Just finished Tom Holland's Lord of the Dead...
Vampire tale like Anne Rice's, maybe better. The author is scholarly with lots of historical details. He has a very clever idea in that his main character and vampire is Lord Byron, the English Poet. Byron's friends - the poet Shelley and his wife Mary Shelly (author of Frankenstein), and John Polidori (author of The Vampyre).
The author has done his homework and weaves fascinating true details to a story of the undead. Take a look at this link to get a sense of the true detail Holland had to work with:
http://pluto.scs.ryerson.ca/~monica/polidori.htm
And that only part of it. In a way I liked it better than Anne Rice - without her overripe and flowery prose that almost drowns in indulgence. Parts bothered me - Byron's endless whining about the loss of his mortality, his constant wish-washyness.
Still, if you are a fan of the genre, you ought to read it. It got very strong reviews - and is available in paperback of course
http://www.bookpage.com/9602bp/ficti...ofthedead.html