Publication Date: October 9, 2026
First, she took my husband. Then my daughter moved in. And now my little girl is accused of murder…
I can’t wait to see my sixteen-year-old daughter Brie, and get back to sharing secrets over cozy dinners together. But when I arrive at her stepmother’s stunning house to collect her, she stares at me coldly, like I’m a stranger. A silver stud gleams in her nose, and she’s dropped out of college. And she doesn’t want to come home…
Brie’s eyes slide away from me, as her stepmother Leanne puts an arm around her shoulder. The message is clear. We stand together and you’re on your own. I’m forced to spy on my daughter, watching as she embraces a much older man, and I vow to do whatever it takes to protect her.
But then the call comes in the middle of the night. Brie’s shaking voice telling me she’s in jail, and that she killed her new boyfriend. It can’t be true.
I thought things couldn’t get any worse. Yet hours later, I learn that Leanne has told the police I’m unstable, to look at the bottles in my bin and the lies I’ve told at work. When footage emerges of me threatening Brie’s boyfriend in the street I feel the net closing in. Someone is framing me and my daughter. I know we are both innocent. Will anyone believe me?
A completely unputdownable and twist-packed page-turner from number 1 bestselling author K.L. Slater. Fans of Lisa Jewell, Freida McFadden and Alice Feeney will be hooked.
When a divorced mother returns home after an extensive work trip, she finds her teen daughter radically changed.
Author K.L. Slater serves up a signature psychological thriller with Her Stepmother’s House. It pits Carrie in a battle to seemingly win back her daughter’s affection, even though Brie insists on living with her father and stepmother, Leanne.
As a mother, all the warning sirens go off. Not only does Brie undergo a radical transformation in her appearance, but the 16-year-old drops out of college and picks up a 20-year-old boyfriend. Her refusal to talk to Carrie indicates something more sinister is happening.
While Carrie desperately tries to get her personal life on track, her professional life hits a massive speed bump that threatens her plans for a better housing arrangement. The contrast between her apartment and Leanne’s luxury home is quite evident.
It’s not until the police show up on Carrie’s doorstep that the story takes an unexpected turn, followed by surprising revelations. To save her daughter, Carrie will do anything, even if it means revealing old secrets.
Her Stepmother’s House delivers a fast-paced thriller highlighting the lengths a mother will go to save her daughter.
For many years, Kim sent her work out to literary agents but never made it off the slush pile. At the age of 40 she went back to Nottingham Trent University and now has an MA in Creative Writing.
Before graduating, she received five offers of representation from London literary agents which was, as Kim says, ‘a fairytale … at the end of a very long road!’
Kim is a full-time writer and lives in Nottingham with her husband, Mac.
