Prolific Boston-based author Freida McFadden has new thrillers coming out in 2025, plus a movie adaptation of her most popular novel is slated for release at the end of the year.
By Lisa Cavanaugh
As a middle-schooler, Freida McFadden really got into books by Stephen King, and her twisty thrillers reflect her admiration for New England’s “King of Horror.”
A graduate of Harvard University and a practicing physician specializing in brain injuries, McFadden (a pen name she uses for privacy) lives in a 300-hundred-year-old Boston-area home with her husband, teenage children, and a pet cat. She describes her abode in a fittingly suspenseful style: “staircases that creak and moan with each step, and nobody could hear you if you scream. Unless you scream really loudly, maybe.”
Her best-known — and best-selling — novel is The Housemaid, which has sold four and a half million copies worldwide. The film version — starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried — is due in theaters in December.
Meanwhile, the impressively productive writer (more than 25 novels in less than a decade) has published two new thrillers in the first half of 2025. The Crash, which came out in January, is set in rural Maine during a snowstorm. “It’s about a pregnant woman who gets in a terrible car accident,” says McFadden. “This lovely couple rescues her — but are they as nice as they seem?”
Next up is The Tenant, another suspenseful page-turner in which someone — this time a young woman renting a room in a gorgeous New York City brownstone — is not who she appears to be. McFadden, who was born in New York, feels compelled to bring justice to her paper villains, even if that isn’t always the case in real life. “When I hear about things that make me mad — something unfair — it inspires me to write a book to pay it back.” The author says that her inspiration can also be unpredictable. “I was once at a concert with my daughter at TD Garden and got an idea just sitting in the audience,” says McFadden. “I almost didn’t go to the concert — what if I hadn’t?”
