A Mormon housewife writing about vampires? That alone may be enough to draw interest. But what's more important is that she does it so well.

Ever since Stephenie Meyer published her first book, "Twilight," in 2005, she has been nothing less than a phenomenon.

The book for young adults tells the story of high-school girl Bella Swan who goes to live with her father in the Northwest and falls in love with a fellow student who just happens to be one of a family of vampires. Within one month of its publication, "Twilight" reached No. 5 on the New York Times Best Seller List for Children's Chapter Books.

When the sequel, "New Moon," came out in 2006 it debuted at No. 5 and within two weeks rose to No. 1. The third book, "Eclipse," was released in August 2007 and enjoyed similar success.

In all, the three books have sold more than 5.3 million copies in the United States, have spent a combined 143 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and have been translated into 20 languages.

This week, Meyer has released her first adult novel, "The Host," which also has been garnering critical acclaim. Furthermore, the final book in the vampire series, "Breaking Dawn," is due out in August. A movie version of "Twilight" is scheduled for release in December. Meyer is also working on a companion book to "Twilight," which will be told from the vampire Edward's point of view.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Meyer was named by Time Magazine as one of its "100 most influential people for 2008," putting her on a list with entertainers such as Miley Cyrus, Bruce Springsteen and George Clooney, not to mention political leaders such as the Dalai Lama, President Bush and the presidential hopefuls.

There are some who have even anointed her the successor to J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter books.

Writing for Time magazine, for example, author Lev Grossman notes that "There is no literary term for the quality Twilight and Harry Potter (and the Lord of the Rings) share, but you know it when you see it: Their worlds have a freestanding internal integrity that makes you feel as if you should be able to buy real estate."

Meyer's stories are successful, Grossman says, because "she rewrites stock horror plots as love stories, and in doing so, she makes them new again." But it goes beyond that. "People dress up like her characters. They write their own stories about them and post their tales on the Internet. When she appears at a bookstore, 3,000 people go to meet her. There are 'Twilight'-themed rock bands."

Plus, like Harry Potter, Meyer's books have been as popular with adults as with young readers. For example, there's www.twilightmoms.com, a Web site for fans older than 25 started by a woman who "was immediately obsessed" by the books, "but the only other obsessed people I could talk to about it were the teenage girls in my neighborhood." She quickly found she was not alone.