Dead in the Family

Dead in the Family is a novel by the American writer Charlaine Harris, published in 2010 and the tenth book of the Southern Vampire Mysteries.

The book begins with Sookie still recovering, physically and otherwise, and it uses her convalescence to bring the people around her into the room: her brother Jason has found a settled relationship, her former lover Bill is dealing with his own history, and her boss Sam has family of his own to manage. The arrival of Appius Livius Ocella, the ancient vampire who made Eric, and of the young man he has brought with him, puts the household under a kind of family obligation that Sookie has no say in. The young man is Alexei Romanov, the son of the last Russian tsar, who was turned as an adolescent after witnessing the murder of his family, and the novel's interest in him is the same as its interest in everyone else: what a very long life does to a person's capacity for ordinary feeling. Harris also keeps the wider world moving, since the revelation that shape-shifters exist is still being worked out in the politics of the vampires and in the ordinary business of a Louisiana parish.