The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

The next book I read on vacation was this one - The Historian.  It is a novel about a group of people searching for Dracula - not Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the purportedly real Dracula whose myth evolved into the vampire we are familiar with today.

The book was really fun to read - it alternated between the 1970's where a young girl discovers her widowed father's fascination with Dracula and the 1950's when he was actively searching for traces of Dracula across Europe.  A mix of history, adventure, and a little supernatural, the story held my attention.  The narration was shared by several of the characters and various articles, letters, and other "primary sources," which made some of what would have otherwise been dry historical content easier to digest.  Also keeping the book lively was the well-developed cast of characters, which included the daughter who finds her father's books, her father, father, his college professor, the professor's daughter, and many librarians, historians, monks, students, and others.

Being in Central Europe while I was reading this book was fun - there are scenes that take place in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and other places in the region we were in.  This was a good vacation read - not fluffy by any means, but one that you need to read a chunk of at a time to really appreciate.