American · b. 1980
Freida McFadden is the pseudonym of a practicing physician who writes thrillers with the same diagnostic precision she brings to medicine. She keeps her real identity private, but her books have made her one of the bestselling authors of 2023 and 2024. The Housemaid (2022) became a viral sensation—a domestic thriller about a woman who takes a job cleaning house for a wealthy couple, with twists that reward readers who think they've seen this before. Its sequels and her backlist (she had published over a dozen books before breaking through) dominated bestseller lists. McFadden represents a new model of thriller success: self-published initially, discovered by readers rather than critics, built on prolific output and TikTok word-of-mouth.