Anonymous

A young woman who confronts the fear of inheriting mental illness when her husband moves her into a hundred-year-old farmhouse where neighbors insinuate it's haunted. Her new friend confronts the fear of a stalker when perverse anonymous letters arrive in the mail. Their stories merge as their friendship grows and their fears escalate.Excerpt:"Debra's hands were small, delicate, the kind of hands that could fit inside a mayonnaise jar. She had bitten her fingernails down to the quick; so she had picked at her cuticles and had bitten them, too, tearing fine strips of skin. She wanted so badly to stop. It was ugly. It hurt. But she would bite them any way."Debra Hamilton's husband moves her into a hundred-year-old farmhouse on fifty-three acres of blacklisted real estate property. Floorboards creak when she's all alone - her husband says it's the wind outside. Objects appear and disappear - her husband says it's her forgetfulness. Having to live here she is daunted by her genetic link to mental illness."In the thicket as tall as her, she heard something, someone, rustling and crackling the dead underbrush. Clutching the rifle, the wooden stock against her cheek, she took her rightful place as her mother's daughter, shaking quaking inside, not because she was so scared – but because it felt so right."Julie, a neighbor who befriends her, realizes she has a stalker watching, waiting, when perverted anonymous letters arrive in the mail that cause a rift in Julie's unstable marriage. Their plots merge as their friendship grows to create a rich and satisfying story.