This week marks the season 12 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, and as usual, we’re promised some big drama. If there’s one thing to be learned from Grey’s Anatomy (aside from a lot of handy medical terms), it’s that doctors have a lot more on their minds than just medicine. Meredith’s personal life alone could fill a dozen different fascinating books on everything from complicated mother-daughter relationships and discovering long-lost half sisters to surviving a wide variety of traumatic situations. It should be no surprise then, that when real-life doctors write, they don’t all stick to the medical stuff. Here are eight books were actually penned by real-life medical doctors. Publishers’ descriptions included below.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons — their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.
About the author: Khaled Hosseini practiced medicine for over 10 years before The Kite Runner took off.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them — for a price. Until something goes wrong…
About the author: Michael Crichton went to all the trouble of obtaining an MD before realizing his true calling was writing and filmmaking.
Coma by Robin Cook
They called it “minor surgery,” but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman and a dozen others — all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures — were victims of the same inexplicable, hideous tragedy on the operating table. They never woke up.
Susan Wheeler is a third-year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital. Two patients during her residency mysteriously go into comas immediately after their operations due to complications from anesthesia. Susan begins to investigate the causes behind both of these alarming comas and discovers the oxygen line in Operating Room 8 has been tampered with to induce carbon monoxide poisoning.
Then Susan discovers the evil nature of the Jefferson Institute, an intensive care facility where patients are suspended from the ceiling and kept alive until they can be harvested for healthy organs. Is she a participant in — or a victim of — a large-scale black market dealing in human organs?
About the author: Robin Cook has continued working as a surgeon and ophthalmologist while writing his medical thriller novels.
Silent Treatment by Michael Palmer
With his wife, Evie, scheduled for surgery the next day, Dr. Harry Corbett goes to the hospital for what he hopes will be a quiet evening of reconciliation. In recent weeks Evie, never quick to share her feelings, has been more closed and distant than ever.
But when Harry reaches Evie’s room, it is too late for reconciliation. Shockingly, without warning, Evie is dead. The police suspect homicide. And their only suspect is Dr. Harry Corbett.
Harry is not prepared for the stunning revelations that follow: His bright, beautiful, highly ambitious wife was leading a double life; she may have had dangerous secrets. But what secret could have been explosive enough to die for?
Then the killer strikes again, boldly, tauntingly murdering one of Harry’s favorite patients in such a way that only Harry knows the death was not natural. This time Harry is certain: The killer, medically sophisticated, coolly arrogant, moving undetected through a busy urban hospital, could only be a doctor. And he wonders — how many more will die?
Desperately Harry probes deeper, following the only clue Evie left. What he finds is a sinister pattern that threatens patients in every hospital in the city. Harry is engaged in a life-and-death battle of wits with a chillingly efficient monster. And until the doctor is unmasked, no patient is safe from his lethal silent treatment.
About the author: At one point, Michael Palmer was chief of medicine at Falmouth Hospital on Cape Cod before his life took a rather House-esque turn, inspiring him to start writing novels.
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.
The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.
About the author: W. Somerset Maugham was an obstetrician for a brief time before his writing career took off.
The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen
He slips into homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, about to awaken to a living nightmare. The precision of his methods suggests that he is a deranged man of medicine, prompting the Boston newspapers to dub him “The Surgeon.” Led by Detectives Thomas Moore and Jane Rizzoli, the cops must consult the victim of a nearly identical crime: Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and filled an attacker before he could complete his assault. Now this new killer is recreating, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell’s ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. And neither Moore nor Rizzoli can protect Cordell from a ruthless hunter who somehow understands — and savors — the secret fears of every woman he kills.
About the author: Tess Gerritsen was a doctor for several years before picking up writing during her maternity leave. She’s now retired and dedicated to her writing career.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
A mysterious stranger and his retinue have astonished the locals of Stalin’s Moscow with the magic show to end all magic shows and have quite literally set the town alight. But what’s the real purpose behind their visit?
About the author: Mikhail Bulgakov was a field doctor for the White Army during the Russian Civil War before giving up medicine in favor of writing.
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Shot in the shoulder and brought to death’s door by typhoid fever, Dr. John Watson is sent home from the second Afghan war with a small income and nothing to do but recover his health. By his own account, he leads a meaningless existence in London until a chance encounter with an old friend brings news of comfortable lodgings on Baker Street. In a hospital laboratory, Watson meets his potential new roommate for the first time. “How are you?” asks Mr. Sherlock Holmes. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
With that remarkable feat of observation, one of literature’s greatest partnerships is born. In their first case, Holmes and Watson set off for an abandoned flat in Lauriston Gardens. An American has been found dead, his body unmarked, a mysterious word–Rache — spelled out in blood on the wall. Scotland Yard thinks the murderer meant to write the name Rachel, but Holmes knows better. When the dead man’s private secretary turns up stabbed through the heart, the same word scrawled nearby, it is up to the world’s only consulting detective and his eager companion to find a killer whose lust for revenge has spanned two continents and dozens of years.
About the author: Yes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was indeed a physician with his own practice. In fact, the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by one of his med school professors, Dr. Joseph Bell.
Did you know these books were written by doctors? Tell us in the comments!