THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

SYNOPSIS: In the first book of the original series, The Awakening, Elena Gilbert is a 17 year old high-school senior who is popular and beautiful, but painfully lonely. When an attractive Italian boy named Stefan Salvatore, enrolls at her school of Robert E. Lee High, Elena's life changes forever. Stefan initially ignores her attempts to attract his attention, but she determines that she’ll make him hers, no matter what. However, Stefan Salvatore is a 500 year old vampire trying to start a new life for himself, and he is rejecting Elena because she is the near-perfect doppelganger of his lost love, Katherine von Swartzschild. Katherine changed both Stefan and his older brother, Damon Salvatore, into vampires five hundred years ago; she then committed suicide and the brothers killed one another because each blamed the other for her death. Even when Stefan admits he loves Elena and starts dating her, he initially keeps his nature a secret. Elena discovers the truth after a teacher is murdered on Halloween and the town blames Stefan for it. Elena believes, however, that the killer isn’t Stefan but the more powerful Damon, who’s been trying to seduce her on the sly. Stefan confronts Damon and warns him to stay away from Elena, but Damon says he intends to make Elena his own, and the book ends with violence between the two brothers.In the second book, The Struggle, Stefan and Elena find themselves in growing conflict with Damon. Damon tries to persuade Elena to abandon Stefan in favor of him and continues to threaten Stefan. Elena attempts to protect Stefan by not telling him how Damon has tricked her into blood exchanges with him. Meanwhile, Elena’s diary has been stolen by other high school students who intend to use it to make the town believe that Stefan is responsible for a rash of assaults and the teacher’s murder. When Elena finally is unable to find a solution and confesses the truth to Stefan, he promises to help her and stay with her no matter what happens, and the two become engaged. However, it is Damon who saves Elena and Stefan by stealing Elena’s diary back. The attack of a supernatural force causes Elena to drown unexpectedly, and Stefan, who believes Damon is responsible, tries to kill Damon in revenge.In the third book, The Fury, Elena wakes up as a vampire and interrupts the brothers’ fight to the death. She identifies the force that killed her as someone other than Damon, and the three vampires band together to find it, despite the continuing tensions between Stefan and Damon. In the end, the Other Power is finally identified as Katherine von Swartzschild, who - it turns out - faked her suicide, and has since gone insane. Elena manages to kill Katherine but dies in the fight. Stefan and Damon make her a deathbed promise to end their conflict and look after one another.In the fourth book, Dark Reunion, Elena’s high school friends receive messages from Elena’s spirit just before one of them is killed in a mysterious attack that seems to have supernatural elements. Elena’s friends summon Stefan to help them fight the new evil. Stefan and Damon arrive, but before they can identify the killer, another human girl is killed and a high school boy is identified as a werewolf. The killer turns out to be the ultra-powerful vampire Klaus, who made Katherine von Swartzschild into a vampire, and to whom she returned after her fake suicide. All of Elena’s friends receive mortal wounds on the battlefield, but Elena’s spirit appears and heals them; she also summons an army of restless Civil War spirits, who carry a screaming Klaus away into the night. When Elena comes back to life, now a normal human girl again, and is reunited with Stefan, the original series has a happy ending.In the fifth book (first of the Return trilogy), Nightfall, the newly returned Elena appears more like an angel than a human being. She has White Powers and four sets of magic wings that can, respectively, allow her to fly, cause people to remember, redeem people from their sins, and destroy supernatural contaminating influences. Two malicious kitsune twins attack the town, causing hostile trees to walk and monstrous tentacled creatures called malach to possess humans. Damon is possessed by one of the tentacled creatures, and under its influence he helps one of the kitsune kidnap Stefan. Damon then pursues Elena, who flees and fights him until she is badly wounded. Damon heals Elena, who uses her magic wings to free him of the tentacled creature possessing him. Damon, Elena, and her friends fight the two kitsune, who are eventually defeated. To rescue Stefan, though, Damon and Elena will have to find the two halves of the kitsunes’ magic key. They set out to do so at the end of the book.In the sixth book, Shadow Souls, Elena, Damon and Matt set out together but Matt, seeing them getting along so well, returns to Fell's Church. Elena and Damon spend the night together in a motel but she is confused by his coldness towards her. They kiss but the morning after he has no recollection of what happened. Bonnie and Meredith later show up and are shocked that something apparently happened between Damon and Elena. They decide to set off to the Dark Dimension together to find the two halves of the kitsunes' key, which will free Stefan. In order to successfully pass into the Dark Dimension, Damon orders the girls to act as his slaves, which they do. Over time, Elena discovers that she has feelings for Damon and they share blood during several parts of the book. Back in Fell's Church, Matt enlists the help of Mrs. Flowers, Dr. Alpert, her nephew and Isobel in saving the town until Damon, Elena, Stefan, Bonnie and Meredith return. In the Dark Dimension, Elena finds both parts of the fox key with help from Damon and they manage to return home after saving Stefan, but Shinichi is in pursuit. At the end of the book, Damon finds a bouquet that, when smelled, causes a vampire to regain their human form and he angers Stefan by becoming a human once more.