Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

"No." I slammed my hands into the stone. It stung, but not enough. "No!" I smashed my fist into the floor. My whole arm tingled and went numb. "NO!" I pounded my fist into the rock over and over until they bled. Pain was sharp, real, mine. I screamed, "Get out of my mind! You bitch!"

I crouched on the floor, panting, cradling my hands against my stomach. My pulse was jumping in my throat. I couldn't breathe past it. Anger washed through me, clean and sharp-edged. It chased the last shadow of Nikolaos's mind away.

I glared up at her. Anger, and behind that terror. Nikolaos had washed over my mind like the ocean in a seashell, filled me up and emptied me out. She might have to drive me crazy to break me, but she could do it if she wanted to. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop her.

Anita Blake would love to have a normal life. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss. It's hard to have a normal life, however, when you raise zombies for a living, help solve supernatural murders, and execute vamipres on the side. Despite her busy schedule, Anita is perfectly content with her life. That is, until a series of vampire killings brings her to the Master of the City. Nikolaos is cruel and powerful beyond imagining, forever trapped in the body of a child. Now Anita must find what is killing the master vampires to save her life, along with that of her friends. What could make matters worse? Jean-Claude, a handsome and alluring master vampire, marking her as his human servant, and Edward, killer extraordinaire, arriving on her doorstep, determined to get information about where the Master of the City is hiding, even if he has to torture her to find out. It seems wherever Anita turns she has enemies. Can she fight them off on her own? She must, or everyone around her will suffer. Anita must fight for her life, and her very soul.

Guilty Pleasures is an extraordinary first novel of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection, unlike any other vampire series I have read. Laurell K. Hamilton will delve into your mind and completely change the way you see the world of the supernatural. Zombies, vampires, lycanthropes, ghosts, ghouls, and witches; sexual tension, odd friendships, gut-wrenching terror, and intriguing mystery; the Anita Blake series covers virtually everything, and each book will have you salivating for the next. The most recent addition to the series is Skin Trade, released June 2nd, and is book number 17. In the summer of 2010, the Anita Blake saga becomes a movie series on IFC.

Intrigued? You should be.