Dead in the Family

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Claude on the porch
2. Hunter and the quiet work
3. Bill is dying slow
4. Wolves want the woods
5. The maker walks in
6. What happened at my house
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I came back to this one because Dead and Gone left me wrung out. Sookie had been tortured by fairies, Claudine was dead, Tray was dead, and Niall sealed Faery off. I wanted something softer next. Charlaine Harris first published Dead in the Family May 4, 2010 with Ace Books in the US, book ten in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The first Ace hardcover runs 311 pages with ISBN 9780441018642. I read it expecting a breather. It is not a breather. It is a crowded house story where everybody brings family trouble at once.

Sookie Stackhouse is still our narrator. Telepathic waitress at Merlotte's in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Around most humans she hears everything whether she wants to or not. Around vampires she gets quiet, which is why they keep using her. By book ten she is not the girl from Dead Until Dark. She notices tips and laundry even while vampires argue about kings in her living room. She sleeps badly here. Nightmares about Lochlan and Neave, the fairies who cut her. She startles, then gets mad at herself for startling. Harris does not cure that in a chapter. She lets it sit in the kitchen while life goes on.

Amelia leaves at the start. Amelia Broadway, witch and friend who lived with Sookie, heads back to New Orleans after Tray died. She cannot stand Bon Temps anymore. Sookie helps her pack and tries to sound cheerful. The house feels too quiet after. I missed Amelia's clutter right away. A Sookie with an empty spare room is a Sookie about to get houseguests, and they arrive fast.

Claude on the porch

Claude Crane shows up early. Claudine, Sookie's fairy protector, was Claude's triplet sister. Claudette died earlier. Claudine died shielding Sookie in the last book. Claude is what is left. Tall, beautiful in a way that puts people off, rude the way cats are rude.

He waits on the porch one morning. Sookie brings coffee because that is what she does, even scared. She tells him what happened, including that Claudine was pregnant. She waits for him to kill her. He does not. He leaves. She cries after, partly relief and partly because she realizes she wants to live, which surprises her.

No fight. Just grief that does not match. That short scene stayed with me longer than the big battles.

Days later Claude returns with a bag. Faery is closed, his sisters are gone, and he is lonely for other fairies. He wants to move in. Sookie says yes. It is kinship more than kindness. Her great grandfather Niall is fairy royalty, enough for trouble and not enough for power. She feels responsible.

Living with him is strange. He strips without shame. He watches TV too close. He draws attention without trying. Sookie sets rules and he mostly ignores them. Still, another person breathing in the house softens the nightmares. I got that. Grief likes company, even annoying company.

Then Dermot. Dermot Brigant is Sookie's great uncle, Niall's son. He wanders her woods, confused, talking to himself. Some spell holds his mind. He apologizes, says he thought Niall killed his twin, says he chose wrong in the war. He warns her about another fairy in the woods who frightens him, then vanishes. Sookie leaves food out. When she cannot fix magic, she feeds people. That practical streak is why I trust her as a narrator.

The other fairy stays hidden a long while. A cold spot in the trees. After the very physical torture last book, a watcher feels worse.

Hunter and the quiet work

The chapters I liked best have almost no vampires. Sookie agrees to help Hunter Savoy.

Hunter is Hadley's boy. Hadley, Sookie's cousin, died vampire earlier in the series. Her son lives with his father Remy and he hears thoughts like Sookie does. At school it leaks out. Remy asks for help. Sookie remembers being a kid nobody believed, called rude or slow. She says yes fast.

She teaches him manners for listening. Do not blurt what you hear. Smile and look away. Keep secrets that are not yours. Hum in your head when voices get loud. Count ceiling tiles. These are tricks she learned alone. Passing them on feels like the point of the series for a stretch. Powers are not cool here. They are a condition you manage.

One afternoon Hunter repeats something mean he caught from another kid. Sookie explains why that hurts even if true. Claude watches and goes soft in a way he rarely does. He plays with Hunter without mocking him. Then he says something vain and ruins it. That swing kept me from hating him.

Normal life runs around this. Shifts at Merlotte's. Sam Merlotte, her boss and shifter friend, dating Jannalynn, who is young Were and quick to fight. Sookie worries and bites her tongue. Mostly.

Sookie also gets a check for 150,000 dollars from Claudine's will through Mr. Cataliades. She stares at it. She does not want money for Claudine dying. She deposits it because bills are real. No speech. Just weirdness and on with the day.

If you want plot every page, this stretch may drag. I needed it after book nine. Dishes and kid lessons remind you Sookie is a person before she becomes a chess piece again.

Bill is dying slow

Bill Compton looks eroded. When Sookie was held, Bill came for her and took silver poison from Neave's teeth into himself. Now he does not heal. Gray. Weak. Hiding inside.

Sookie killed Lorena, Bill's maker, back in book three. That blocks the normal cure, because maker blood would have helped. Bill will not ask the only other option. Lorena made one other vampire, Judith Vardamon, turned to keep Bill company because she resembled his dead human wife. Bill thinks Judith blames him. Judith spent decades avoiding Lorena out of fear. So they never met.

Sookie meddles. She digs through Bill's vampire database, finds Judith, sends an awkward polite email. Hello, you do not know me, your brother is sick, I killed your maker, can you come. Harris lets the absurdity sit without winking.

Judith comes to the door. Quieter than Lorena. Wary. Tired of fear. When Sookie says Lorena is dead by her hand, Judith brightens in a freed way, not cruel. She goes to Bill that night. Her blood heals him. They talk and actually like each other. Sookie feels relieved and a little jealous and glad mixed together.

Sookie also sits with Bill on human family business. Old Caroline Bellefleur believes she descends from Bill's line. Bill brings a Bible, shows the tree. Andy Bellefleur bristles. Portia is kinder. Caroline dies next morning. The funeral runs at night so Bill can stand in back in the dark. Nobody fusses. After his lies in earlier books, watching him get acknowledged as kin felt earned.

My complaint: this thread stops and starts. Sookie chases Judith, drops it for wolves, picks it up again. I flipped back twice to remember names. That is the book in miniature. Many threads, thin ties. Lifelike, but an editor could have pulled tighter.

Wolves want the woods

Alcide Herveaux asks to run the Shreveport pack on Sookie's land at full moon. Campers sit on their usual ground. Sookie agrees. Alcide brings Basim al Saud, his new enforcer second, plus girlfriend Annabelle and Jannalynn Hopper, sharp and hungry for rank.

Morning brings trouble. Basim says vampires and fairies crossed the land lately. He smells a buried body in the woods. Sookie feels sick. Her acreage has held bodies before.

Eric Northman gets called. Eric, Sookie's vampire lover and local sheriff under a shaky king, asks Alcide to return and dig. Jason helps. The grave holds Basim himself. Annabelle admits she spent that day with Basim, cheating on Alcide, before Basim took a call about money and left fast. Jannalynn hits Annabelle for it. Alcide names Jannalynn second on the spot. Pack justice, quick and ugly, in front of humans.

Sookie insists she and Jason attend the pack inquiry since the body sat on her land. Before that she and Eric shift the corpse across the road. When Sheriff Dearborn arrives with Andy and Alcee Beck on a tip, they find bare dirt. Sookie smiles, offers help, hates lying to Andy. She does it to shield Alcide and Eric. Both feelings sit true.

The inquiry meets in a Shreveport house. Alcide says they lack a shaman and asks Sookie to drink a potion that shifts her sight so she can pick the killer among minds she reads poorly. She hates the idea. Drugs and magic in a wolf packed room. She drinks it because she wants this off her land.

Colors swim. Auras wobble. It points to Ham, with Patricia covering. Basim had taken fairy money to plant a body and cause Sookie trouble, to settle a debt to his old pack. Ham killed him to grab that reward. Annabelle was guilty of cheating, nothing worse. Jason pulls Sookie out before punishment starts. She vomits in the bushes. No heroic exit.

I found this section heavy. Debt, rank, seconds, old packs. Basim, Annabelle, Jannalynn, Ham, Patricia blur unless you list them. Harris filters it through Sookie's dizziness, which helps, but only so far. I thought of the summit in book seven where I also wanted a chart. Readers who love dense pack lore will eat it. I skimmed family trees to get back to people I knew.

The maker walks in

Halfway through, the air changes. Sookie braids Eric's hair at his house. Domestic, rare for them. Then her skull pressures up. Babble, pain, fear through the blood bond. Someone of Eric's blood nears. Old blood.

Appius Livius Ocella enters. Eric's maker. Roman, ancient, courteous the way old predators are courteous when it suits them. With him is Alexei. Alexei Romanov, the czar's son. Turned around fourteen, sick in life with hemophilia, pulled from the Bolsheviks with Rasputin as middleman in Appius telling. Eighty years a vampire and still unstable. Spoiled and sad and dangerous.

Appius steps into Sookie's house without invitation. Rules kept her alive for years. Old ones bend them. He notes lightly that he could order Eric to kill her. Eric stands stiff. Jason blunders in mid scene to fetch a table, tries normal talk, shakes hands. Alexei helps carry it out while Appius frets about humans near vampires. Funny and awful together. Sookie watches safety thin to paper.

Eric spent his early vampire years as Appius companion, lover and servant and pupil. He left when able. Around Appius he shrinks. Sookie hates seeing it. Power here never holds. Somebody is always somebody's child.

Alexei cannot be steadied. In Shreveport Sookie watches him take a teenager without remorse. She tells him suffering explains but does not permit use of others. He floods her with his family's murder, cellar and noise. She aches for him and holds the line. That exchange anchors the book for me, brief as it is.

Appius admits he considers giving Alexei final death. Proximity to Eric was last hope. It fails. Alexei slips out, kills two locals. Then he breaks at Eric's house. Bobby Burnham, Eric's day man, dies with Felicia, the bartender who dated Bobby. Pam is hurt. Eric sits alone with caved ribs when Sookie arrives. She orders Jason to press bone back, talks Eric out of shutdown, sends Jason for Pam. Triage, not heroics. Scared Sookie giving orders works better than courage speeches.

Victor Madden hangs over this. Victor serves Felipe de Castro, who holds Louisiana now. During the fairy war Victor chained Eric in silver so he could not reach Sookie, then claimed he forgot the vampire marriage binding Eric and Sookie. Sookie decides Victor needs killing. Cold plan, not heat of fight. She sat with wanting murder and disliking the want. Harris leaves it unresolved here. I respected that she did not cash it for cheap revenge. Sookie also already killed Bruno, one of Victor's men, on a rainy roadside with Pam when he jumped them. That was him or her. Victor would be choice. The difference matters and Harris knows it.

What happened at my house

The end runs fast. Michele, Jason's girlfriend, phones. Alexei came by Jason's place hunting. Michele sends him toward Sookie's. Sookie drives wounded Eric to her house in Jason's truck.

Appius lies on the ground, torn. Alexei circles Claude and a second fairy, Colman. Colman is the watcher from the woods, father of Claudine's unborn child.

Sookie darts inside for the silver chain that once held Bill. She loops Alexei. It sears him. Eric stakes him. Eighty years ends in her yard without ritual or repair. Sookie holds the stake and weighs Appius. Hate for what he put on Eric wars with a scheme to trade his life for Victor's death. Before she speaks, Colman lunges for her and strikes Appius instead. Dermot steps from trees and kills Colman to save kin. Eric finishes what must be finished.

Motive sorts out slowly. Colman blamed Sookie for Claudine and the baby. He paid Basim to plant trouble on her land to get her jailed and shamed. Watched her with Hunter and lost nerve for straight murder, then rage took him. Claude tells it flat, grieving thinly. He does not forgive exactly. He stays. Staying counts more.

Sookie remembers old tales. Kisses break spells. She and Claude kiss Dermot's cheeks at once. Silly on paper. It works. Dermot clears. He weeps. He knows Niall did not kill his twin. Claude weeps. Sookie weeps. Yard full of ash, three fairy kin holding on.

Eric is free in a way he has not been for centuries. Maker gone. Brother gone. Strings cut, wounds still open. He leaves to tend Pam. Sookie lets him go without clinging. Together but tired. Less hunted for one night.

Claude and Dermot ask to share her bed for comfort. Fairies crave touch and closeness. She is too tired to argue. They pile in like kids after a storm. I laughed and ached together. After torture and trials and a staking in the yard, letting people close enough to hear breathe feels like the bravest act. Read this after Dead and Gone, not first. It relies on nine books of debt. Give the slow middle room. The payoff is not triumph. It is a house still standing with more people in it than morning.

FAQ

Is Dead in the Family part of a series?

Yes. It is Sookie Stackhouse book ten, after Dead and Gone and before Dead Reckoning. Read books one through nine first.

When was Dead in the Family published?

Ace Books first published it May 4, 2010. The first hardcover runs 311 pages with ISBN 9780441018642.

Can I read Dead in the Family as a standalone?

You can follow the house plot alone, but Bill, Eric, Alcide and the fairy war all carry history from earlier books. Start with Dead Until Dark for full sense.