Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter
This series is adult fantasy, and more adult as each book goes on. It is based in the times when beepers where a thing and mobile phones were not yet viable but give it a few years. Say early 90's.
Mythical creatures have only recently come out of the closet. Vampires, were-animals (not restricted to wolves), witches, warlocks, voo-doo, demons and fae. In the United States of America they have declared Vampires living beings with rights, one of the few countries in the worlds to do so causing vampires to try migrate there, legally or otherwise.
This has caused the rise of things like the Church of Eternal Life that can literally offer you eternal life. Companies run by were animals and businesses that make a living on raising the dead. This is where we meet Anita Blake a 24 year old animator in St. Louis, Missouri, who also happens to be a part time Vampire Hunter, all above board mind you, only when the government sanctions her to hunt a misbehaving vampire or five. Ok maybe more often than that but what the public doesn't know, she literally insures cant hurt them.
Her day job (or night job really) as an animator is to raise zombies for folkes who want to settle wills, apologise to the deceased or history buffs who want to get the facts right from the horses mouth. She uses voodoo teachings to do the raising but really she probably doesn't need all the ceremony, it just acts as a guide for her innate ability, that if she didn't raise the dead on a semi-regular basis, her power would escape her un guided and raise random dead thing willy-nilly, anything from roadkill to an old highschool teacher.
Her unique knowledge of all things dead and undead makes her a useful tool to the local police in identifying murder scenes that fall outside of the normal human vs human killings. She knows things like how to tell the difference between a ghoul bite and a vampire bite to the difference between the burnt corpse of a human vs the burnt corpse of a vampire.
Between her impressive vampire kill rate, and her ability to look at a ravaged corpse without vomiting (most of the time) she has earned the nick name of "the Executioner" and basically a bogey-man to vampires. If you met her on the street though and had no idea who she was, she is a 5'3 china doll with a mass of black curly hair, highly christian episcopalian prude with no mental filter and a no nonsense attitude.
As you go through each book she become less and less prudish and as each book goes on it is less and less ideal for anyone under the age of 18 to read it. But let's be realistic, most kids from the age of 14-15 onwards are reading this sorta thing and it is getting them through the hell that is puberty.
In this series there are sex scenes, depictions of S&M, gay and lesbian sex, polyamory, group sex, and if you consider were-beasts animals and vampires as dead then also scenes of beastiality and necrophilia. So in short this is NOT for children. If you want books for your children/young adults go read my reviews on Tamora Pierce. Some of the stuff in these books is enough to make even the most weathered porn star randy and also some scenes so dark they can still give an adult nightmares.
Enjoy