American Mother

Dangerous Women - True Crime Stories

By: Gregg Olsen

Narrated by: Karen Peakes

Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's Summary

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.

Nope.

When the narrator ruins the book so badly that you can't even finish.... And I wanted to. I'm going to have to kindle it, this is absurd. She's doing nonsensical but also just plain bad ~voices~ and it's utterly unlistenable. A competent narrator doesn't need to rely on garbage like that, and a competent female narrator never has to vocal fry her way into a man-voice. Just. Read. The. Book. It's not a cartoon. The utterly insulting amateur theatrics aside, I knew this was doomed well before the last straw. At one point the text obviously read "...extra-strength excedrin bottles with particular attention being paid to lot # 5H102." This buffoonette read it as "...lot hashtag 5H102."

It just means number, sweetie. Lot. Number.
Is this really where we are now? Do better.

Couldn’t get in to it

I’m sure it’s a fascinating story but the narration killed it for me. Too sing song.

wrong narration

The narrator made the entire book sound like a low budget drama. It had none of the qualities of a well researched true crime.

American Mother

Sooooo good! Will be following/reading more of Gregg Olsen. The narration made it very easy to listen to and to be able to follow the many people in the story!

Good story, narration not so much

The voices the narrator did was awful.
Hard to get past that. The story was an interesting one, but there was so much repetitive information it made it longer then it had to be. Almost hard to get thru the whole thing.

Very slow and repetitive

This book found have been an interesting read but the bocss was is were terrible. Why can’t they just read the book and not change their voice for each character.
I’m not in kindergarten.
Also the book was super repetitive when it finally got to the court case you had already heard all the testimony .
I would not recommend this book on audible .

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.

Well written...buy

Gregg Olsen's work is very good, but the Narrator uses inflection & voice tone poorly. She lowers her voice for male dialogue & it comes off monotone & almost insulting to the story itself & the reader. Her pitch, tones & odd accents on dialogue is very distracting.

Bitter Almonds Updates!

I almost returned this book after learning that it was bitter almonds with a new title. However, the performance of the narrator is wonderful the man who narrated “bitter almonds“ was excellent as well, but this new woman puts great emphasis on accents, and change your voice to sound like the people she is quoting. I really enjoyed it!
The updates all come in the afterward, and then the question and answer session, I think you need to re-listen to the book in order for all of that to make sense.

Another great one

Another great story from Gregg Olsen! He’s so thorough and puts the pieces together perfectly.

I'm giving up on this!

This is written as if it is not factual, too much drama which is made so much worse by the awful dramatic narration.

The story is 'all over the place' and the narrator seems to think she has to add drama to the tale, I cannot go any further!

Narrator Spoils Story

Story bit too dragged out. Voice was irritating hi Low pitch impersonations off putting

What to say?

What do you say about true crime? You can’t call it entertaining or enjoyable. It never ceases to amaze me the depths that one human will stoop to against another.