omnibus of the first 3 books featuring "Sookie Stackhouse": Dead Until Dark (2001) + Living Dead in Dallas (2002) + Club Dead (2003) / The television series TRUE BLOOD is based on this series, with Season 1 corresponding to the first book - with some events or characters borrowed from later books. These were all paperback originals, so this is the first hardcover edition for these titles. (They were later reprinted separately in hardcover, but those tend to be expensive and hard to find.)

Dead Until Dark - Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. You can tell she doesn't get out much, and it's not because she isn't pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this "disability:" she can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. Then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome - and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. Just the guy she's been waiting for all her life. But Bill has a disability of his own: he's a vampire with a seriously creepy crowd of friends. So when one of her coworkers is killed, Sookie fears she's next...

Living Dead in Dallas - Sookie is on a streak of bad luck. First, she finds a body in the backseat of her car. Then she comes face-to-face with a beastly creature that gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Enter the vampires, who graciously suck the poison from her veins - like they didn't enjoy it! Point is, they saved her life. So when one of them asks for a favor, she complies... and soon Sookie finds herself in Dallas, using her telepathic abilities to search for a missing vampire. There's just one condition: the vamps must behave, and let the humans involved go unharmed. Which is easier said than done....

Club Dead - Sookie's vampire boyfriend, Bill, has been a little distant lately. In another state, distant. He's on a secret assignment for the vampire queen of Louisiana, and only his sinister and sexy boss Eric knows where to find him. Soon, Sookie is off to Jackson, Mississippi, to mingle with the über-underworld at Club Dead - a dangerous little haunt where werewolves, shapeshifters and vampires go to chill out and suck down some type 0. But when Sookie finally finds Bill - caught in an act of serious betrayal - she's not sure whether to save him... or sharpen some stakes.