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Edward Lee is an American author best known for novels of extreme horror that play gleefully with erotica and gore. Many of his works have a Lovecraftian bent or cosmic underpinnings, while others have a tendency toward backwoods hillbilly-horror. He has written works that fit snugly into the bizzaro subgenre, as well as straight horror, weird fiction, and a 4-book cycle of fantastic horror beginning with City Infernal. Lee is the author of over 40 books and many short stories which have appeared in such venues as the famous Hot Blood series, Best American Mystery Stories, and numerous mass market and specialty press anthologies through the years. His novel Header was adapted for a movie and released on DVD by Synapse Films in 2009.
His first two novels, Night Bait and Night Lust, were published in 1982 in mass market paperback by Zebra Books under the pseudonym Philip Straker. In an old web biography he noted in retrospect that he had no idea how those books got published. Nevertheless, hardcore fans of Lee’s work consider these works highly collectible, especially Night Lust, which can be difficult to find in good condition and fetches high prices in the secondary market. Lee’s first novel under his own name was Ghouls, published by Pinnacle in 1988. His next three books are some of my favorites by him: Coven, Incubi, and Succubi were picked up by Berkley and published under their Diamond imprint in 1991 and 1992. His later novels were published by Zebra, Pinnacle, Leisure, and a host of specialty publishers including Cemetery Dance and Necro Publications. Necro is the primary publisher of his works today.
Lee grew up in Maryland and served in the Army in West Germany in the late 1970s. His website says that he spent time after that as a police officer in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland majoring in English, but quit before graduating to pursue his dream of becoming a full time writer. Lee eventually did fulfill that dream; he quit his job at a security company to write full time in 1997. He lives in St. Pete Beach, Florida.
To view a list of Edward Lee’s novels and stories available in print and ebook formats, please click here.
These cover scans are from the library of author Christopher Fulbright.
