Mario Reading was born in Bournemouth in 1953, son of Gordon and Lieselotte Reading. He was brought up in England, Germany, and the South of France, and educated at Rugby School and at the University of East Anglia, where he studied Comparative Literature under Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. He sold rare books, taught riding in Africa, studied dressage in Vienna, played professional polo in India, Spain and Dubai, and later on help to run a coffee ranch in Mexico. 

Mario did a lot of travelling setting the custom of his life, and accumulating the experiences and acquaintanceships that influenced his work later on. He was an avid horseman and country sportsman and from an early age had been familiar with the fishing spots and shooting estates. He remained a keen fisherman and was a regular beater with the local shoot. He always had a yearning to be a writer. He was a compulsive scribbler, filling notebooks with his thoughts and with poems, noting down conversations with his extraordinary network of friends, and the events of his genuinely eventful life. He kept diaries throughout his adult life. 

In his early thirties he had already experienced the first symptoms of what turned out to be cancer. In the ensuing years, he suffered a great deal, including a very delayed diagnosis but this did not deter his inveterate travelling, and scribbling. Mario lived in France, Mexico and in the final years of his life he settled in Wiltshire, England.

His novels include The Music-Makers, and the bestselling Antichrist Trilogy (which has sold more than a million copies in 39 countries), comprising The Nostradamus Prophecies, The Mayan Codex, and The Third Antichrist. His newest series of novels features photojournalist John "The Templar" Hart: The Templar Prophecy came out in 2014, The Templar Inheritance in April 2015, and Hart's final adventure, The Templar Succession, appeared in April 2016. 

Mario travelled extensively throughout his life and he used many of the places he visited in his novels. He wrote a wide and varied selection of non-fiction books including a series on the Prophecies of Nostradamus, he also wote a Dictionary of Cinema and a Dictionary of Dreams. He wrote for a number of publications, including the Sunday Times Magazine and the Shooting Times. He also wrote poetry and children's stories which remain unpublished at this time. Mario had a wide variety of interests besides writing. He was a cinephile, loved music and art. 

He was a member of Mensa and The International Society For Philosophical Enquiry [ISPE]. In 2015, he was voted one of the Top 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People by Watkins Mind Body Spirit Magazine. After years of battling cancer, Mario Reading died on 29 January 2017.

In February 2000, Mario published a controversial major Sunday Times Magazine exposé of the CIA, entitled An American Hero. When he lived in Mexico, he found he had a former US GreenBeret for a neighbour. During their year long friendship, the story of the soldier's covert and murderous missions with the special forces in the run up to the Vietman war came to light. It was a history that the former soldier wanted told after his death. 

He wrote several articles for magazines; Shooting Times, The Field and The Flyfishers. He also wrote book reviews for the Spectator Magazine and a piece on his personal experience living with cancer. Following the publication of the non-fiction books on Nostradamus Mario made a number of national and international appearances on radio and television, most notably in Discovery Channel’s 2006 documentary, Nostradamus: The Truth. Followed by another Nostradamus documentary on the History Channel.