Thirsty (Tracey Bateman) Books in Order

The Thirsty books are where Tracey Bateman swerves hardest from reader expectations. Instead of prairie romance or comic women's fiction, this series heads straight into supernatural suspense set in the Missouri Ozarks. There are vampires here, yes, but Bateman is just as interested in addiction, shame, grief, and spiritual hunger.

That is what gives the series its weight.

Thirsty starts with Nina Parker, an alcoholic in recovery who is forced to return to Abbey Hills, Missouri, the hometown she left years earlier. Going home means facing her ex-husband, her angry daughter, and the old wound that has shaped her life for nearly two decades. It also means stepping back into a place watched by something ancient and dangerous. The horror element matters, but Nina's personal unraveling matters just as much.

The sequel, Tandem, stays in Abbey Hills after people think the worst is over. It is not. New questions, fresh killings, and a deepening sense of dread push the story wider, bringing in another woman's grief and a stranger marked by his own past. Bateman keeps the town central, so the series never loses that small-community feeling where everybody is close enough to be threatened.

What makes these books work is that the supernatural threat is tied to appetites people already understand. Desire, obsession, relapse, loneliness, the need to be wanted, the wish to escape the self. Bateman uses vampire lore to sharpen those problems, not replace them.

So the books are dark, but they are not empty dark.

Expect a mix of thriller pacing and personal wreckage. The series is interested in whether redemption is possible after damage that feels permanent, and whether faith still means anything when evil looks tangible and intimate. Read Thirsty first, then Tandem. The second book builds directly on the first, and Abbey Hills makes most sense when you see how the original nightmare took hold.