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Don't Tell Mother: A Gripping Psychological Thriller with a Killer Twist
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 27 2026
Pages: 148
Weight: 0.41
Height: 0.37 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Sixteen years ago, Frankie Hale packed a bag and walked out of the cold house on Sable Street, certain of one thing: her father was the warm one, and her mother was the woman who froze the love out of every room.
Now her mother is dead at the foot of the stairs, and Frankie has come home to bury her - and to meet Cora. Devoted, gentle, grieving Cora: the live-in carer who nursed Eleanor to the end, whom the whole town adores, and to whom her mother left the house, the savings, everything.
To her own daughter, Eleanor left only the contents of the house. Including the journals. Including the pages where a frightened old woman writes, over and over, in a hand far too steady to belong to anyone confused: She is not who she says she is. If anything happens to me, it was not my heart.
Everyone in town has a kind, reasonable explanation. The dead woman was failing. The carer is a saint. The runaway daughter is only back for the money. But Frankie restores old things for a living, and she knows the difference between something that is damaged and something that has been deliberately broken. The deeper she digs into her mother's final year, the more she understands that the secret her family spent her whole childhood hiding has come home wearing a sweet face - and it is not finished.
One of them is lying about who she is. One of them has already killed once. And the only person who can prove it is the daughter this town has every reason not to believe.
Don't Tell Mother is an utterly gripping domestic thriller about family secrets, the lies we believe about the people who raised us, and how easily a warm lie beats a cold truth. A twist-laden psychological thriller for readers of Lisa Jewell, Shari Lapena, and Freida McFadden. A complete standalone, with an ending you will not see coming.
Lock the doors. Trust no one. And whatever she tells you - don't believe the girl.
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