L.A. BANKS - Novelist Creator of "The Vampire Hunter Legend" series

Novelist Leslie Esdaile Banks, who was best known for "The Vampire Huntress Legend" series of dark fantasy, died of cancer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 2, 2011. She was 51.  Banks was born in Philadelphia on December 11, 1959. She began her career writing columns for local newspapers and magazines. She was penning romance novels from the mid-1990s, with such titles as "Sundance" (2996), "River of Souls" (2001), "Still Waters Run Deep" (2002), "Sisters Got Game" (2004), "Take Me There"  (2006), and "Better Than" (2008).  She also wrote the crime novels "Betrayal of the Trust" (2004), "Blind Trust" (2005), "Shattered Trust" (2006), and "No Trust" (2007). Writing as LA Banks, she began "The Vampire Huntress Legend" series with "Minion" in 2003, and continued with "The Awakening" (2004), "The Hunted" (2004), "The Bitten" (2005), "The Forbidden" (2005), "The Damned" (2006), "The Forsaken" (2006), "The Wicked" (2007), "The Cursed" (2007), "The Darkness" (2008), "The Shadows" (2008), and "The Thirteenth" (2009). The early novels were optioned for a film version, and were adapted by Dynamite for a comic book series. She also wrote the "Crimson Moon" series, which included the novels "Bad Blood" (2008), "Bite the Bullet" (2008), "Undead on Arrival" (2009), "Cursed to Death" (2009), "Never Cry Werewolf" (2010), and "Left for Undead" (2010), and the "Dark Avengers" ebooks, "Finders Keepers" (2008) and "Loser's Weepers" (2008).