Saratoga Schaefer (they/them) is the author of Serial Killer Support Group, Trad Wife, The Last Time We Drowned, and A Thousand Monstrous Forms. Their books have been featured in People Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour, and their writing has appeared in Writer's Digest, CrimeReads, and more. Originally from Brooklyn, Saratoga now lives upstate with several needy animals and a haunted clown table.

Praise for Trad Wife:
"Get ready for an intense, gory, and brutally honest tale . . . Schaefer writes a nuanced and visceral deep dive into horror's trad wife and influencer categories, in the sinister vein of Tantrum by Rachel Eve Moulton and Youthjuice by E. K. Sathue, infused with the disquieting, grotesque beauty of The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus."
--Library Journal

"A gleefully gruesome take on the life of an influencer . . . strikes a good balance of gore and tenderness."
--Publishers Weekly

"Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife is one of those novels that truly sticks with you. It blends real horrors with the supernatural in a way that's timely and deeply unsettling."
--Capes & Tights

"Forget flipping through Baby 411, readers are going to need Baby 911 after meeting the newborn at the sweet, succulent heart of Saratoga Schaefer's surprisingly tender -- and stunningly stomach-turning -- new novel Trad Wife. A Rosemary's Baby for our modern social media mindset, no IG filter can rinse the blood-soaked body horror off your subconscious once you're done devouring this beaut of a book."
--Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

"Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife is a gory thrill ride! Imagine Rosemary's Baby, but she's doing it for the 'gram."
--Chelsea Conradt, USA Today Bestselling Author of The Farmhouse

"In the tradition of Bret Easton Ellis, Trad Wife takes the domestic dream and rips it wide open, serving up a blood-soaked satire as smart and tender as it is stomach-churning. Deliciously gruesome and surprisingly tender, it's a razor-edged meditation on losing one's self."
--Dawn Kurtagich, Amazon bestselling author of The Thorns and The Madness

"Trad Wife is the body horror of your dreams (and nightmares). Relentless, feverish, and deliciously dark, Trad Wife plunges a knife into the dark, writhing heart of motherhood. Schaefer excels at writing morally gray protagonists, and in Camille Deming they peel back the glossy persona of the 'traditional housewife' we see online, revealing the uneasy truths beneath the performance of femininity and the lengths we go to protect the life we think we want. I absolutely devoured this."
--Charlene Wang, author of Mindy's Book Studio pick I'll Follow You

"Trad Wife is a masterpiece that cements Schaefer as the new authority when it comes to horror."
--Maria Tureaud, author of This House Will Feed

"Smart, stylish, and savage, Trad Wife is an insidious drop down a well you'll never climb out of."
--Neena Viel, author of Listen to Your Sister

"Trad Wife will satisfy every craving you have for raw, visceral horror hidden behind a picture-perfect facade. Timely, terrifying, and touched with humor, this book will chew you up and spit you out and you'll love every second of it."
--C.J. Dotson, author of The Cut

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Pub date: 2026-02-10

Length: 320 pages