The M*A*S*H book series comprises several novels that inspired the M*A*S*H series, including the movie and TV series. The first, M*A*S*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, was written by H. Richard Hornberger, himself a former military surgeon; under the pen name Richard Hooker, it was published in 1968. It told the story of a U.S. mobile army surgical hospital in Korea during the Korean War.

Hooker wrote the first sequel, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine in 1972, covering the lives of the surgeons after they returned home from the war.

After the success of the M*A*S*H TV series, novels credited to Hooker and William E. Butterworth appeared, beginning with M*A*S*H Goes to Paris in 1974. Although credited to Hooker and Butterworth, they may have been ghostwritten entirely by Butterworth. At this point, the novels largely left the original characters behind to focus on extraneous characters, mostly caricatures of public figures from the 1970s: for instance, operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti is parodied in the form of a singer named "Korsky-Rimsakov", and news anchor Dan Rather becomes the egotistical "Don Rhotten". The tone of the Butterworth novels is also markedly different from Hooker's original books, being much more comical and less realistic.

After the conclusion of the "Butterworth" series with 1977's M*A*S*H Goes to Montreal, Hooker wrote a final "M*A*S*H" novel, M*A*S*H Mania, which jettisoned the plots of the intervening novels and picked up where M*A*S*H Goes to Maine left off.