Margins
Basilisk book cover
Basilisk
2009
First Published
3.24
Average Rating
237
Number of Pages
When a scientist's wife is injured by a basilisk he faces a terrible choice...let her die, or join with its creator to breed more killers. Nathan Underhill is right out at the cutting edge of stem-cell research: attempting to recreate mythological creatures such as gryphons and gargoyles in order to cure medical conditions like Alzheimer's and MS. After five years of research, however, his latest experiment fails, and he loses his funding. But when his doctor wife Grace loses an elderly patient in unusual circumstances, Nathan suspects that somebody else has been trying to breed mythical hybrids...and succeeded. Nathan and Grace investigate, and discover that Doctor Zauber, owner of the local care home, has brought to life one of the most dangerous creatures of medieval times - the basilisk, which could reputedly kill any living thing with a single stare. Grace narrowly escapes being killed, but she is put into a coma. Nathan is faced with an impossible dilemma - lose Grace for ever, or enter into an unholy alliance with Doctor Zauber to breed more mythological beasts, at the cost of many more human lives.
Avg Rating
3.24
Number of Ratings
410
5 STARS
14%
4 STARS
25%
3 STARS
38%
2 STARS
17%
1 STARS
6%
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Author

Graham Masterton
Graham Masterton
Author · 119 books

Graham Masterton was born in Edinburgh in 1946. His grandfather was Thomas Thorne Baker, the eminent scientist who invented DayGlo and was the first man to transmit news photographs by wireless. After training as a newspaper reporter, Graham went on to edit the new British men's magazine Mayfair, where he encouraged William Burroughs to develop a series of scientific and philosophical articles which eventually became Burroughs' novel The Wild Boys. At the age of 24, Graham was appointed executive editor of both Penthouse and Penthouse Forum magazines. At this time he started to write a bestselling series of sex 'how-to' books including How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed which has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. His latest, Wild Sex For New Lovers is published by Penguin Putnam in January, 2001. He is a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, Woman, Woman's Own and other mass-market self-improvement magazines. Graham Masterton's debut as a horror author began with The Manitou in 1976, a chilling tale of a Native American medicine man reborn in the present day to exact his revenge on the white man. It became an instant bestseller and was filmed with Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, Michael Ansara, Stella Stevens and Ann Sothern. Altogether Graham has written more than a hundred novels ranging from thrillers (The Sweetman Curve, Ikon) to disaster novels (Plague, Famine) to historical sagas (Rich and Maiden Voyage - both appeared in the New York Times bestseller list). He has published four collections of short stories, Fortnight of Fear, Flights of Fear, Faces of Fear and Feelings of Fear. He has also written horror novels for children (House of Bones, Hair-Raiser) and has just finished the fifth volume in a very popular series for young adults, Rook, based on the adventures of an idiosyncratic remedial English teacher in a Los Angeles community college who has the facility to see ghosts. Since then Graham has published more than 35 horror novels, including Charnel House, which was awarded a Special Edgar by Mystery Writers of America; Mirror, which was awarded a Silver Medal by West Coast Review of Books; and Family Portrait, an update of Oscar Wilde's tale, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger in France. He and his wife Wiescka live in a Gothic Victorian mansion high above the River Lee in Cork, Ireland.

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