Best-selling The Housemaid author Freida McFadden reveals true identity

Best-selling The Housemaid author Freida McFadden reveals true identity7 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleIan YoungsCulture reporterGetty ImagesFreida McFadden, whose real name is Sara Cohen, chose her pseudonym after a medical database called FreidaOne of the biggest mysteries in publishing has been solved, after the best-selling US author known to millions of readers as Freida McFadden revealed her true identity.McFadden has been one of the world's most popular authors of recent years, thanks to thrillers like The Housemaid.The author has never made a secret of the fact Freida McFadden is a pseudonym, and that she also works as a doctor, but had never revealed her real name.She has now told USA Today she is actually Sara Cohen. "I'm at a point in my career when I'm tired of this being a secret," she explained. "I'm tired of people debating if I'm a real person or if I'm three men. I am a real person and I have a real identity and I don't have anything to hide."Under the name McFadden, she was the second best-selling author of 2025 in the UK, selling 2.6 million books, and sold six million print copies in her home country.Those sales were fuelled by the success of The Housemaid, which was first published in 2022 and was turned into a film last year starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried.Only The Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson sold more books overall than McFadden in the UK in 2025.She is a prolific writer, having published 29 novels so far, and has already topped the best-seller charts this year with three books - The Housemaid, Want to Know a Secret? and Dear Debbie.'Patients might find it weird'Cohen initially chose a pen name to hide her true identity when she self-published her first book, a fictionalised account of her life as a resident doctor, titled The Devil Wears Scrubs, in 2013.She chose the name Freida as a medical in-joke - after a hospital training registry, the Fellow...