Freida McFadden

Freida McFadden is the pen name of an American physician — she practices as a brain injury doctor — who has become one of the most commercially successful psychological thriller writers of the 2020s. She is best known for The Housemaid, a twist-driven thriller about a live-in housekeeper whose new employers hide dark secrets, which spawned the sequels The Housemaid's Secret and The Housemaid Is Watching and became a viral sensation, particularly on BookTok. She is remarkably prolific, with a wide backlist including The Teacher, Never Lie and The Inmate, all sharing her signature style of fast pacing, unreliable narrators and late-breaking reversals. New readers should start with The Housemaid, both because it's her signature work and because its sequels build directly on it. McFadden's medical background lends an authentic, clinical precision to the psychological elements of her thrillers, and her books-per-year output rivals the genre's most prolific veterans. As of this writing there is no film or television adaptation, though her rapid rise in popularity has made her one of the most talked-about thriller authors writing under a pen name today.