Graham Masterton (born 16 January 1946, in Edinburgh) is a British author known primarily for horror fiction. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, his debut novel, The Manitou, was published in 1976. This novel was adapted in 1978 for the film The Manitou. His 1978 novel Charnel House and 1983 novel Tengu garnered positive critical reception, the former receiving a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America and the latter being awarded with a silver medal by the West Coast Review of Books. Masterton was also the editor of Scare Care, a horror anthology published for the benefit of abused children in Europe and the United States. Masterton's novels often contain visceral sex and horror. In addition to his novels, Masterton has written a number of sex instruction books, including How To Drive Your Man Wild in Bed and Wild Sex for New Lovers. In 2002, Masterton wrote the crime novel A Terrible Beauty, featuring the character Katie Maguire, an Irish detective. The novel was republished in 2013 under the title White Bones, and spawned a number of other novels by Masterton featuring the Maguire character. In 2010, Masterton published Rules of Duel, a short novel that he co-wrote with William S. Burroughs in the early 1970s.

Career

Masterton is a former editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse. His first novel, The Manitou, was published in 1976, and adapted in 1978 for the film The Manitou. Further works garnered critical acclaim, including a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America for Charnel House and a silver medal by the West Coast Review of Books for Tengu. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel Family Portrait, a reworking of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Masterton was also the editor of Scare Care, a horror anthology published for the benefit of abused children in Europe and the U.S. In 2002, while living with his wife in Cork, Ireland, Masterton added crime fiction to his repertoire with A Terrible Beauty featuring Irish Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire. This was republished in 2013 as White Bones and sold 100,000 ebook copies in a month. It is to be followed by further Katie Maguire adventures, Broken Angels (2013), Red Light (2014), "Taken For Dead" (2014), "Blood Sisters" (2015), "Buried" (2015), Living Death" (2016), "Dead Girls Dancing" (2016) and "Dead Men Whistling" (2018). In 2010, Masterton published Rules of Duel, a short novel from the early 1970s that he wrote in collaboration with William S. Burroughs (Burroughs has co-author credit). In 2017, after a visit to Wolow, the maximum-security prison near Wrocław in southern Poland, Masterton set up the Graham Masterton Written in Prison Award (Nagroda Grahama Mastertona W Wiezieniu Pisane) for the inmates of all of Poland's penal institutions to enter a short story contest. The contest is now an annual event and is supported by the Polish Prison Service, the Wrocław Agglomeration for Culture and Sport, both Rebis and Albatros publishing houses and the Wrocław Library. The Prix Graham Masterton is organized annually in Belgium by the publisher Marc Bailly for the best French horror novel and short story of the year. The first prize is a sculpture of a demon. In 2019, Masterton was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers' Association. In 2021, he was honoured by the city of Wrocław in Poland by having a bronze dwarf representing himself with a copy of his horror novel The Manitou placed on the pavement outside the Art Hotel on Kielbasnicza Street—one of nearly 600 dwarves which are a major tourist attraction. Masterton is co-authoring short horror stories with Dawn G Harris and these have appeared in a collection "Days Of Utter Dread". He is also writing short horror stories based on Slavic mythology with a Polish psychologist Karolina Mogielska and the first of these "Mr Nobody" was published in "Phantasmagoria magazine 22." Masterton won the Zloty Kosciej Award for the best horror novel of 2023 "Szpital Filomeny" ("The House at Phantom Park").

Personal life

Masterton lives in Surrey, England. His wife and agent Wiescka died on 27 April 2011, aged 65.

Horror

The Manitou/Harry Erskine series

Night Warriors series

Rook series

Sissy Sawyer series

Nathan Underhill series

Katie Maguire series

Patel & Pardoe Series

Historical fiction

Thrillers

Confessions series

Movie tie-ins

...of Fear - short story collections

Short stories

Sex instruction books