Dead to the World
Charlaine Harris
 This novel opens on New Year's Eve, three weeks after the events of Club Dead. Sookie Stackhouse finds Eric running down the road close to her home, but he seems to have lost his memory. Sookie, initially reluctant to get involved in vampire matters once again, takes Eric in. Eric's second in command, Pam, is relieved at Sookie finding Eric, and explains a coven of villainous witches, some of them also werewolves, has arrived in Shreveport, set on extorting money from Eric and taking over the local power he has. Hence, Pam believes the witches to be responsible for Eric's erased memory. After Sookie's brother Jason bargains on a financial settlement, Sookie agrees to keep Eric in her house and care for him, as the witches are on the lookout for Eric and might harm him. The next day, Jason is missing. Sookie oversees the slowly progressing police investigation of her brother's disappereance, but personally fears the witch coven might've gotten hold of him. Later on, Sookie informs werewolf Alcide Herveaux of the witch coven being in town. Alcide and his pack master fear that one of their pack members might have defected to the witches' side, but Sookie and Alcide then discover this particular woman's murdered body. Back in Bon Temps, Sookie's workplace is paid a visit to by the leaders of the witch coven, Marnie "Hallow" and Mark Stonebrook. Meanwhile, Sookie and Eric give in to their sexual interest in each other, while Sookie realizes she wouldn't have done so if Eric still had his memory. Pam suggests Alcide's werewolf pack, her area vampires and some local Wiccans unite to fight off the witch coven. They do so and with Sookie's assistance, brutally attack the witches' main gathering place, wiping out everyone present but Hallow, whom Pam captures and forces to lift Eric's amnesia. Sookie returns home dismayed at the loss of her "relationship" with the memory-free Eric, and finally retrieves Jason with Sam's help in Hotshot, a local were-panther community. In Hotshot, Felton Norris, romantically interested in Jason's one-time fling Crystal, also a werepanther, had contained Jason and purposefully bit him to change him into a werepanther, so that Crystal would lose her interest in Jason. This novel marked the death of three previously introduced characters; Fangtasia's human waitress Ginger was killed by a witch curse, Fangtasia's replacement bartender Chow was staked in the climactic battle, and Alcide Herveaux's jealous, shapeshifter ex-girlfriend Debbie Pelt was shot to death by Sookie after invading Sookie's house intending to kill her.