Connie has built her life around caring for her elderly mother, Gwen, whose dementia makes her increasingly dependent — and increasingly easy to influence. Being the one Gwen turns to for cooking, cleaning, and company gives Connie's days their shape and their meaning. So when a man named Paul turns up claiming to have been sent by a charity to help out around the house, Connie's alarm bells start ringing at once.
Paul is charming, patient, and just a little too eager to make himself indispensable. Gwen adores him. And when he conveniently finds himself between homes and moves in, Connie becomes convinced he is working to push her out of her mother's life entirely. But it is her word against his, and the harder she tries to expose him, the more everyone — including Connie herself — begins to doubt her grip on reality.
John Marrs turns this quiet domestic stand-off into a clever, twisting psychological thriller in which no one under the roof is quite who they appear to be. As buried secrets surface and loyalties shift, The Stranger in Her House keeps pulling the ground out from under the reader, right up to its final reveal.