Review
"The first few chapters are atmospheric; intriguing. They made me want to keep reading. The beautifully observed characters and exotic setting have all the makings of a first class novel." Barbara Erskine. "The promise of the early chapters is more than well-maintained. This novel is a real page-turner, worthy of comparison with the early John Fowles The Magus - but distinctively Raymond Nickford." Allen Synge. "An atmospheric, vibrant, almost spooky page-turner that might easily become something of a cult". Reay Tannahill.
Product Description
A collection of psychological suspense, ghost stories and a romance in the novella: A Face in a Corridor. A MUSICAL CALLING: Schizophrenic Sam Baldock is given a day out - his last - at the Beethoven Museum in Vienna. FATHER'S HELPING HAND: Octogenarians Hubbald & Bros, piano tuners at their Old Chapel workshops, seem almost too kind when they choose to make a gift of a Steinway to their 'favourite' customer. FAMILY TREE: Mr Glossop might be a widower, his neighbours said, but it was time he poured acid on all those diseased roots. Was he really going to let his only son have the same degrading end as Mrs Glossop? VOICES OF A HYPNOTIST: She had paid two weeks of her hard-earned salary to ease a phobia of spiders which she thought embarrassing for a nurse to have and now there was something she couldn't quite trust in that voice; a hint of something nearer to Cockney than to Harley Street. NANNY'S FRIENDS: "She calls them her little friends", Suzy slurred. Miss Harlow says that when it's time for a doll to 'stay' with her, she 'prepares' eyes, really beautiful eyes for it. THE PARCHMENT RECIPES: Emily clung for life to the bric-a-brac which made a Mausoleum of her home; for sure, in everything Berny had touched, he still lived and somehow she would - she would reach out to him. THE RUM BARBER'S BABY: Harry the barber was vast; a Sumo wrestler without the wrestle but it was only after two vandals had sprayed his shop window in boot-high capitals with 'I'm too fat to - that he'd finally come to hate himself. A FACE IN A CORRIDOR: Can a paranoid stop himself from destroying she alone who might have loved him?
About the Author
Raymond Nickford has been published, apart from his novels, for his searching character studies in stories of psychological suspense as a contributor to USA anthologies including: "Voices of a Hypnotist" published in Gaslight, "Family Tree" in Haunts no.32, "Nanny's Friends" in Not One of Us, "A Musical Calling" in Heliocentric Net. Vol 5. and "The Parchment Recipes" in Chills no.8 British Fantasy Society Magazine. He has taught English in colleges and as a tutor; the years visiting pupils in shacks to mansions, from what he calls "the delightful to the vaguely Little Lord Fauntleroy," in part informed his fourth novel, a psychological suspense thriller - A Child from the Wishing Well, which it is hoped, may also see publication in large print and audio form for libraries which supply fiction to those for whom he has a special sympathy; the visually impaired. Nickford has a degree in Philosophy and Psychology from The University College of North Wales, Bangor, and is working on another psychological suspense "Prey to Her Madonna". His favourite authors range from Hitchcock, through Patricia Highsmith to Ruth Rendell and Henry James.
