Twists in the Tale (ePub)

Schizophrenic Sam Baldock says he 'hears' Beethoven calling him. For therapy, his doctor and daughter Joanne accompany Sam to the Beethoven Museum in Vienna, once the composer's apartment. Will lonely Joanne, at last, get closer - to her strange Dad ?

Raymond Nickford has a degree in Psychology and Philosophy from University College of North Wales. Troubled souls, the lonely, his inspiration. Lives which could be ours when driven to extremity, yet lives which can triumph over despair, glimpsed through psychological suspense and ghost stories.

Other stories include :

Voices of a Hypnotist

There was something Miranda couldn't quite trust as those haemorrhage-red lips of Dr Harditch shaped above her like writhing worms and she felt herself once more losing herself to trance. She was mindful of the private hypnosis under which she would very soon be his again... to mould as easily as once was her mother's pastry dough rolled out on a board. Still, yield she must, for even though she had paid over two weeks of her hard-earned salary as a nurse to ease a chronic phobia of spiders, the panic attacks had to go - before her job did.

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." After the words had welled up from her, Suzy shivered, felt feverish, but couldn't understand why.

Novella - a romance

A Face in a Corridor

Can a doubt-consumed paranoid stop himself from destroying the love from she alone who might have shown him what love can be?

Other titles :

Family Tree : Stories of Love Beyond the Grave

The body of Eddy's mother was found entangled in fungus-laden roots of the rotting ancient yew on the cemetery side of the family's garden fence. At nights, Eddy stutters, imploring his father to believe that the tree - or is it his mother - seems to call him. Dad just keeps saying "Grief works in strange ways, boy. You'll heal !" But that tree... Mum... calls. Should he sneak out... to the cemetery side? Or had Mum gone to that cold place which Dad kept saying was "Just death by misadventure, Eddy, as the autopsy stated" ?
Loss of family and loved ones revealing how, for those left behind, hurt and longing can find resolution - where unexpected.

Winner of the Harper Collins Gold Star award May 2010 :

A Child from the Wishing Well

Gerard's only wish is to escape the dark of chronic paranoia to be closer for his lonely daughter. He accompanies Rosie to violin lessons with eccentric but friendly tutor Miss Stein. But could the old spinster's often foul-smelling "wishing" well really be a place for his wish ?

Sunday Times best-selling author, Barbara Erskine, comments

' Beautifully observed characters, atmospheric, intriguing.'

Editorial Reviews:

' Atmospheric, vibrant, spooky page-turner. '

Reay Tannahill - historian, novelist and author of The Seventh Son.

'Growing up in a suburb of Chicago, the first scary movie I remember seeing was the 1965 Bette Davis movie, The Nanny. To this day, that movie has always stuck with me as one of the great psychological thrillers of all time. For me, A Child from the Wishing Well, is reminiscent of that movie.'

Candace Bowen Early - author of A Knight of Silence