Your Guide to Freida McFadden: The Housemaid and Beyond

Erika Cass seems the picture of perfection. Her job is perfect, her family is perfect—in other words, her life is perfect. At least, it was. 

When two policemen appear on Erika’s front doorstep one night asking to speak to her teenage son, Liam, she doesn’t know what to think. Apparently, Liam was the last person seen with a neighborhood girl who went missing the night before, and the police suspect the worst. 

Erika has always felt there was more to her charismatic, intelligent, and popular son than met the eye, but could he be capable of that? As evidence mounts and tensions heighten, she is forced to confront the terrifying truth that her perfect son may be far, far from it. 

In The Boyfriend, McFadden revives a 21st-century fear that has dissipated since the early days of dating apps: What if the other person is a serial killer?

Dating is scary. No one knows this better than Sydney Shaw, who has weathered date after terrible date in New York City and is beginning to lose faith in love altogether. Then she meets Tom.

Tom is sweet. Handsome. A doctor at a local hospital. In other words, he’s perfect. 

Sydney is relieved to have found someone so special, especially as police link the brutal murder of a local woman to a serial killer who dates his victims before he kills them.

After all, she could have been one more bad date away from a gruesome death. But the more she gets to know Tom, the more she doubts whether she was so lucky after all…

Eve should have a good life. She does have a good life.

She loves her husband, Nate, and she loves her job teaching math at the local high school. But a shadow has loomed over it ever since last year, when a student-teacher affair embroiled Caseham High in scandal. 

At its center is Addie, a liar and a destroyer of lives in the eyes of everyone at school. Eve has always suspected these ugly rumors hide a much uglier truth.

Only Addie knows the truth, though, and she’ll do anything to keep it that way. Anything. 

Millie worked as a housemaid for years, but her past is far from clean. She is determined to put it all behind her, though, as she and her family finally move into a house of their own.

Their new life is the whole suburban package, complete with a quiet cul-de-sac, sprawling backyard, and friendly, if slightly off-putting, neighbor. 

Millie soon discovers that her neighbor isn’t the only strange thing about their block. When Mrs. Lowell invites Millie’s family over for dinner, their housemaid greets Millie with cold, knowing eyes.

A shadowy figure watches them at night. A neighbor from across the street warns her to be careful of her neighbors. 

Millie moved here to escape her dark past. Instead, she may have found herself in its darkest chapter yet. 

Newlyweds Tricia and Ethan can’t believe their luck when they find the house of their dreams, a remote mansion that once belonged to renowned psychiatrist Dr. Adrian Hale. Hale himself was not so lucky: he vanished several years ago without a trace. 

Pushing aside the mysterious history of the stately manor, Tricia and Ethan resolve to visit it as soon as possible. After a fierce winter storm traps them inside, a restless Tricia finds a collection of old cassette tapes featuring Dr. Hale’s sessions with patients.

What starts as a fun way to pass the time quickly turns terrifying as, tape by tape, Tricia and Ethan bear witness to the twisted saga of lies and betrayals leading up to Dr. Hale’s disappearance. 

If they make it to the last tape, the horrifying pieces just might fall into place. Of course, by then, it might be too late…

Nora Davis lives a quiet life. She has to—it’s the only way to make sure her secret past stays secret.

The past in which her serial-killer father murdered dozens of women in their basement while Nora studied upstairs, oblivious. In which her father was sentenced to life in prison, leaving Nora to fend for herself.

A successful surgeon, Nora seems to have finally found the formula for a stable existence.

Then one of her female patients is murdered in the same grisly way Nora’s father used to kill his victims, and Nora finds herself at the center of a dizzying investigation that threatens to topple the delicate barrier she’s erected between past and present.

Nora knows someone is trying to frame her. She knows the police have nothing on her. 

But just in case, she better lock her basement door. 

This psychological thriller with a twist (or ten) will keep you guessing until the very end. 

Nurse practitioners at the local penitentiary must follow three rules: treat all prisoners with respect, never reveal personal information, and don’t, under any circumstances, get too close to the inmates.

New hire Brooke Sullivan has already broken all three.

Nobody knows that, though. Nobody knows that her high school sweetheart was the prison’s most dangerous inmate, star-quarterback-turned-serial-killer Shane Nelson.

Nobody knows that Brooke’s testimony is what sealed his sentence for good. Nobody but Shane himself. And he’s not going to let Brooke forget. 

Medical student Amy Brenner would do anything not to spend the night in Ward D, the local hospital’s in-patient mental health unit. 

Anything but fail out of her program, which is what Amy faces if she refuses this shift.

No one knows the reason Amy dreads Ward D, and she’s determined to keep it that way. Besides, it’s just one night, right?

That’s what Amy tells herself. But as the night lingers on, and patients and staff start to vanish one by one, Amy’s worst fears about the ward become impossible to ignore.

This shift just might her last.