Something in the blood

First published in 1897, Dracula has had a long and multifaceted afterlife - one rivaling even its immortal creation; yet Bram Stoker has remained a hovering specter in this pervasive mythology. In Something in the Blood, David J. Skal exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who birthed an undying cultural icon, painting an astonishing portrait of the age in which Stoker was born - a time when death was no metaphor but a constant threat easily imagined as a character existing in flesh and blood.