Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1) by Charlaine Harris

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of 'disability'. She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he's tall, dark and handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all her life.

But Bill has a disability of his own: he's a vampire. Worse than that, he hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, with a reputation for trouble - of the murderous kind.

And when one of Sookie's colleagues is killed, she begins to fear she'll be next . . .