SOOKIE Stackhouse returns in Charlaine Harris' latest book, Dead and Gone. The telepathic vampire-dating, werewolf friend is in fine form defending herself and her friends from a wide variety of nasty supernatural creatures.

Yes, these are the books that the television series TrueBlood is based on.

Set in America's deep south, Harris' books are part of the 'supernatural-creatures-in-daily-life' genre that began with Anne Rice's classic Interview with a Vampire and was expanded by best-seller Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series.

The world continues to be in love with the world of the supernatural. You just have to look as the success of books like the Twilight series, Harry Potter and TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and the eponymously named, Supernatural.

I'm sure there are any number of exciting psychological and sociological reasons why this continues to be so, but for what it's worth, I think it's all about the sex.

Just about every vampire, werewolf, witch, wizard or faery is portrayed as being super-sexy. After all, who'd want to get sucked dry or torn to bits if it wasn't being done by a sexy guy with great muscles and/or hundreds of years experience in romance?

Harris' characters fit this super-sexy mold perfectly. Sookie, the telepathic heroine of her novels, goes from one sexy lover to another.

Starting with a vampire, Bill, she's gone through a shape-shifter, a weretiger and now she's hooked up with another vampire. It makes one wonder just what all these sexy supernatural creatures are doing in the backwoods of Louisiana.

Finally, however, there some sort of an answer as to why Sookie is just so attractive to these creatures. She's actually part fairy.

A couple of generations back her ancestress ended up with a mysterious fairy as a lover and now Sookie is being caught up in her great grandfather's fairy war.

It was bound to happen; fairies I mean, Harris has just about every other type of supernatural creature in her novels after all.

But what makes Harris' novels stand out from the, rapidly increasing, crowd of supernatural genre books is that her heroine is touchingly human.

Sookie might have a few extra talents but at the bottom of it all she's just a girl trying to get by. She's lost her parents, her grandparents, friends, lovers and enemies.

How she copes with the dramas in her life – and they are many and never-ending – echoes every day life. Sure, you might not have to fight off evil fairies but everyone has a work colleague they cant's stand.

It is Harris' touches of the mundane that ensures the reader cares enough about the characters and the story to suspend disbelief and get caught up in Sookie's story.

It also helps that Harris' is a great writer – the prose is detailed with nothing extraneous to distract the reader; the dialogue is particularly good and the twists come from all angles.

Although it helps to have read the other Sookie Stackhouse novels, it's not entirely necessary. However, the series as a whole is so good that it's worth getting hold of them all and reading them in sequence.

Dead and Gone is another classic Harris novel – tight, punchy, exciting and, dare I say, sexy.

Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris is published by Gollancz and is available from good bookstores and online.