American Mother

Dangerous Women - True Crime Stories

By: Gregg Olsen

Narrated by: Karen Peakes

From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of If You Tell comes the absolutely unputdownable and chilling true-crime story of Stella Nickell—a mother and wife who did the unthinkable…and the unforgivable.

At 5:02 p.m. on June 5, 1986, an emergency call came into the local sheriff’s office in the small town of Auburn, Washington State. A distressed housewife, Stella Nickell, said her husband, Bruce, was having a seizure. Officers rushed to the Nickells' mobile home to find Stella standing frozen at the door…. Bruce was on the floor fighting for his life.

As Stella became the beneficiary of over $175,000 in a life insurance payout, forensics discovered that Bruce had consumed painkillers laced with cyanide.

A week later, 15-year-old Hayley was getting ready for another school day. Her mom, Sue, called out "I love you" before heading into the bathroom and moments later collapsed on the floor. Sue never regained consciousness, and the autopsy revealed she had been poisoned by cyanide-tainted headache pills. Just like Bruce.

While a daughter grieved the sudden and devastating loss of her mother, a young woman, Cindy, was thinking about her own mom, Stella. She thought about the years of neglect and abuse, the tangled web of secrets Stella had shared with her, and Cindy contemplated turning her mom in to the FBI….

Gripping and heartbreaking, Gregg Olsen uncovers the shocking true story of a troubled family. He delves into a complex mother-daughter relationship rooted in mistrust and deception, and the journey of the sweet curly haired little girl from Oregon whose fierce ambition to live the American dream led her to make the ultimate betrayal.

A sensational real-life mystery, American Mother will hook those fascinated by The Staircase and Making of a Murderer.

This book was originally published as Bitter Almonds.

©1993, 2002, 2022 Gregg Olsen (P)2022 Bookouture, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.

Fascinating

I loved everything about this book. It was so informative and went into such great detail about this story. The writer really dives deep into so many aspects of this horrific story. Wonderful work!

Great read

This is a compelling true crime read. The narrative keeps the reader engaged, and the orator is exceptional.

Great story!

Love this team…love the author and the narrator! Looking for more audible with these two! I’ve listen to If You Tell…that’s a great one too!

Good book, not great narration

I wanted to listen to this all the way through but I just couldn’t. The narration was bad. The different voices were silly and not different enough to make sense. I rarely do not finish books but here we are.

Troubling but well-performed story

First I want to praise the narrator Karen Peakes. The variety she achieves with the female characters is amazing. She embodies so many different personalities and voices and makes them so distinct and believable. For men, she does that husky voice that many female narrators do that I dislike. I prefer women to embody men using their own voice and conveying the male personalities through expression rather than through roughing up their voice. Nonetheless, it says a lot about her performance that I appreciated it despite her having that one quality that I dislike.

As to the story, the way it jumps backward and forward in time was hard to follow. What, the husband is still alive? We must be in the past.

The other thing that was hard about this story was how painful it was to watch the two main characters stagger from man to man in search of happiness, one to her self-destruction and one toward the destruction of others. I almost quit a couple of times.

But the story is quite well told (despite the jumping around in time) and was a satisfying listen. Even the trial is a page-turner! I wanted to throttle that one juror. You'll know who I mean when you listen.