The author of The Housemaid lives a secret double life. Only a handful of people know the truth.

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It's Friday, the work week is finally over. A Boston doctor clocks off, exchanging tired pleasantries with her colleagues.

"Weekend plans?"

She gives a casual smile and a vague answer: "A little Netflix, a lot of nothing."

It's a script she knows by heart now.

Her colleagues see a focused physician heading home to her two children. They have no idea that in a few hours, she'll shed the scrubs for the keyboard, dedicating herself to her second, secret life.

The truth is, she'll spend her weekend crafting the kind of psychological thrillers that keep millions of readers awake.

None of her colleagues know she's a best-selling author who has sold more than 17 million books and dominates her genre.

None of them know she's Freida McFadden.

Watch the trailer for the movie adaptation of McFadden's book The Housemaid. Post continues below.

Freida, is a or pen name, and she's the powerhouse behind thriller titles such as The Inmate, The Boyfriend and The Teacher.

But it was The Housemaid, a novel soon to be adapted into a major motion picture starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, that catapulted her from self-publishing success to global stardom.

The author's output is so staggering, with a public persona so non-existent, that she has become a bit of an internet mystery.

Readers have little to go on when piecing together who Freida is beyond being a doctor with a fake name; entire Reddit threads are dedicated to debating her real identity.

Some speculate she's a secret collective of writers, while others suspect she's AI.

Ironically, her pseudonym is actually a sly nod to her medical career. Freida is an acronym for the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database, which helps medical students find hospital placements.

As for McFadden? Well, she told The Sunday Times she simply "wanted something a little more humorous-sounding".

Apparently, she never planned on dominating the thriller genre.

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A post shared by Freida McFadden (@fmcfaddenauthor)

More than a decade ago, being an author was just a hobby.

As she raised two young children, Freida squeezed writing in during nap time, late at night and early in the morning. She drew on a private medical blog to self-publish her first novel, The Devil Wears Scrubs, in 2013.

What was intended to be a one-and-done deal soon found success.

Freida eventually moved into medical and psychological thrillers, a genre she now absolutely commands.

Freida is known for creating relatable female characters and, more crucially, for delivering twists so unforeseen they leave readers gasping.

"Everything has already been done," she wrote on her website, acknowledging the challenge.

"You have to step out of the box of: 'The suspects were A, B, C, D, and A is the killer.' It's not even enough to say E is the killer. It has to be E is the killer because he is actually B, and was the victim's mother and his daughter, and also was dead the whole time."

Yet each time, she still finds a way to deliver.

McFadden prefers to keep her two lives separate. Image: X/fredia_mcfadden.

In 2019, she had the concept for The Housemaid but shelved it, believing it wasn't quite right.

When digital publisher Bookouture approached her a few years later, she offered them the novel. By late 2022, it was a monster hit and drove hordes of readers to her extensive backlist of earlier, self-published novels.

Eventually, she struck a major deal with Poisoned Pen Press, which acquired the rights to 15 of her titles.

Despite the global success, Freida prefers to keep her life split.

What little we know is this: She was born in New York City, currently lives in Boston with her family, and her birthday is May 1, 1980. Today, she works part-time as a doctor and spends the majority of her free hours writing.

Her boss still doesn't know.

Sydney Sweeney has been cast in The Housemaid. Image: Getty.

There are some people who know about Freida's double life — her children, her close friends and, most recently, her book group.

"It's not like I'm in witness protection," she told The Times.

But she maintains the clear divide at work.

"I'm a physician and I do not want my patients to know," she explained in a blog post in 2022.

"Would most people be cool with their doctor writing psychological thrillers? Sure, probably…

"Then again, I have to say, I don't know how I would feel if I knew my physician wrote a book in which a surgeon's patients are systematically murdered. I might feel a wee bit nervous. So, I'd rather just take that out of the equation."

Her ultimate reasoning is simple: "I can always tell people. I can never un-tell people."

And honestly? That's fair enough.

Feature image: Mira Whiting via Hachette Book Group.