Angel at Dawn

A 496-year-old vampire goes to 1950s Hollywood in this spicy paranormal tale. Handsome bloodsucker Christian Durand (familiar from November 2010's Devil at Midnight) is reunited with his long-lost lover, Grace Michaels, by his maker, the evil vampire queen Nim "Naomi" Wei. Naomi is now an ambitious director of B-movies and determined to make her vampire subordinate a star. Grace remembers nothing of her magical erotic encounters with Christian centuries before, and as other figures from his past are mysteriously drawn to the film studio, Christian struggles with his memories as well as his difficulties as a novice actor. The marathon sexual encounters between Grace and Christian are sizzlingly hot, but the story suffers from its dependence on the previous book, and the connections with the events and characters of Christian's past are never fully integrated or resolved. (Jan.)