Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability." She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome -- and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the kind of guy she's been waiting for all her life.

But Bill has a disability of his own: he's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs out with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of -- big surprise -- murder. And when one of Sookie's co-workers is killed, she fears she's next.