The Vampire Diaries Book Series
Written By: L.J. Smith
I have had alot of questions on what order the books go in and what they are about, So here it is...
1) The Awakening ~The first book introduces the reader to Elena Gilbert, a beautiful and popular high school student in the small town of Falls Church, Virginia, and her friends Bonnie, Meredith, Matt, and Caroline, Elena's old friend who now is her competition. Elena breaks up with her boyfriend and best friend, Matt, who is a football star, when school starts (they were not together over the summer). They were the golden couple; she was blonde and popular, but she felt that there were no fireworks in their relationship, and she wanted more. As their senior year begins, Elena pursues the mysterious new guy in town, Stefan Salvatore. He is staying in Ms. Flowers' old remote house. Stefan rejects Elena's advances, and as the school's most popular girl, she makes up an imaginary boyfriend that she met over the summer, later explaining to Matt that it was made up: he was the handsome married gardener. Elena also hangs out at the cemetery at her parents' grave site.
Stefan's resistance is met with Elena's determination, and she eventually discovers his secret: Stefan is a centuries-old vampire. As Elena and Stefan fall in love, strange attacks begin to happen in the town while a dark and seductive stranger appears to Elena. He is eventually revealed to be Stefan's older brother, Damon. In Renaissance Italy, the brothers both fall in love with a young vampire named Katherine, who later committed suicide after the two brothers turned against each other. They fought for her love and she decided to choose them both as lovers and exchanged blood with them, turning them both into vampires. Fueled with rage, the brothers killed each other but woke up as vampires. The Awakening ends with Elena seeking out Damon whom she believes to be the prime suspect for Stefan's disappearance after the towns people begin to suspect the latter to be behind the recent murder of the school's social studies teacher during the Halloween Haunted House, and the strange attacks.
2) The Struggle ~The second book picks up where The Awakening left, and delves further into Damon's ongoing attempts to win Elena's affections and Stefan's struggle to survive. When Stefan went missing, Elena seeks out Damon and confronts him in the graveyard, knowing that it will be dangerous. Damon claims he killed Stefan the previous night. Elena and her friends find Stefan in a well, near death, after Bonnie has a vision. Elena saves Stefan by giving him some of her blood. Elena also exchanges blood with Damon, making a secret deal with him she kept hidden from Stefan, knowing he would disapprove, tying herself to both brothers as Katherine did centuries ago. While waiting for Stefan one night, Elena feels as if a presence inside a storm is coming for her, and she frantically tries to escape by crossing the bridge over a river. The car, which she has borrowed from Matt, veers off the road and into the river, and she drowns.
3) The Fury ~ The third book deals with Elena's adjustment to her vampirism, as well as her confusion at loving both brothers. Stefan finds Elena dead, and believes that the force that was chasing Elena was Damon. They fight, and in the middle of it, Elena awakens, and attacks Stefan— as Damon had given Elena more of his blood in the exchange and as such viewed Stefan as a threat to her creator. They stop the fight, Stefan is broken-hearted assuming that her attack meant she loved Damon more, and Damon tries to clear everything up.
While having to stay out of the way of the town's new vampire hunter (the new teacher, Alaric), Stefan, Damon, Elena and her friends search for the source of the dark presence that has overtaken the town and which they also suspect to be behind Elena's death. They find the answer in Honoria Fell's tomb, and it turns out to be Katherine, who in fact did not die centuries before as the brothers had thought. Instead, she had faked her death, having her maid bring ashes from the kitchen, lay them out on her dress, and put her lapis lazuli ring on top, while she had another forged, making it looked as if she had killed herself. Since then, Stefan has lived with the guilt of her death, while Katherine has spent that time seething with anger. She decides to take revenge, and is jealous of Elena for "stealing" both brothers' love. Katherine reveals that she is the one who attacked Vicki and ran Elena off the bridge. They are all tortured brutally, and Elena ends this by knocking Katherine into the light of the tomb, while unsuccessfully getting herself out of the sunshine fast enough. She dies in the end, saying that she wants both brothers' words that they would take care of each other because Damon is often misunderstood, and she wants the fraternal rivalry to end, also telling Stefan that she loved him, and that she did not want this to happen, causing pain for him as Katherine had.
4) Dark Reunion ~The fourth book begins six months after Elena's death. This book is told primarily from Bonnie's point of view. At a surprise birthday party for Meredith, Bonnie and Caroline (along with two other girlfriends from high school) contact Elena using an Ouija board. Elena warns them there is evil in town with them, and that they are all in danger. She tells them they need to summon someone but gets interrupted, presumably by an evil spirit, before telling the girls to run. Before all of the girls can get out of the house, one girl is thrown from the second floor balcony and dies. Another girl goes insane after the ordeal. With Matt's help, Bonnie and Meredith perform a spell to summon Stefan, who arrives back in town with Damon.
5) The Return: Nightfall ~The fifth book starts with Elena's return from the dead. She returns from the afterlife with super human powers which makes her blood irresistible to vampires. Stefan is convinced to keep Elena safe and wants to leave Falls Church, though in the end he does not. Damon, being the power hungry vampire that he is, wants Elena to stay with him and rule as his princess of the dark. Damon struck a deal with a new vampire in town, Shinichi—he would take care of Stefan, but in return, Shinichi would take over Fell's Church. When Stefan is lured away from Fells Church, he tries to convince Elena that he is the brother that she should be with. Damon, always the hunter is now the hunted when he becomes the prey to an evil insect that can possess anyone, and it desires not just Elena's blood, but also her death. As the town becomes infected by these evil creatures that posess humans, Matt is wanted for arrest, and Damon lapses in and out of control over his own body; he watched Elena's friends (Matt, Bonnie & Merideth) almost die, but he later on regained control. In particular, Bonnie was on the verge of death before Damon saved her, showing that he does care for humans, and that he has feelings for her, though he continually shows his love for Elena still. Afterward, Stefan mysteriously disappears, leaving a note in Elena's diary, which Damon deleted, instead saying that he left her for her own protection when the real note was to warn her that if he was to disappear, it was Damon to blame—he wanted to become a human again after Damon gave him a website address that was for Shi no Shi, meaning 'death of death', advertising a way for vampires to become humans again.
There are many new characters introduced, such as the Saitous, a Japanese family, consisting of Isobel, who becomes possessed by the evil creatures, her little brother, and her grandmother, Obaasan, who was a shrine keeper once. Ms. Flowers is now revealed to be more than a batty old woman—she is in fact a powerful white witch who knew all along that Stefan was a vampire. The new villains in town are kitsune (fox demons) named Shinichi and Misao, Japanese twins, who came to Fell's Church because they were attracted to its evil aura. It is revealed that even after all this time, Matt continues to have feelings for Elena.
In the end, Damon gains control of his body, and Elena helps him remember everything he has done by removing the insect from his body. Damon is disgusted with himself, but he and Elena manage to subdue the twins, though they will return to Fell's Church. Matt, Elena and Damon set out to find where Shinichi has hidden Stefan—both men are attracted to her, though she is trying her best to resist Damon, she remembers her past with Matt.
6) The Return: Shadow Souls ~A penitent Damon, along with Elena, and Matt follow Stefan into the darkest dimension in an attempt to set him free from the prison he has found instead of salvation. Bonnie and Meredith join Elena as all three are forced to enter as slaves, the chained and leashed property of a vampire–Damon. AND last but least they all nearly die
7) The Return: Midnight (2011) ~ The surviving group of Falls Church friends return to find their town in a shambles. Meredith makes a horrifying discovery in her research and Bonnie has an out of body experience which might explain all the mayhem that is going on. Matt faces down Caroline, while, Elena must face the most important question of her life: who does she really belong with? Stefan or Damon?
All book info was Found at Wikipedia
