Complete at 81,000 words, Apart at the Seams won third place in the 2024 Daphne DuMaurier Kiss of Death competition for unpublished suspense.
Like Stacy Willingham’s A Flicker in the Dark, the book depicts a protagonist torn about whether she is paranoid or in danger. With international intrigue, it is set in San Francisco, London, and Antwerp.
Synopsis:
Either Violet’s paranoia is back, or someone is hunting her.
After living half her life with schizophrenia, twenty-eight-year-old PhD student Violet wins a prestigious academic award. She’s nervous about flying from San Francisco to London after starting new medication but is determined to present her theory. To boost her confidence for the ceremony, she blows her savings on a glittering silk dress from a thrift shop. Thrilled, she preens for her sister’s camera. But when the photograph winds up on social media, the psychopath hunting the dress begins stalking her.
Violet’s plane is halfway to Heathrow Airport when she realizes her carefully packed medication is missing—the only thing that can keep her from lapsing into psychosis. Upon landing, anxious and jet-lagged and having missed a dose of medicine, she experiences her first hallucination in years. Violet begins to suspect she’s being followed, a sensation eerily similar to her old paranoia. Until it becomes starkly real.