Mary the Vampire – hinnat ja saatavuus

The novel, Mary the Vampire, continues the story that began with The Dancing Valkyrie. In this installment, Mary Hoffman, aka Erica, the erotic dancer who owns a gentlemen's club in Schenectady, NY, continues to try to extricate herself from the watchful eyes of the FBI and CIA, as well as deal with organized crime bosses. On a more personal level, Mary also tries to balance her love for her creator, Elizabeth Gottsched, her love for Ana, the young woman she turned into a vampire, and the love and responsibility she feels for the human, Karen Wilson who is a member to the Schenectady City Council. Karen Wilson is one of only two humans who knows Mary is a vampire. This was the result of Mary sharing her blood with Karen as part of her effort to prevent Karen being killed by organized crime. This sharing of blood did not make it possible for Karen to become a vampire but it did cause Karen to fall wildly in love with Mary. The relationship is complicated by the fact that Karen has two young children who came to love Mary because of Mary saving their mother's life. There is a back story that involves Elizabeth Gottsched and her creator and lover, Joseph Gottsched, and their having known the real Dracula, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, also known as Vlad Dracula. It was Vlad Dracula who gifted a castle in Romania to the Gottscheds, who later duplicated the castle on property they own in the Adirondacks. Blood, love and sex weave a complicated thread throughout the novel. The vampires in this novel are not demons but are presented as undiscovered, unknown creatures of flesh and blood, skin and bone, who easily pass as humans. Immoral by human standards, they nevertheless try to follow their own moral codes. This can best be hinted at by their view on the killing of humans by taking their blood. They see it as no different from all the plants and animals humans kill to eat and thus survive. They believe God created them, just as God created humans, and have as much right as humans do to live their lives as they see fit. They would no more apologize for being vampires than a tiger would apologize for being a tiger.