Graham Masterton

Graham Masterton

Graham Masterton is the author of the Amazon bestselling crime series featuring Katie Maguire which takes place in Cork, Ireland. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, Graham Masterton’s is also a British horror writer, and his first novel The Manitou was released in 1976. This novel was 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 Mirror. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel Family Portrait, an imaginative 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 USA.

Publications

DEAD GIRLS DANCING – Buy here

In the middle of Cork, in the middle of the day, a fire blazes in a local dance studio. Thirteen women, all promising stars, die in the flames. Their young lives cut short by a tragic accident.

But where others see tragedy, DCI Katie Maguire sees murder. This is not the first fire to sweep through Cork. And in one previous case, the victims were dead before the fire was started.

As Katie Maguire investigates the strange, obsessive world of competitive Irish folk dancing, she must face her most chilling killer yet…

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Publication Date: 1 December 2016

LIVING DEATH – Buy it here

The girl who teetered out of the doorway was exactly who they were looking for…

It’s Hallowe’en, and the people of Cork are partying. At half past two in the morning, a girl with green hair and sad eyes stumbles out of a club. She never makes it home.

DS Katie Maguire and her team are stretched to their limit. A gang of dognappers are terrorising the kennel owners of Cork. The city’s drug trade is at an all-time high. Now they have a missing girl to find too – and all in the glare of the media spotlight.

As Katie closes in on the truth, she realises that the three cases might be connected. And that with every second she spends investigating, the clock ticks on for the missing girl, trapped in a living death…

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Published: 8th September 2016

Scarlet Widow — Buy it HERE

London, 1750: Beatrice Scarlet is the apothecary’s daughter. She can mix medicines and herbs to save the lives of her neighbours – but, try as she might, she can’t save the lives of her parents. An orphan at just sixteen, Beatrice marries a preacher and emigrates to America.

New Hampshire, 1756: In the farming community where Beatrice now lives, six pigs are found viciously slaughtered, slices of looking-glass embedded in their mouths. According to scripture this is the work of Satan, but Beatrice suspects the hands of men. As she closes in on the killer, she must act quickly to unmask him – or become the next victim herself…

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Published: 7 April 2016

How do you fight criminals who aren’t human?

From Graham Masterton, the bestselling author of the Katie Maguire series, comes an unputdownable story of a deadly alliance between L.A. gangsters and terrifying witches…

A ruthless new crime syndicate holds Los Angeles in a grip of terror. Anyone who opposes it suffers a horrible death… but not at human hands.

Bizarre accidents, sudden illnesses, inexplicable and gruesome deaths: the mobsters will stop at nothing to eliminate their enemies. Every bloody step of the way, their companions are four mysterious women, witches who wield more power than the gangsters could ever dream of.

With the help of his mysteriously gifted neighbour, Annie Conjure, Detective Dan Fisher must fight both the LAPD’s scepticism and this chilling new power. And at the heart of the nightmare lies the final puzzle, the secret of… The 5th Witch.

For readers of Angela Clarke, Peter James and Stephen King, this gripping novel from the legendaryGraham Masterton will leave you reeling.

‘One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time‘ Peter James

‘A true master of the horror genre’ James Herbert

‘A masterly plotter who evokes both terror and suspense’ Library Journal

‘A mesmerizing storyteller!’ Publishers Weekly

‘The living inheritor to the realm of Edgar Allan Poe’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘Masterton is a crowd-pleaser, filling his pages with sparky, appealing dialogue and visceral gore’ Time Out

Buy the book HERE

Publisher: Canelo

Published: 25 February 2016

BURIED — Buy it here.

Katie Maguire knows that in this part of Ireland, the past can never stay buried…

In Blarney, Cork, an old millworker’s cottage guards its secrets. In 1921, a mother, father and their two young children disappeared from this house. And now, ninety-five years later, their mummified bodies have been discovered under the floorboards.

The neighbours cannot imagine who would have killed such a harmless family all those years ago. But as DS Katie Maguire investigates, the flames of old family rivalries flare up once more… and Katie is caught in the crossfire.

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Publication Date: 11 February 2016

BLOOD SISTERS — Buy it here.

Katie Maguire hunts a serial killer targeting nuns in the gruesome new thriller from Graham Masterton.

In a nursing home on the outskirts of Cork, an elderly nun lies dead. She has been suffocated. It looks like a mercy-killing – until another sister from the same convent is found viciously murdered, floating in the Glashaboy river.

The nuns were good women, doing God’s work. Why would anyone want to kill them? But then a child’s skull is unearthed in the garden of the nuns’ convent, and DS Katie Maguire discovers a fifty year old secret that just might lead her to the killer… if the killer doesn’t find her first.

PUBLISHER: Head of Zeus

PUBLISHED: 8th October 2015

TAKEN FOR DEAD – Buy HERE

The severed head of Micky Crounan, local baker, is grinning gruesomely up from the bottom tier of his own cake. Katie Maguire of the Irish Garda is baffled–until another local businessman goes missing in horrific circumstances. Soon Katie is on the trail of a debt-collecting gang calling themselves the Kings of Erin. But these are very dangerous men. And they will stop at nothing to throw Katie off the trail…

“One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.” (Peter James)

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Published: 24 September 2015

BURIAL — Buy it here.

First published in 1991, this is the story of New York City. Friday night. Untouched by anything visible, Mrs Greenberg’s furniture starts to slide across the room – and however hard she tries, she can’t move it back.

Harry Erskine, self-taught fortune teller, agrees to investigate – but soon realises that Mrs Greenberg’s moving furniture is just the beginning of a nightmare, for it is being drawn by the same inexorable force which drags us all to the grave.

City by city, America is on the brink of falling into the abyss – women and children, streets and buildings – one and all brought thundering and screaming into the dominion of the dead…

Published: Bloomsbury Reader

Publication Date: 22nd October 2012

THE RED HOTEL — Buy it here

A Sissy Sawyer Mystery

One afternoon, shadows started to flicker along the corridors of The Red Hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and both guests and staff heard persistent grinding noises that gave them “the freesons” – or goosebumps. Months later, Sissy Sawyer’s step-nephew Billy drops by with his new girlfriend, T-Yon. Sissy has an uncanny ability to read the future using her special Tarot cards, and T-Yon wants her help. She’s been having terrible dreams about her older brother, Everett, ever since he’s started restoring an old hotel in Baton Rouge…

PUBLISHER: Severn House

PUBLICATION DATE: 31st May 2013

GARDEN OF EVIL — Buy it here

A Jim Rook Horror Novel

Jim Rook gets the shock of his life when he returns for a new semester to find something more than unpleasant in his classroom. Jim Rook, remedial English teacher and psychic, knows it’s going to be a bad day. He nearly runs over someone dressed entirely in black – but why did they walk right in the middle of the college driveway? And who just walks off into the fog after nearly being run over? But when a splash of blood appears on a questionnaire Jim realizes that his day isn’t going to be merely bad: it’s going to be the day from hell. Perhaps quite literally…

PUBLISHER: Severn House

PUBLICATION DATE: 28 April 2014

FOREST GHOST — Buy it here

Modern-day America. Fifteen Boy Scouts and their seven adult leaders are found to have committed suicide in the forest of a scout reservation. One of the dead boys is a friend of Sparky Wallace, whose father Jack runs a Polish restaurant in Chicago. Drawn into investigating the suicides, Jack discovers a connection with his own grandfather, who killed himself in the Kampinos Forest in Poland when he was fighting the Nazis in World War II.

Together, Jack and Sparky travel to Poland to unlock the terrifying mystery of what really makes people panic in the forest. But before they can do so, they have to experience panic for themselves, and reach the very brink of madness.

PUBLISHER: Severn House

PUBLICATION DATE: 3 December 2013

COMMUNITY – Buy the book HERE

Michael is involved in a car crash which kills his girlfriend. He wakes to find himself in the hospital of a small town in Montana. There he convalesces and gradually becomes acquainted with the local community, most of whom seem to be clever and charming, although some are arrogant and difficult to get on with. In particular he forms a relationship with a smart and pretty local girl. He learns that he has been in a coma for weeks and that his friend’s remains have already been sent back to California for cremation. He keeps in touch with his family through emails and phone calls.

As time goes by, however, and he gradually recovers his mobility, he begins to notice odd things about the community. People disappear without explanation and nobody ever mentions them again. Strangers come and go on a regular basis but the local people seem to ignore them. He is about to leave and go back home when his new girlfriend disappears. He stays to investigate. He gradually begins to come to the terrible conclusion that he is actually dead and that everybody in the town knows that he is no more than a ghost. The truth, however, is far more shocking…

Published: Severn House

Publication Date – 1st September 2013

Buy it here.

Two Jim Rook horror novels in one book.

College teacher Jim Rook has a special talent: a near-death experience in childhood gave him the facility to see ghosts and spirits that nobody else can see.
Into his remedial English class at West Grove Community College comes Susan White Bird, the daughter of a Navajo Indian. Susan is beautiful and shy, but all her life she has been closely protected by her two older brothers, Sam and George. And when college senior Brad Dolman takes a fancy to Susan, there are frightening consequences. Brad’s body is found one morning in his automobile, his face and body terribly mutilated – almost as if he has been attacked by a wild animal – and it is Susan’s brothers who are immediately arrested.
Only when two more students are attacked do the police realise that the brothers are innocent, and that there is something terrible lurking around the college campus … something that threatens to transform Susan into the most horrific creature known to Navajo myth. And there is only one man who can save her, a man who can see the oncoming danger – Jim Rook.
It is now left to Jim and his engaging class of slow-lane students to face a shattering confrontation between the cultures of new and ancient America.

Buy it here.

A Jim Rook horror novel.

Jim Rook has the ability to see ghosts and spirits. A young boy, Jack Hubbard, joins Rook’s remedial English class while his father is completing a film about his epic journey across Alaska. Shortly after his arrival, five students are found dead.

BROKEN ANGELS — Buy it here.

One cold spring morning in County Cork, two fishermen find a bundle of rags floating in the Blackwater River.

It is the bloated body of Father Heaney. His hands and feet are bound, and his neck bears the marks of garrotting wire. Worse still, he has been castrated.

When a second priest is found murdered, his body bruised and beaten and the same savage wound hidden beneath his soutane, Detective Inspector Katie Maguire finds evidence of a sinister cover-up at St Joseph’s Orphanage.

But the Catholic diocese still wields considerable power here, and the Garda are under pressure to close the case. Katie has to work alone if she is to catch the killer in time – but first she must shatter a wall of silence that for decades has hidden a terrible secret.

A secret that is beyond belief…

Published: Head of Zeus

Publication Date: 29th August 2013

RED LIGHT – Buy it here

On a bloodstained mattress in a grimy flat, a burly man lies dead. A terrified girl kneels over his body. She has been trapped here for three days. It doesn’t take DS Katie Maguire long to identify the murder victim: he’s a cruel and powerful pimp she’s been trying to convict for years.

It’s Katie’s job to catch the killer. But with men like this dead, the city is safer – and so are the frightened young women who are trafficked into Cork. When a second pimp is horrifically murdered, Katie must decide. Should she do her job, or follow her conscience? Should she allow the killer to strike again?

PUBLISHER: Head of Zeus

PUBLICATION DATE: 12th March 2015

WHITE BONES — buy it here.

The first book in the Katie Maguire series.

One wet November morning, a field on Meagher’s Farm gives up the dismembered bones of eleven women. In this part of Ireland, unmarked graves are common. But these bones date to 1915, long before the Troubles. What’s more, these bones bear the marks of a meticulous executioner. These women were almost certainly skinned alive.

Detective Katie Maguire, of the Cork Garda, is used to dead bodies. But this is wholesale butchery. Her team think these long-dead women are a waste of police time. Katie is determined to give them justice.

And then a young American tourist goes missing, and her bones, carefully stripped of flesh, are discovered on the same farm. With the crimes of the past echoing in the present, Katie must solve a decades-old ritualistic murder before this terrifying killer strikes again.

Published in America under the title A Terrible Beauty, White Bones marks Katie Maguire’s UK debut.

‘One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.’ Peter James.

‘A natural storyteller with a unique gift for turning the mundane into the terrifyingly real.’ New York Journal of Books.

‘One of the few true masters.’ James Herbert.

PUBLISHER: Head of Zeus

PUBLICATION DATE: 1st March 2013

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How do you fight criminals who aren’t human?