THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB'S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES: Grady Hendrix's New Novel Picked up For Adaptation

PMK Prods. nabbed The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires after a ten-buyer bidding war in a massive sale ahead of the novel’s release this spring  by Quirk Books. The character-driven, supernatural thriller is set in Charleston in the ‘90s and revolves around a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a real monster.

 

“Southern Book Club is a spiritual sequel to My Best Friend’s Exorcism, said Hendrix. “None of the same characters recur, but it takes place in the same neighborhood where I grew up, only a few years later and this time, instead of being about the kids, it’s about their parents,” Hendrix said. “It’s a power ballad ode to the moms I grew up around, who seemed like wine-drinking, book-reading powderpuffs but who dealt with the kind of darkness on a regular basis that would make Jack Reacher cry.”

 

Housewife Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime and paperback fiction. At these meetings, they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family murders as they are to discuss marriage, motherhood, and neighborhood gossip. This predictable pattern is upended when Patricia meets James Harris, a handsome stranger who moves into the neighborhood to take care of his elderly aunt and ends up joining the book club. James is sensitive and well-read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in twenty years. But there’s something off about him. When local children go missing, Patricia and the book club members start to suspect James is more of a Bundy than a Beatnik—but no one outside of the book club believes them. Have they read too many true crime books, or have they invited a monster into their homes?