The Kiss of Death (12+) by Marcus Sedgwick
Orion, £9.99; 192pp Buy the book

Breaking Dawn (12+) by Stephenie Meyer
Atom, £12.99; 768pp Buy the book

August isn't over, but the nights have started drawing in, and tales of the undead thicken fast. The classiest of these is by my hero, Neil Gaiman, but The Graveyard Book isn't out until Hallowe'en; meanwhile we have two lip-smacking reads from a master and mistress of the genre in Marcus Sedgwick and Stephenie Meyer.

It took me a couple of goes to really fall for Sedgwick's first vampire novel, My Swordhand is Singing, but it turned out to be brilliant - about a boy called Peter who discovers that his father has the only sword that can stop vampires and save his sweetheart, deep in a Eastern European forest. If you haven't read it, do, because The Kiss of Death is an equally gripping sequel.

Marko's father, a doctor, has disappeared, leaving his wife and nine children on the mainland without money or help. When he gets a note begging him to come to Venice he sets off, and meets Sorrel, whose own father, a patient of the lost doctor, has become a madman. No servant will stay in their ruined, magnificent house on the Giudecca, where increasingly sinister things happen. Before long, our two heroes are fighting for their lives with a mysterious old swordsman who turns out to be Peter, from the first novel. Vampires are on the rise, and Peter's old enemy, the Shadow Queen, is taking over more and more people after having been very nearly defeated.

Both the children are sympathetic, strongly drawn characters. When gentle, brave Marko asks Sorrel why she wants to “kill yourself with the fear of what might be”, she answers, “the world is a vampire ... sent to drain us of our souls”. There is a real sense of fear and horror and hopelessness surmounted in these books that sensitive readers will love, and the ending is marvellous.

What makes Sedgwick such an interesting author is not just his imagination, which has a consistently unpredictable and original cast to it - even if this is yet another children's novel set in Venice - but his voice. He isn't an easy read, despite the vivid simplicity of his language. The pared-down Sedgwick style is a far cry from the lyrical descriptive writing of classic children's literature, but is both dramatic and effective, making us see banana-shaped gondolas through Marko's eyes, while revealing that he doesn't even know what a banana is. Each chapter is only two or three pages long, and often interspersed with fairytales, letters, diary entries and so on. The effect is not unlike one of those collages, built up by glueing small pieces of torn-up colour magazines to form an image that is both disturbing and suggestive of a bigger picture.

Stephenie Meyer's brand of virginal eroticism has been going down a storm among teenaged girls ever since Twilight, the tale of pale Bella and exquisite, chivalrous Edward, who hungers for her flesh but can't consummate their love unless she becomes one of the undead. Matters are further complicated by Bella's best friend Jacob turning out to be a werewolf, and fancying her, too.

Books 2 and 3 were progressively less satisfying, but that hasn't handicapped sales of Book 4, Breaking Dawn, which have overtaken Harry Potter in America and have been boosted by the forthcoming release of the film of Twilight. Sadly, what made the first book so interesting and suspenseful - the choice between an imperfect mortal life and a perfect but sterile vampire one - is here traduced. Bella gets all her heart's desires, including a perfect baby, but not before the reader feels suffocated in sugar. Pass the insulin, please!

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