Living Dead in Dallas is the second book of the Southern Vampire Chronicles, the book series about Sookie Stackhouse on which True Blood is based. And book 2 is what season 2 was based on.
There are, of course, some major differences between the books and the TV series, and these differences promise to continue to grow as the seasons go on. And so far, I definitely prefer the TV series, for reasons I am about to get into, but that does not mean the books aren't worth a gander...well maybe the first one isn't (it was some bizarre, over-campy, badly-written stuff), but in the second one, the writing improved drastically.
The books are told in the first person, with Sookie relating things exactly as she sees and experiences them. Which means that Tara, Sam, and Jason get only brief mentions as they cross Sookie's path while she helps Bill and Eric deal with vampire politics. And boy do I miss them. Reading the books feels like people are missing, mostly because they are. The other characters are present to fill out Sookie's world, but the world itself is not full. In the show, you follow the adventures of the people of Bon Temps, not just of one sexy, vampire-loving, telepathic waitress.
And yet it is fascinating to read the books and see where the ideas in the show came from. The maenad is such a small character in the book, she shows up where people are having a party and takes them all as tribute to herself before she goes on. Her connection to Sookie is much more important than to Tara, and she is not searching for hearts or a particular supernatural being, just violence, sex, and drunkenness.
Plus, there are things that we haven't got yet in the series, and may never get. Like the fact that Bill is actually Andy Bellefleur's great great (somewhere in there) grandfather. Or the idea of Eric wearing multicoloured Lycra tights. Or that Sookie can occasionally hear a thought from a vampire (I wonder if that will ever appear in the series). And in Dallas, it was shape shifters who helped Sookie escape from the Fellowship of the Sun, rather than Jason. But the seeds for most of the story are already in the books, taken and elaborated upon, with the writers asking themselves how they can involve the characters we know rather than simply focusing on exactly what Sookie's got going on.
My advice? Read the books and watch the series. The order will not matter that much to you, and the differences, while noticeable are acceptable in both cases. Just to demonstrate, in the book, Lafayette dies, but you don't really care too much cause you hardly knew him. In the series, he lives, which is awesome because he's SO great.
Have you read the books?
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