Shell Games

Is her mother's mind slipping, or has her charming new husband spun the perfect con?
'A truly spectacular psychological thriller' Matthew Blake
A dazzling thriller about a young woman whose fabulously wealthy mother might be the victim of an elaborate con or might be losing her mind - and the daughter can't tell where the truth lies.
Julie's mother Kate is a force of nature - a glamorous woman of seventy, a self-made real estate developer, a grande dame in Florida society, and a power broker in Florida politics. It wasn't easy for Julie to grow up in the shadow of such a dynamo, but she loves her mother, and she and her husband Eric are thrilled when Kate marries her long-lost high school sweetheart, a salt-of-the-earth man named Charlie.
But their storybook romance ends abruptly. On their wedding night, Kate calls the police in hysterics to report that Charlie just confessed to a notorious unsolved crime from decades before.
Charlie says she imagined it. Eric says that Kate has dementia. And the FBI says that Charlie couldn't possibly have committed that crime.
Julie doesn't know what to believe. Is her brilliant mother losing her mind? Or is sweet, lovable Charlie gaslighting Kate to gain control of her fortune?
As Julie tries to navigate through this maze of paranoia and mind games, cracks start to develop in her own marriage as it seems that Eric is keeping secrets . . .
Set against a backdrop of rampant development and devastating climate change, Shell Games is a psychological thriller that will make your head spin and the pages turn as you wonder exactly who is doing what to whom.

Bonnie Kistler is a former trial lawyer, spending her career in private practice with major law firms and successfully tried cases in federal and state courts across the country, as well as teaching writing skills to other lawyers and lecturing frequently to professional organisations and industry groups. She is the author of The Cage (HarperCollins US and Canelo UK 2022) and House on Fire (Atria US 2019).