Which Author Is Outshining Stephen King, John Grisham and even Colleen Hoover?

Which author is cleaning up on the bestseller lists? They’ve got not one, but two books in the New York Times’ top chart! That’s twice as many as perennial blockbuster authors like Stephen King (#9 with his short story collection You Want It Darker ), Emily Henry (#10 with Funny Story ), John Grisham (#6 with Camino Ghosts ), James Patterson (#4 with late co-author Michael Crichton) and even mega-selling Colleen Hoover (#14 with It Ends With Us ).

Mind you, most of those authors have seen two or more of their books on the esteemed New York Times bestseller list in the past and likely will do so again. (We’re talking about the NYT Top 15 Fiction list combining sales in both print and e-book, by the way, the gold standard of book sales charts.)

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Heck, J.K. Rowling once had so many Harry Potter books on the chart at the same time that the NYT changed its rules and now just ignores books geared towards kids and young adults. That’s why you don’t see Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go on the chart during graduation season anymore, like you used to in the past. (Big mistake, NYT! Imagine a list of the top-grossing movies of the week that ignored animated films for kids. No Inside Out 2 when it’s the biggest film of the year ? That’s just dumb.)

Happily, the NYT isn’t ignoring thrillers yet, for which one author is doubly grateful.

Which Author Is Outshining Stephen King, John Grisham and even Colleen Hoover?

Medical doctor Freida McFadden proves writing a best-selling thriller isn’t brain surgery (though she’s done that too) with her latest hit. The Housemaid is Waiting debuts at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, the third in a series that also includes The Housemaid (sitting pretty at #8) and The Housemaid’s Secret. So McFadden is the rare author to enjoy seeing two of their books on the chart at the same time.

But she’s not resting on her laurels. McFadden already published the hit novel The Teacher in February and has The Boyfriend coming out in October. It asks, “is he the man of your dreams or your worst nightmare?” and since this is McFadden we’re talking about, I’m gonna go with “nightmare.”

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McFadden is indeed a practicing physician who specializes in brain injury. She’s also the rare but not unprecedented author (like Hoover!) who began by self-publishing her books and now works hand in hand with traditional publishers. McFadden has published more than 20 books since 2014, with three this year alone and a film version of The Housemaid on the way.

The industry publication Publishers Weekly talks about McFadden’s success all the time. On their chart for bestselling print trade paperbacks (the format McFadden focuses on), she has seven books in the Top 25 this week and all of them have sold at least 100,000 copies (or will by the time you read this: One By One is at 98,944 and counting.) For someone who wrote story ideas down in between seeing patients, that must be thrilling indeed.

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