Reading Vampire Gothic Through Blood examines the manifestations of blood and vampires in various texts and contexts. It seeks to connect, through blood, fictional to real-life vampires to trace similarities, differences and discontinuities. These movements will be seen to parallel changing notions about embodiment and identity in culture.

This fascinating study explores the multifarious erotic themes associated with the magic lantern shows, which proved the dominant visual medium of the West for 350 years, and analyses how the shows influenced the portrayals of sexuality in major works of Gothic fiction. It offers vivid, new readings of works as varied as Charlotte Brönte's Villette and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and even uses clues suggested by magic lantern references to discover the meaning of the amorous entanglement described in the last extant stanzas of Byron's Don Juan. The first book-length consideration of the erotic associations connected with lantern shows, Jones reinstates the lanterns' importance for past generations in their visualization and expression of diverse sexualities and argues that an understanding of these influences serves fundamentally to change our reading of Gothic literature.

1.Introduction.- 2.Angela Living in Gothic Times.- 3.Margaret Atwood and Canadian Women's Spite, Lies, Split Selves and Self Deception.- 4.Cultural Toni Morrison and Tananarive Due.- 5.Postcolonial and Cultural Haunting Letting the 'Right' Ones In.- 6.Testing the Fabric of Bluebeard's Postcolonial Reconfigurations, Demythologizing, Re-Mythologizing and Shape-shifting.- 7.Vampire Bites.- 8.Vampire Kisses.- 9.Ghostings and Splintering the Fabric of Domestic Gothic with Horror Houses, Stately Homes, Ghosts Behind Walls, Playroom Deaths, Women in Black, Little Strangers.- 10.Reviving, Revisiting and Mainstreaming Gothic

After 9/11, the world felt the “shock and awe” of the War on Terror. But that war also exploded inside novels, films, comics, and gaming. Danel Olson investigates why the paranormal, ghostly, and conspiratorial entered such media between 2002-2022, and how this Gothic presence connects to the most recent theories on PTSD. Set in New York/Gotham, Afghanistan, Iraq, and CIA black sites, the traumatic and weird works interrogated here ask how killing affects the killers. The protagonists probed are artillery, infantry, and armored-cavalry soldiers; military intelligence; the Air Force; counter-terrorism officers of the NYPD, NCIS, FBI, and CIA; and even the ultimate crime-fighting vigilante, Batman.