Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today

By day they are accountants, secretaries, lawyers.But by night, they transform into creatures of the darkness,purveyors of the surreal where flesh and fantasy meet.

They are vampires.

Going beyond the scariest imaginings of Anne Rice, clinicalpsychologist and journalist Katherine Ramsland takes youon a mesmerizing, personal tour deep inside the little knownyet growing "vampyre" subculture that exists today in citieslike your own.Discover a society you never believed existed.Find out what these people do, and why they do it. Visitmembers-only clubs where "liquid electricity"--blood--isthe favored currency of intimate exchange, and share in"feeding circles." Meet lovers whose sex toys are razors andstraps and others who reject normality the way manydenounce the practices they hold sacred. You may thinkyou've seen or heard everything. You may even think you'reunshockable. You're wrong.

With each new foray by Ramsland (previously noted for celebrating Anne Rice in several books) into the unknown, we are treated to fascinating insights into the personalities and motivations of people who might well be the world's most devoted fans of Rice's supernatural melodramas. Ramsland is admirably guileless throughout, throwing herself, body and soul, into situations that would run counter to most people's common sense. In one memorable scene inside an exclusive S/M club, Ramsland concludes an evening of research by treating a female masochist to a good, solid whipping. A rollicking story of blood, sex, violence, and fashion in all their various combinations. --Lisa Higgins