The article is a ranked list of all 13 books in Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries series, the source material for HBO's True Blood, running from worst to best. It argues that the novels, centred on telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse in the fictional Louisiana town of Bon Temps, diverge significantly from the TV adaptation, giving far greater depth to the Eric Northman-Sookie relationship while sidelining Bill Compton as a love interest after the third book. The piece is aimed at fans of the show who may not realise how different, and in the writer's view often more rewarding, the source books are.

Placed at the bottom of the ranking are the thirteenth book, "Dead Ever After" (2013), criticised for its divisive ending in which Sookie is paired with Sam Merlotte rather than Eric, and the tenth book, "Dead in the Family" (2010), seen as a slower instalment functioning largely as an epilogue to its predecessor. The full ranking of all 13 novels, published between the late 1990s and 2013, continues through the series highlighting stronger entries, though the excerpt provided covers only the two lowest-ranked titles in detail.