KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!

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BALD-FACED LIAR
A Novel
BY VICTORIA HELEN STONE

BLURB

Living a lie becomes a matter of life and death for a woman hiding from her past in a novel of mounting psychological suspense.

Traveling nurse Elizabeth May has a promising new home in Santa Cruz. And another new identity. It’s a pattern of reinvention for a woman escaping a traumatic childhood—and hiding from the decades of notoriety and destruction that followed. Invisibility has kept Elizabeth safe. Until now. After all these years, someone sees her for who she is.

Threat by threat, a vengeful stalker is dismantling Elizabeth’s carefully constructed lifetime of lies. And no one in her temporary circle can be trusted. Not her fleeting new love interest. Not the supportive friend she knows only from online forums. And certainly not the police. They’ve never been there for her.

As dread sharpens to fear, Elizabeth soon discovers something about her past that even she didn’t know. The revelation could finally set her on a path of healing and redemption. Or, now alone in the dark, it could be Elizabeth’s worst nightmare.

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BALD-FACED LIAR
A Novel
BY VICTORIA HELEN STONE

Excerpt

Screams really carry here. Everything gets quieter in the offseason, but during summer the ocean breeze carries the cries of people dropping down the big hills of the rollercoaster, the squeals of children rocketing past on scooters, the screech of seagulls fighting over fries. I like the noise, the life, the humanity drifting toward me, so I can experience all of it.

Some people only live one life. I have no idea how they do it. I can live as many as I want, remaking myself and pulling from others. People are like books for me, and I wander the world like it’s a library, plucking out whatever catches my interest.

There’s the rental upstairs from me, empty today but usually busy with guests coming and going, and then there’s the beach bungalow next door where Julia’s staying.

Other than that . . . well, almost everyone is a stranger in this town, and they leave bits of their stories with me, whether they mean to or not. Most people have no idea how exposed they are these days.

For example, no one blinks an eye at the doorbell or patio cameras. I’ve witnessed more than one couple have sex right there on-screen. My most scandalized moment was seeing a man go down on the family nanny after the wife and kids were asleep. I slapped my hand over my mouth to smother my shocked guffaws, but she was a little less successful at hiding her noise. The wife either didn’t hear or didn’t care, I’m not sure.

Ah, humans. We’re truly fascinating.

Speaking of, Julia’s entire life with her husband is now available to me, from their adorable dating selfies to their new house and the wedding and the pregnancy and, oh look, there’s tiny newborn Sheila!

What a cutie.

There’s another blond woman with them in many of the prebaby photos on Instagram. She’s older than Julia, with bold, striking features and an intense gaze that eats through the camera lens. They don’t look like sisters. Could this be the unnamed troublemaker?

The username tagged in the photo isn’t helpful: Chromospheric1—some sort of astronomical term—and her account is private.

I pause over a shot of the other woman with her arms wrapped around Julia from behind. Both women are pink-cheeked and laughing while Jamie stands six inches away flashing a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. I build a whole story for them as I scroll through, watching Julia’s belly grow as the other blonde appears less and less often.

Letting my creativity run wild, I imagine Jamie told his wife he was totally comfortable with her special friend . . . until he wasn’t anymore. Until the competition intensified and the inside jokes got to be too much. And then they were having a baby, and wouldn’t the baby be confused by her—The vibration of an alarm interrupts me, and I sit up straight with a muffled curse. That was supposed to be my alarm for break time, but I haven’t even started working yet. Oops. Time to transform myself into Eliza May, nurse extraordinaire.

People really like that name. When I was working hands-on in hospitals, it always made my patients feel comfortable, like I was an innocent farm girl fresh out of the Midwest. And really, I was. I’d never lived on a farm, but plenty of my classmates back in Fair Isle, Iowa, had. I’d even raised rabbits for 4-H, though I’d mostly been in it for the excuse to spend hours in the backyard, away from everyone who knew me.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing with this job too? Spending hours in my backyard, away from everyone who knows me? Probably. I miss the day-to-day interactions I got in hospitals, but I’m so anonymous here. Safe and comfortable and surrounded by strangers and casual acquaintances.

Though I step inside to drop into my desk chair, it’s positioned right next to the open patio doors so I won’t miss any delicious tidbits because of work.

But don’t worry, work offers plenty of tidbits too. Two messages await me when I sign in, and both are related to my juiciest file. I’ve really dug into this one, cheering on the patient as she progressed from an ER visit for a mysterious fever to hospital admission for kidney failure, and on and on until she was in the ICU for six full days and veered close to death twice.

Mrs. Washington is a fighter, and I was breathless the first time I waded through her charts, relieved to find notes from nurses about the extensive questions posed by her son and daughter. Both of her kids have been right by her side through all this. Despite that she’s eighty- five, Mrs. Washington hasn’t given up and neither has her family. I love them all, and I felt nothing but relief when I got to her discharge paperwork and knew she was at home and on the mend. But medicine is a business in this country, and everyone expects documentation and payment, which is where I shine. Her nephrologist took several days to answer my questions about the medical coding, but he’s given me a lot to work with. I can definitely press Medicare for the maximum allowable payment, and that makes me, the hospital, and everyone involved happy. Mrs. Washington has done it again!

I add the latest notes to her file, then go through the same process with the information provided by a lab supervisor. Wrapping up this case is a triumph, but I’m a little sad to let it go. I miss being fully immersed in patient drama, the ups and downs of a life-and-death struggle, but—like so many health care professionals—I burned out badly during the pandemic, so last year I walked away from nursing to become a clinical documentation specialist. Nursing is always there waiting if I want it, but I’m lazy as a cat now in my little place near the beach.

And hey, new files arrive every day. I crack open a fresh one and rub my hands together, ready to lose myself in every detail of this stranger’s life.

I’m not a stalker. I’m not! It’s not like that.

Then again, isn’t that just what a stalker would tell herself? I’m not bad, I’m just misunderstood. No one thinks they’re the villain of their own story.

“Not true,” I mutter to myself. I’ve been the villain since I was five years old, an enfant terrible who helped destroy an entire family and ruin several careers. No one back home ever let me forget, and it sticks with me no matter how far I run.

About Author Victoria Helen Stone…

Links to Victoria’s websites, blogs, books, #ad etc.:

Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/4dQC9gP

Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/4dKbjXv

Official Website: VictoriaHelenStone.com

Instagram: @victoriahelenstone

Happy Reading!