When this book landed in my lap, I was a total newb to Charlaine Harris and Stookie Stackhouse. Sure I had heard of them both and certainly Anna Paquin is decidedly easy on the eye in the Trueblood series, but I hadn't read any of the stories or novels – until now.

This is a collection of five short stories about Sookie. In her Introduction, Harris gives a chronological order of the stories and where they fit into the overall Sookie storyline. Not much help to me seeing as I hadn't read any of her books before. At the same time, I wasn't going to be distracted by thoughts like 'I don't remember that' or worse, 'she's got that wrong'. Being trained as an accountant before becoming an economic statistician, has an unfortunate side effect of creating a natural affinity for analytical fault picking.

I would not consider this a collection of short stories in the sense of individual pieces each with their story and character arcs. Instead they are more vignettes or episodes in what is the obviously fascinating storyline of Sookie Stackhouse.

There is a mixture of the grimness one would expect in a world of vampires etc but with some sense of the light-hearted as well.

I do not like reviewing individual pieces in an anthology as I think I end up doing too many spoilers. I have to admit however that I thought the endings of Dracula Night and One Word being a little too contrived, too convenient, with Stookie turning out to have advance knowledge of things without this being apparent to the reader.

In the overall wind up, I found this an interesting and entertaining little collection. Newbs like myself are introduced to Sookie and her world, leaving an interest in finding out a bit more. Fans of the Southern Vampire series should also enjoy these vignettes as extra hits to feed their addiction.

Ross C. Hamilton