Title: Twists in the Tale (Psychological Suspense, the Supernatural and Ghosts)
Description: **Schizophrenic Sam Baldock 'hears' Beethoven calling him. For therapy, his doctor and daughter Joanne accompany Sam to the Beethoven Museum in Vienna where the composer once scored piano sonata Les Adieux, The Farewell. Will Joanne at last get closer to her 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 included :**

Voices of a Hypnotist 

**There was something Miranda couldn't quite trust as those haemorrhage-red lips of Dr Harditch shaped above her like a writhing worm and she felt herself once more losing herself to trance. She was mindful of the 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. Besides, Amanda could still just reason, she had paid over six weeks of her hard-earned salary as a nurse to ease a chronic phobia of spiders which she had already found embarrassing after one attack revealed while nursing.**


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, but couldn't quite understand why.**

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. Yet, one way or another, he would produce a baby and they would, they would eat  their words. They owed him his dignity.**

**Novella – a romance**  

A Face in a Corridor 

**Can a paranoid stop himself from destroying the love from she alone who might have shown him what love can be? 
Other titles of family life, literary suspense and romance :**

Aristo's Family 

Aristo, living alone with his sole surviving son Pavlos,  is obsessed that he still has surviving family, even though told they were all burned to death when the Turks invaded Cyprus in 1974. Preoccupied, he comes to neglect Pavlos yet both Aristo's and his son's need to get closer also burns in this novel.

Mister Kreasey's Demon

Broken by his street-hardened London students, reduced to chronic paranoia, can Amy's teacher stop himself losing she, alone, he might have trusted, might have loved ? 

**Winner of the Harper Collins Gold Star award May 2010 : 
A Child from the Wishing Well** 

A father suffering paranoia struggles against mental illness to reach out to his daughter. 

**Sunday Times best-selling author, Barbara Erskine, comments in the Preface
' Beautifully observed characters, atmospheric, intriguing.'** 

Editorial Reviews: 

'Taps into the psychological attributes of its characters.' 

T. L. Tyson – author of Seeking Eleanor 

' 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 

' The sense of atmosphere and place developed is exquisitely detailed. ' 

Jack Hughes – author of Dawn of Shadows 

'The author gives great voice to his characters, describing well their idiosyncrasies. A good story must either go deep or wide, and with Nickford's background in psychology he goes deep within the human condition. 

Stephen Valentine - author of Nobody Rides for Free 

**The author** 

http://raymondnickford-psychologicalsuspense.weebly.com