Freida McFadden

Freida McFadden is the pen name of an American physician and bestselling author of psychological thrillers, born in New York City in 1980 and best known for The Housemaid (2022).

She began by self-publishing through Amazon after finishing her medical training. Her first book, The Devil Wears Scrubs (2013), drew partly on her medical internship, and further self-published titles followed, including Suicide Med (2014) and The Ex. Her psychological thrillers then reached a far larger readership. The Housemaid was published by Bookouture on 26 April 2022 and became an international bestseller, launching a series that continued with The Housemaid's Secret (2023) and The Housemaid Is Watching (2024). Never Lie was first self-published in September 2022 and reissued by Poisoned Pen Press in December 2023. Other thrillers include The Locked Door (2021), The Inmate (2022) and The Coworker (2023).

The Housemaid won the 2023 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Paperback Original, and The Housemaid's Secret won the 2023 Goodreads Choice Award for Mystery and Thriller. A film of The Housemaid, directed by Paul Feig and starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, was released in 2025. Her official site reports more than 90 million copies sold in over 45 languages. She lives in Boston.

For collectors

Her early books were self-published: Open Library records the first paperbacks of The Devil Wears Scrubs (2013) and Suicide Med (2014) under CreateSpace, Amazon's self-publishing platform. The Bookouture first of The Housemaid (2022) marks her breakthrough and is the obvious starting point for a collection.