Publication Date: June 1, 2025
Living a lie becomes a matter of life and death for a woman hiding from her past in a novel of mounting psychological suspense by the bestselling author of Jane Doe and The Hook.
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 her 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 fear sharpens to terror, 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.
With her latest book, author Victoria Helen Stone opens the door for readers to break the unspoken rule of skipping ahead to the ending.
While I was able to talk myself out of it, I ended up binge-reading Bald-Faced Liar. Told in first person by the morally gray character Elizabeth May, the story explores her incredibly private life and subsequent unraveling at the hands of an unknown stalker.
From the very beginning, her character stands out as somewhat of a voyeur. Depending on the circumstances, she takes on different identities, much like a chameleon. Whether she is May, Beth, Lizzie, or Eliza, the sheer level of fear removes all artifice to expose the real woman. And it terrifies her.
Dark intrigue and emotional suspense are woven neatly into the storyline, making readers wonder why she is being targeted. The answer leads to even more plot twists that are intricately devised to keep up the suspense.
The supporting characters add flavor, as well. There’s the new potential boyfriend, the Romanian landlord, the online friend. Together, they keep the pace moving rapidly so “just one more chapter” turns into “until I finish.”
Bald-Faced Liar delves into a woman’s lifetime of lies and the destructive force determined to expose her.
Wall Street Journal bestselling author Victoria Helen Stone, author of the runaway hit Jane Doe, writes critically acclaimed novels of dark intrigue and emotional suspense. Her work includes Follow Her Down, At the Quiet Edge, The Last One Home, Problem Child, Half Past, The Hook, and the chart-toppers False Step and Evelyn, After.
Victoria writes in her home office high in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, far from her origins in the flattest plains of Minnesota, Texas, and Oklahoma. She enjoys gorgeous summer trail hikes in the mountains almost as much as she enjoys staying inside by the fire during winter. Victoria is passionate about dessert, true crime, and her terror of mosquitoes, which have targeted her in a diabolical conspiracy to hunt her down no matter the season.
