Those vampires attract Stackhouse, a mind reader, as she can't hear their thoughts like normal people. They brood like the other vampires flooding bookstores and move theaters, but Harris endows them with a dark power harkening back to Bram Stoker, Durand says.

''They're still not the cuddly little teddy bears with teeth kind of deal. They're still a threat,'' he says. ``The only reason that they don't wipe out everything is because they restrain themselves.''

Race also plays a part in the novels. There are few black characters, a problem Harris acknowledges. The first Stackhouse novel also hints at the need for a black and a white funeral home in Bon Temps, something Harris writes is tradition rather than racism.

Harris grew up in Tunica, Miss., during the 1960s. Now home to casinos lining the bank of the Mississippi River, her hometown was 80 percent black and surrounded by rice fields. The town's high school finally integrated in 1969 when Harris was a senior.

''It was very painful and frightening. Honestly, I congratulate the two young black women who graduated from my class,'' she says. ``I don't know how they did it.''

Those angry with sweeping societal change make their way into Stackhouse's town after supernatural creatures reveal themselves. Stackhouse finds herself targeted by them, her ''disability'' of being able to read minds often placing her in harm's way. A terrorist bombing against vampires finds her helping firefighters recover victims as the smell of ''hate'' hangs in the air, an allusion to 9/11.

''I saw so many people [like that] when integration came in -- people who hated change without really understanding what it was going to mean or really looking at it from any other perspective than their own comfort,'' Harris says.

Another disaster, Hurricane Katrina, hits close to home for the book's characters. Vampires struggle to cover damaged roofs with blue plastic tarps. Stackhouse takes storm victims into her home -- though they are witches, of course.

Some readers got angry and accused Harris of exploiting the tragedy. 'I thought, `How can I write a book about Louisiana and not mention Katrina?' That would have been crazy,'' Harris says. ``The last thing I want to feel like is I'm profiting on someone else's misery.''

Stackhouse's travails -- romantic and otherwise -- will continue for at least four more books, Harris says. The next adventure is due out in October. Harris promises that it will explore some ''loose threads'' in Stackhouse's life, but that sense of small town will continue to fill the pages.

''You've got to use everything you have,'' she says.

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