Sookie Stackhouse

Sookie lives with her grandmother Adele and spends her days trying not to hear customers' thoughts. When Bill Compton walks into Merlotte's, his mind is total silence. She saves him from a pair of drainers, and they grow close. Women tied to her brother Jason start dying, and Adele herself is murdered. In the end, Sookie reads René Lenier's mind, learns he's the killer and kills him with a shovel, with Sam's help.

Eric Northman, the area's vampire sheriff, brings Sookie and Bill to Dallas to find his maker Godric. Sookie goes undercover in the Fellowship of the Sun and gets caught. After the rescue, Eric takes a bullet for her, and Sookie sucks it out, swallowing some of his blood. She watches Godric choose the sun. Back in Bon Temps, Maryann has the town in her grip. Once things calm down, Bill proposes, and he vanishes while she's in the restroom.

To find Bill, Sookie teams up with Eric and the werewolf Alcide and ends up at the mansion of Russell Edgington, the vampire king of Mississippi. There she stakes Lorena, Bill's maker. Bill tells her she's part fairy, which explains the light from her hands and the vampires' interest. When Eric reveals the queen sent Bill to win her over, Sookie throws them both out and accepts Claudine's invitation to the fairy world.

Sookie comes back thinking little time has passed, but she's been gone a year. Eric has bought her house. When a witch wipes his memory, Sookie hides him and they fall for each other. In the end, she refuses to choose between Bill and Eric and decides to be alone. Right after, Debbie Pelt breaks in armed, Tara takes the shot, and Sookie kills Debbie.

Sookie digs into her parents' deaths and learns, with Jason, that they were killed by Warlow, a vampire holding a 1702 contract that gives him a claim on her. In S6, she learns she's fairy royalty and gets close to Ben, who turns out to be Warlow himself. Jason and Niall finish him.

With Hep-V loose, Sookie learns she became a carrier without knowing and passed it to Bill. He refuses the cure and asks her to end him. Sookie won't give up her fairy powers to do it and stakes him in his grave. Four years later, she's married, pregnant and hosting her friends for Thanksgiving.

In Charlaine Harris's books, Sookie narrates everything in first person. Anna Paquin won a Golden Globe for the role and married Stephen Moyer, the show's Bill, in 2010.