her drink his blood. In the background, a local woman named Maudette Pickens has been found strangled in her apartment. She had been known to keep company with vampires, and Sookie's brother Jason had been with her, which draws the attention of the Bon Temps police.

The Rattrays die when their trailer is torn apart in what is officially recorded as a freak tornado, and Sookie understands well enough what really happened. Bill begins courting her in his formal, old-fashioned way and starts restoring his inherited house across the cemetery. Sookie's grandmother, delighted to have a genuine Civil War veteran nearby, persuades Bill to address the Descendants of the Glorious Dead, and he speaks to a packed room about the war and the men he served with. Then Dawn Green, the other Merlotte's waitress, is found strangled in her bedroom. Both dead women had slept with vampires and both had slept with Jason, and he had made videotapes with them, so Andy Bellefleur and the parish sheriff pull him in for questioning repeatedly. Jason turns on Sookie for her relationship with Bill, and the town's mood toward vampires curdles. Sookie, in love and out of her depth, has to decide how far she is willing to go into Bill's world.

Bill takes Sookie to Fangtasia, a vampire bar in Shreveport, to ask whether any local vampire knew the murdered women. There she meets Eric Northman, who is more than a thousand years old and holds authority over the vampires of the area, and his second, Pam. When Sookie picks up an impending police raid from a mind in the room and warns Eric in time, she reveals her ability to exactly the people she should have hidden it from, and Eric marks her as a resource he intends to use. Worse follows at home: Sookie comes back to the house to find that her grandmother has been strangled in the kitchen. Gran had taken over an evening Sookie was expected to be home for, and the town and Sookie both understand that the killer had come for Sookie, the one woman in Bon Temps openly seeing a vampire. Jason, wild with grief, blames his sister at the funeral.

Gran leaves Sookie the house, and Sookie goes on alone in it. She and Bill become lovers. Bill's old acquaintances Malcolm, Diane and Liam, vampires with no interest at all in mainstreaming, turn up at Sookie's door to look her over and enjoy frightening her, and their contempt for the rules makes plain how thin Bill's respectability is. Sookie learns that her great-uncle Bartlett, who molested her as a child and whom she had told Bill about, has been found dead; she does not have to ask who arranged it, and the knowledge sits badly with her. The tension between Bon Temps and the vampires breaks when locals burn the Monroe house where Malcolm, Diane and Liam sleep, killing all three, along with humans who were inside. The killings of local women have not stopped, and Sookie is increasingly certain she is on the list.

Eric summons Bill and Sookie to Fangtasia and makes his first real demand: Sookie is to read the minds of the bar's employees to find out who has been stealing from him. She identifies Long Shadow, the bartender, who lunges at her across the bar and is staked by Eric on the spot, drenching Sookie in blood. Bill is then called away to New Orleans on vampire business and leaves Bubba, an unstable vampire made from a famous singer, to guard the house while he is gone. In Bon Temps another young woman connected with Jason is strangled, and this time the evidence is enough for the police to arrest him. Sookie, frightened, grieving, and now certain that she is what the murderer actually wants, is left with a guard she cannot rely on and no idea which familiar face is doing the killing.

Sitting with Arlene and her children, Sookie catches an image out of a mind that tells her who the killer is: Rene Lenier, Arlene's former husband and Jason's workmate on the road crew. Years earlier his own sister took a vampire lover, and Rene strangled her for it; since then he has been killing women in the parish who did the same, which is why Maudette Pickens and Dawn Green died, and why Adele Stackhouse died in her granddaughter's place. Rene attacks Sookie and very nearly kills her. She survives, badly hurt, he is stopped, and vampire blood pulls her back from the worst of the damage. In the middle of it she discovers that Sam Merlotte is a shapeshifter, and that the stray collie sleeping at her house had been her boss standing guard. Jason is released and cleared. Bill comes back from New Orleans holding a formal position among the vampires of the area, one that will keep taking him away from her. Sookie ends the book alive, publicly attached to a vampire, and known to Eric Northman as something worth owning.

Sookie catches the truth out of another mind: the killer is Rene Lenier, Arlene's former husband and Jason's workmate. His own sister took a vampire lover, and he strangled her for it; since then he has killed local women who did the same. Maudette Pickens and Dawn Green died that way, and Sookie's grandmother died in Sookie's place, because Sookie was the woman in Bon Temps sleeping with a vampire. Rene attacks her, and she survives the assault only barely, badly injured; he is stopped, and Sookie is healed by being given vampire blood. Two things about her life are permanently changed by the night. Sam Merlotte turns out to be a shapeshifter: the stray collie that has been sleeping at her house was her boss, keeping watch over her. And the vampire world now knows exactly what she can do. Jason is cleared of the murders and released, but he is still on the wrong side of his sister and taking vampire blood as a drug. Bill returns from vampire business in New Orleans having taken on a formal position among his own kind, which will pull him away from Bon Temps more and more. Sookie is left with her grandmother's house, a vampire lover, and no way back to an ordinary life.