Home of the Alpha Showdown, and one-stop shop for urban fantasy, paranormal romance and fantasy news and reviews.
It’s officially time for Alpha Showdown 2012! We’ve pulled together 16 of the most kickass characters from urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels and with your votes placed them into a NCAA-style bracket. Only one will be named champion. Round one brings together a master vampire known for being ruthless with everyone except his wife and a witch who is not to be trifled with (she does have vampires,... ![Prepare to fight! It’s time for Alpha Showdown nominations [Giveaway]](http://vampirebookclub.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Showdown-500px-300x183-21571_200x183.jpg)
OK, I don’t expect you to fight. But we need to determine who’s making it into this year’s battle to be the ultimate alpha. Last year, Jericho Z. Barrons won. Rightfully. However, JBZ can’t be in the running this year. Leaving things open for other kickass characters to claim top honors. This is where you come in, dear readers. We’re doing open nominations this year. (And bribing your participation with a... 
Last week we talked about those heroines we’d never swap places with in a million years. Seriously, no one wants to take Katniss’ place. But a few of you emailed and tweeting asking who I would swap shoes with, figuratively speaking. This one is harder, actually, because I like such dark novels. So, I’ll give you one obvious choice and one where you’ll all think I’m wearing my crazy pants. Then, I want to... 
February has been filled with Character Love Letters and on-and-off chatter about Karen Chance’s Touch the Dark. Because of a death in the family at VBC HQ, we can’t lead the group read discussion for Touch the Dark. If you’re interested in leading a last-minute chat — either on Goodreads or Twitter — please let me know in the comments. In the meantime, let’s look forward to a March filled with books...
We’re pretty excited to talk about the January group read Street Magic by Caitlin Kittredge. The starting discussion questions are already up over at the VBC Goodreads group, but the real chat is scheduled for 8 p.m. CST on Tuesday, Jan. 31. This means you have one week to finish reading the first Black London novel. Feel free to read our spoiler-free review for motivation. In the meantime, we’ve got to...
We’re planning to spend Thursday chatting up Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood in our Goodreads group. But in the meantime, we need to select the group read title for January. (I know this is a bit late, but I’ve been traveling most of December. Don’t worry, I’m back at VBC HQ in Dallas again.) We have six stellar titles to pick from for the January read. Let us know which book you’d most like to read... 
The VBC Best Books of 2011 post is in the works, and I’ll try to have it up early enough to be helpful for gift giving. (You can see last year’s best of list here.) I want to try something different this year. I’m adding a Readers’ Choice portion. There are two giveaways tied to this one, to please keep reading. If you leave a comment on this post with your favorite books — up to three — of 2011, you will...
Well, it’s no secret I loved Jaye Wells’ Red-Headed Stepchild (spoiler-free review). If you’ve already finished the book and are itching to chat, the spoiler discussion thread is now up. I’m really looking forward to hearing what you think of Sabina, Giguhl and everyone else. It’s already time to start thinking about the December group read. (I’ll give you a moment to process that. Sneaky holidays,... 
Here’s the deal, readers: I like shifter books, too. I know. Shocking. But while I may be an expert on vampire books, my friend Kelly is the queen bee of shifter novels. Oh, she loves her heroes furry. It made sense to ask her to write up the favorite shifters for part of this week’s ongoing chats about favorite paranormal beasties. Other key things to know about Kelly: she runs the blog Reading the... 
We’re edging up on Halloween. While buying skeleton hand salad servers and zombie paraphernalia is a good start, I thought we should talk about our favorite paranormal creatures throughout the week. That means lists of favorite vampires, shifters, demons and the like — with polls and giveaways. And what better way to kick things off than with my favorite supernatural types: vampires. Bones (Night Huntress... 
