Skip to content

Authors · NYT Hardcover Fiction

Thomas B. Costain portraitThomas B. Costain

Charting Sep 16, 1945Mar 13, 1960 · 243 weeks with chart power

Compare with other authors
Image credits

Honours

Author of the Week

  • NYT Hardcover Fiction

    44 crowns

    19451960

    Longest reign 17 weeks (Oct 1945 – Jan 1946) · First crown Oct 1945

Peak Power
13.26%
week of Mar 1, 1953
Career Power
2,284
share-weeks
Crowns
44
weeks crowned Author of the Week
Peak Year
648
August 1952 – August 1953
Peak Five Years
994
January 1949 – January 1954
Top-five weeks
156
weeks ranked 1–5
Longevity
243
weeks with chart power
Dominance
14.53%
week of Oct 7, 1945
Comebacks
6
Aug 1947 · Dec 1950 · Sep 1952 · Nov 1955 · Nov 1957 · Jan 1960

Ranked by weekly Power Share, part of the ChartReign Power model — not the list's own positions. How it works →

Exponentially smoothed share of the week's total power (the primary metric).

Titles on the NYT Hardcover Fiction

8 books · 2,284 share-weeks of Career Power

Power contributed is what each book earned this author: their weekly Power Share, split across their books (a featured credit takes its reduced share). Book Power is the book's own figure, the same for every author on it. Bar length compares books within this list.

TitlePeakWeeksPower
The Silver Chalice#168702.7
The Black Rose#139449.5
The Moneyman#131347.9
Below the Salt#326227.5
The Tontine#323154.0
Son of a Hundred Kings#219147.8
High Towers#318145.5
The Darkness and the Dawn#419109.2

At their peak

1952 in books

Thomas B. Costain's best twelve months on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list ran from August 1952 to August 1953. The most powerful authors over those weeks:

  1. 1Thomas B. Costain648
  2. 2Herman Wouk406
  3. 3John Steinbeck401
  4. 4Annemarie Selinko363
  5. 5Frances Parkinson Keyes270
  6. 6Edna Ferber235
  7. 7Daphne Du Maurier191
  8. 8Howard Spring183
  9. 9Francis Van Wyck Mason177
  10. 10Ernest Hemingway175

Ranked by Era Power over the same weeks.

Their decades: the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s.