Here's a nice glossy, oversized book for your coffee table. Just make sure you display it near a vial of holy water and a tastefully arranged bowl of garlic.

Dracula, by Memorial University English professor Elizabeth Miller is a lushly illustrated, wide-ranging text on the many facets of horror fiction's most outstanding creation.

Miller, a specialist in the field who has published two previous books on Dracula ­ she's known to many as the "Dracula Lady"­ writes here on the origins and influences of Count Dracula, and his connection to the real-life, historical figure, Vlad Tepes.

Divided into four sections, the book first tackles the Wallachian voivode ( a Rumanian term for ruler), while the following three sections are devoted to vampires, Bram Stoker's Dracula, in particular, and world folk belief examples in general, with references to films, modern vampire sightings and the Transylvanian tourist trade along the way.

Vlad all over

Many people assume Vlad Tepes, a.k.a. Vlad Dracula, the 15^th century Wallachian king and warlord, was Stoker's inspiration for his aristocratic, pitiless and cruel Dracula. Certainly he borrowed the name Dracula (Vlad's father was known as Dracul) and some geographic locations. Miller argues Stoker actually knew or cared little about the historical figure, although if only half of what they say is true, Vlad comes across as worse than any number of fictional vampires.

Nicknamed "The Impaler"-- and perhaps that is all you ever really need to know ­ Vlad is considered by some Romanians to be a folk hero.

There was law and order during his brief reign (actually three short periods between 1456 and 1470), and little poverty. True, but only because he killed all thieves and murderers (and often their nearest and dearest and their entire villages) and slaughtered the poor en masse as well. News of his atrocities still reverberates, and makes for gruesome reading. History is written by the victors, and Vlad was defeated, but there is no arguing this was someone with major anger-management control issues.

Stoker's novel came along about four centuries later.

"Symmetrically constructed... in many respects, the novel fits the template of the detective story­ a genre that was gaining respectability due to the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle­ with his tripartite structure: mystery, investigation and resolution," Miller writes.

Story started life as a play

First titled The Undead, Dracula premiered as a five-act play, read by the theatre company of famed actor Henry Irving (Stoker and Irving were good friends and business partners). Released to mixed reviews (Winston Churchill was said to be a fan), Dracula was considered rather an ordinary horror story; Stoker would die before it became an international favorite.

Why it did is another question Miller pursues. Why are people so fascinated with vampires? Is it the promise of eternal life, the lure of dangerous sex, watching the Count on Sesame Street? The reasons may vary as much as the portrayals, and she presents a good survey of these, from off-shoot novels (a nod to Anne Rice) to the many film and television versions of Dracula (some tenuously connected: Frankenstein Meets Dracula, for example.)

There are lots of full-colour photographs, film stills and book covers, postage stamps and old engravings to balance and enhance the writings. But the layout is not all it should be. In the film stills, for example, the actors are not always identified. The copy is set flush left, and most paragraphs are only a sentence long, giving an abrupt and choppy effect. And there are several glaring typos, misaligned sentences and accidentally omitted words. It's jarring to find these in such a hefty, polished publication.

However, while true Dracula aficionados may be familiar with some of the information Miller offers here, Dracula should prove entertaining and informative for those with a new or blooming interest in that most notorious of counts.

You might want to skip some of those "Impaler"-era pictorials.