Physicians book series in reading order

by Susanna Gregory

by Colin Cotterill

by Stephen White

by Jed Rubenfeld

by Carl Hiaasen

Betty Neels (15 September 1909 - 7 June 2001) was an English author of more than 134 romance novels, born in Leyton. Mills & Boon published the novels first in the United Kingdom, and Harlequin reprinted them in North America. Neels wrote from 1969 until death, and the books are noted for being especially chaste. The catalogue lists 140 books, including Nurse in Holland (1969), Sister Peters in Amsterdam (1969) and Tempestuous April (1970). Doctors, nurses, surgeons and the Netherlands recur in the subjects, and Dr Fforde is a named series.

Susanna Gregory is the pen name of Elizabeth Cruwys, a Cambridge academic and former coroner's officer who writes historical detective fiction. Matthew Bartholomew, a physician investigating murders in fourteenth-century Cambridge, carries her longest sequence, which opens with A Plague on Both Your Houses (1996). Thomas Chaloner heads a second series. Under a further name, Simon Beaufort, she wrote the Sir Geoffrey Mappestone and Alec Lonsdale books. The catalogue holds 52 books published between 1996 and 2022, and nothing has followed The Pudding Lane Plot (2022).

Marie Ferrarella is an American romance writer, born Marie Rydzynski in Germany on 28 March 1948. Ferrarella has also written as Marie Nicole, Marie Michael and Marie Charles, and the novels have been translated into at least seven languages. The catalogue lists 328 books from 1983 to 2024, beginning with Scenes from the Heart, issued as Marie Charles. Series include Cavanaugh Justice, Matchmaking Mamas, Forever Texas, Baby of the Month Club and ChildFinders, Inc. Subjects include contemporary, western and suspense romance, police, physicians, single fathers and single mothers. Cavanaugh Justice: Cold Case Squad (2024) is the newest title.

Dr. Thorndyke, a medico-legal forensic investigator, carries most of R. Austin Freeman's fiction. Freeman (1862-1943) was a British writer of detective stories who invented the inverted detective story, in which the crime and the culprit are shown at the start and the narrative then follows the detective's work to solve it; that form is counted his largest contribution to the genre. His 36 catalogued titles run from The Golden Pool (1905) to The Missing Mortgagee, dated 2021, taking in The Red Thumb Mark (1907), John Thorndyke's Cases (1909), The Eye of Osiris (1911), The Singing Bone (1912) and A Silent Witness (1914). Freeman drew on his early work as a colonial surgeon. London, physicians and anthropologists recur as subjects.

Sarah Morgan writes contemporary and medical romance, with 119 books catalogued from Expectant Bride (1999) to The Best Christmas Ever (2026). Physicians, nurses, billionaires and Italians are among the recorded subjects, and early titles include The Doctor's Engagement (2001), The Midwife's Child (2001) and The Greek Tycoon's Bride (2002). Series lines include From Manhattan With Love, Lakeside Mountain Rescue, Glenmore Island Doctors, Cornish Consultants, O'Neil Brothers and Miller Sisters.

Patrick Taylor's Irish Country novels follow two doctors, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly and Barry Laverty, in rural Northern Ireland. A second line, the Irish Troubles books, turns to political violence. Taylor's catalogue holds 23 titles, from The West Clare Railway (1994) to An Irish Country Yuletide (2021), with short stories and non-fiction alongside. No new Taylor title has appeared since 2021.

Medical suspense is Michael Palmer's register, physicians, patients and hospitals, several of them in Boston. The Sisterhood (1982) opens a catalogue of 25 books that runs through Side Effects (1986), Extreme Measures (1991), Silent Treatment (1995) and Miracle Cure (1998) to The First Family in 2018. Dr. Lou Welcome heads the one series, and nothing later than 2018 is catalogued.

Lee Goldberg

87 books• 12 series

Lee Goldberg is an American author, screenwriter, producer and publisher, with television crime work that includes Diagnosis: Murder, Monk, The Glades and SeaQuest. Lost Hills and True Fiction are bestselling Goldberg novels. The catalogue carries 88 books from 1990 to 2027, beginning with Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw (1990) and later Successful Television Writing (2003). Fiction series include Monk, Diagnosis Murder, Eve Ronin, Ian Ludlow Thrillers, Sharpe & Walker, Charlie Willis and Crown Vic. Split Screen appeared in 2026 and The Invisible Architect is due in 2027.

Gaius Petreius Ruso, a reluctant sleuth in the Roman world, is the figure Ruth Downie's mysteries follow. Downie, an English author born in 1955, has 10 catalogued books in the Medicus Investigation series, opening with Medicus (2006) and closing with Prima Facie (2019). Several titles carry a second name: Terra Incognita also appears as Ruso and the Demented Doctor, and Caveat Emptor as Ruso and the River of Darkness. Physicians, Rome, Britain and historical crime make up the subjects.

Max Brand

345 books• 13 series

Max Brand was the main pen name of Frederick Schiller Faust, an American writer who died in 1944 and whose westerns fill most of a 345-title catalogue. Faust also created Dr. James Kildare, a young medical intern, for pulp fiction; the character later carried into Paramount and MGM films, radio, two television series and comics. Other Faust pseudonyms include George Owen Baxter, John Frederick, Evan Evans, David Manning, Peter Dawson, George Challis and Frederick Frost. Series strands include Silvertip, Dan Barry, Thunder Moon, Ronicky Doone and Bull Hunter. Harrigan (1918) is the earliest catalogued title, with reissues dated as late as 2022.

Hannah Alexander is the shared pseudonym of Cheryl and Mel Hodde, a married Christian writing team who blended their two names into one. Mel Hodde is a physician, and the pair specialise in medical romantic suspense. The catalogue lists 33 books from Hideaway (1990) to Ashes Over Yellowstone (2025). Hideaway, Missouri, Hallowed Halls, Healing Touch and Sacred Trust are the series. Subjects include emergency physicians, women physicians, hospitals and inspirational romance.

Daniel Kalla is a Canadian physician and novelist who writes medical thrillers and historical fiction. Born in Vancouver in 1966, Kalla studied mathematics and then medicine at the University of British Columbia, took a screenwriting course at Simon Fraser University, and served as director of Emergency Medicine at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. His father and grandfather practised medicine before him, and his grandfather left Czechoslovakia weeks before the Nazi annexation of 1939. Sixteen catalogued books run from Pandemic (2005) to The Deepest Fake (2025), the Adler Family and Dr. Noah Haldane series among them.

Robin Cook

43 books• 4 series

Medical thrillers are Robin Cook's whole catalogue: physicians, forensic pathologists and medical examiners. Cook published The Year of the Intern in 1972 and Coma in 1977, and the run reaches 43 books with Bleed in 2026. Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery lead the longest series, and Marissa Blumenthal and Pia Grazdani head shorter ones. The 1990s were the busiest decade, at 403 pages a book.

A.J. Cronin

28 books• 2 series

A.J. Cronin was a Scottish physician who turned novelist, and medicine runs through the work: doctors, nurses, hospitals and the relations between them. His 28 catalogued titles open with Hatter's Castle (1931) and include The Stars Look Down (1935), The Citadel (1937), The Keys of the Kingdom (1941) and The Green Years (1944), alongside the Dr. Finlay stories and several plays. The Citadel follows a Scottish doctor from a Welsh mining village into a lucrative London private practice, where disillusion with the greed and incompetence of some doctors sets in. That novel exposed unfairness in British medicine and helped inspire the National Health Service. Cronin drew on his own work as a medical inspector of mines and as a Harley Street physician, and lived from 1896 to 1981.

Across 194 catalogued books, Danielle Steel writes contemporary romance and family drama: love stories, marriages, widowhood and the turns that reshape a life. The run starts with Going Home (1973) and continues through Celebration, with 24 Hours scheduled for 2027. Steel's catalogue also holds children's picture books, short stories and non-fiction beside the standalone novels that make up most of it.

Hugh de Singleton, a surgeon in England, investigates murders in Mel Starr's historical mystery series. The Unquiet Bones (2008) opens the run, which continues through A Corpse at St. Andrew's Chapel (2009), A Trail of Ink (2010), The Tainted Coin (2012) and The Abbot's Agreement (2014). Starr's catalogue holds 17 books and reaches The Way of the Wicked in 2024.

Crime fiction set in Southeast Asia is Colin Cotterill's territory. Cotterill was born in London on 2 October 1952, holds both British and Australian citizenship, and lives in Thailand, where he also works as a teacher, cartoonist and comic book writer. The Dr. Siri Paiboun mysteries, set in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, are Cotterill's award-winning series; the Jimm Juree crime novels are set in southern Thailand. Cotterill's 42 catalogued books run from The Night Bastard (2000) to Dog Diary (2025), and the output continues.

Paul Doherty writes historical mysteries set largely in England, with 127 books catalogued from The Death of a King (1985) to The Meadows of Murder (2026). Recurring detectives include Hugh Corbett, Brother Athelstan, Kathryn Swinbrooke and Amerotke. Other series cover the Canterbury Tales Mysteries, Ancient Rome, Egyptian Mysteries, Nicholas Segalla, Mathilde of Westminster, Margaret Beaufort and Vlad Drakulya. Satan in St Mary's (1986) and Spy in Chancery (1988) are among the early titles.

Cathy Gillen Thacker is an American romance novelist. The catalogue lists 153 books published from 1982 to 2025, from Island of Desire to Stand-In Texas Dad. Texas appears among the subjects, alongside cowboys, ranchers, physicians, single fathers and single mothers, and the romance is tagged as both contemporary and western. Family series under the Thacker name include McCabes of Texas, McCabe Multiples, Lockharts of Texas, Deveraux Legacy and Texas Legacies: The Carrigans.

Historical romance and FBI suspense make up Catherine Coulter's two main bodies of work. Regency and medieval romances such as the Sherbrooke Brides and Medieval Song sequences date back to the 1979 debut The Rebel Bride, while the FBI Thriller series and A Brit in the FBI follow government investigator Dillon Savich. Coulter's catalogue runs to 95 books, reaching The Heir of Whitestone in 2026.

Robyn Carr is the American author of the Virgin River books, and an executive producer on the television versions of Virgin River and Sullivan's Crossing. The catalogue records 70 Carr books, from Chelynne (1980) to The Friendship Club (2024). Thunder Point, Sullivan's Crossing and the Grace Valley Trilogy are Carr's other series. Several novels, The Hero among them, reached The New York Times Best Seller list. Subject tags on the books include contemporary romance, California, single mothers, veterans and city and town life.

Barbara Delinsky, born Barbara Ruth Greenberg on August 9, 1945, is an American romance novelist with 19 New York Times bestsellers. Delinsky has also used the pen names Bonnie Drake and Billie Douglass, and 1982 titles such as A Time to Love are listed under Douglass. The catalogue counts 96 books from 1981 to Tender Loving Care (2024), starting with Surrender by Moonlight and Passionate Touch. Series include Crosslyn Rise, Blake Sisters and Victoria Lesser, and mothers and daughters recur in the subjects.

Christopher Reich

17 books• 5 series

Christopher Reich is an American thriller writer, born in Tokyo in 1961, whose family moved to the United States in 1965. Reich studied at Georgetown University and the University of Texas and worked as an investment banker in Switzerland before writing Numbered Account (1998), a New York Times bestseller with more than one million copies sold. The catalogue lists 17 books to 2025, including the Jonathan Ransom novels, the Simon Riske books and Rules of Deception (2008). Subjects include espionage, international finance and terrorism.

Karen Rose Smith is an American author born in Pennsylvania whose first romance appeared in 1992. Smith has written for Meteor/Kismet, Kensington, Silhouette and Harlequin, and has indie-published novels and short story collections as e-books. Awards include New Jersey's Golden Leaf Award for short contemporary romance (twice), CRA's Award of Excellence and the Golden Quill for Traditional Romance. The catalogue lists 124 books from A Man Worth Loving (1992) to If Books Could Kill (2026). Mystery lines include Caprice De Luca Mystery and Daisy's Tea Garden Mysteries.