Brain Damage (Paperback)

"Delicious and dark...starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending." ― Kirkus Reviews

How can you survive when you can't remember who wants you dead?

Dr. Charly McKenna had the perfect life: a thriving dermatology practice, a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, and a handsome husband who adored her.

Until the night a bullet tore through her skull… and stole everything.

Now Charly wakes in a rehabilitation hospital unable to walk, speak, or remember her own name. All she knows is that someone tried to kill her―and they may still be out there. As fragments of memory surface, so do unsettling questions about the people around her, including the attentive man who keeps appearing at her bedside.

The truth of what happened that night lives somewhere inside her brain. And as Charly pieces together the jagged edges of her past, she begins to realize the most terrifying possibility: the person who wants her dead might be the one she once trusted most.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden comes a scalpel-sharp psychological thriller about fractured memory, buried secrets, and how far the mind will go to protect you from the truth.

#1 New York Times, #1 Sunday Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and internationally bestselling author Freida McFadden is a physician who lives in Boston with her family. Freida is the winner of the International Thriller Writer Award for Best Paperback Original, the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Thriller, and was honored as one of TIME 100’s most influential people in the world for 2026. Her novels have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have sold over 90 million copies worldwide.