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The second story, "Haunted by Amy", is ten chapters long and is about a former school teacher, Matthew, and the teenage student, Amy, with whom he had an affair. He suspects her of murdering his friend Philip. But he also admits that he might be clinically paranoid.
"The Parchment Recipes" is a paranormal mystery about a widow with a not-so-nice mother. The widow finds a parchment in her kitchen late one night, and mysterious things begin to happen.
Atmospheric scenes and poignant themes centering around odd, troubled characters whose lives are driven to extremity, drawn on, still, by the tantalizing hope - sometimes delivered by fate or fortune - of happiness.
Moving, dysfunctional lives and relationships; hypnotist and patient, a strained romance, paranoid father and daughter, eccentrics, making normal relationships difficult. Some ghostly presences but the 'Cupboard of Skeletons' is more a euphemism for people with embarrassing secrets coming to haunt and test their lives and how, despite despair, they try to find something of their dreams.
REVIEWS:
"Beautifully observed characters, atmospheric, intriguing."
Barbara Erskine - best selling author of Lady of Hay.
"Vibrant, spooky, a real page-turner."
Reay Tannahill - historian and author of The Seventh Son.
"Skellies in the Closet? Everybody has them. Dark secrets. Troubled pasts. Or the repeated inability to hit the mark. When our spirits are low, we crave dark music. Just as medicinal, however, are well-crafted stories of things macabre, chronicles of lives that take us either in or outside of ourselves. Or both.
The stories are about living and choices and missteps; they will undoubtedly haunt your thoughts for some time.
Nickford's prose is mesmerizing, yet his delightful dry humour arises just often enough to charm us along the way."
John Campbell - author of Walk to the Paradise Garden
"All the characters are built up so stealthily we can fail to notice that odd behaviour could develop into obsession and dark foreboding secrets."
Daniel Manning - author of No Compatibility.
"The meticulous, obsessive nature of paranoia is beautifully depicted."
Jann King - author of Making Connections.
"Eccentrics abound and yet what chills is that for the most part the people in this collection seem so normal - on the surface. They are like friends whose past or darker secrets you'd never have thought of questioning... until right up there next to you when you're completely alone with them and the real chill dawns."
- Ralph Porter
"A brilliant piece of work tapping into the psychological attributes of its characters."
T.L. Tyson - author of Seeking Eleanor.
"The sense of atmosphere and place developed is exquisitely detailed."
Jack Hughes - author of Dawn of Shadows.
EPIGRAPH
âThus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and nightâĻ shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.â
â from Bernard in "The Waves" by Virginia Woolf.
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Raymond Nickford has said "To me, people are stranger than fiction and in many ways more fascinating."
Perhaps this is what first led him to his degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University College of North Wales and which has subsequently driven him to produce searching character studies in his collected stories "Twists in The Tale", novels and contributions to anthologies in the USA.
Of his novel based in Cyprus, "Aristo's Family," Barbara Erskine, best selling author of "Lady of Hay" has commented on the "beautifully observed characters," the "intriguing and atmospheric scenes," and above all the suspense which made her "want to read on".
Part Greek Cypriot, the author was raised amongst Greeks in England and has travelled extensively through Cyprus.
Though people may be stranger than fiction, still, souls - particularly troubled ones, the outsider, the lonely and any driven to extremity â have been indispensable for Raymond's novels, "Aristo's Family," "Mister Kreasey's Demon", "Twists in the Tale", "Cupboard of Skeletons" and "A Child from the Wishing Well".Â
The last won the Harper Collins Gold Star award for May 2010.
It features an eerie music tutor, her young pupil Rosie and Rosie's paranoid and inept father, Gerard, who fights through his mental illness to mean more to his daughter.
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Â
http://raymondnickford-
MEET THE AUTHOR:
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Facebook:
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REVIEWS
Candace Bowen - author of A Knight of Silence, has written:
âGrowing 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, by Raymond Nickford, is reminiscent of that movie. Ruth, the eerie music tutor, and Gerard strap you in, and take you on a psychological thrill-ride to the very end.â
Stephen Valentine - author of Nobody Rides for Free, comments:
"The author gives great voice to his characters, describing well their idiosyncrasies. A good story must either go deep or wide, and with his background in psychology he goes deep within the human condition. For some adults, the ability to relate to a child does not come naturally, and requires enormous if not awkward effort. This is an often overlooked subject worth exploring."
Raven Clark - author of The Shadowsword Saga says:
"Raymond Nickford has a writing voice that has to be one of the most unique and intriguing I have come across.
The story is both enjoyable and oddly chilling, all the more so for its apparent warmth. The pleasantness of Ruth and her liveliness should seem gentle, grandmotherly and appealing, a sweet old lady one could adore, but reading the trailer, what seems kindly suddenly turns sinister, her upbeat excitability oddly macabre.
Each time she says lines like "Our Rosie," and speaks so excitedly, rather than hearing a pleasant old lady, I think of a bird screeching. Fingers down a blackboard.
Will Gerard realize what he feels is not a symptom of his disease?
And if not, will Heather uncover the truth and save Rosie before the hurricane that is Ruth sweeps her into oblivion?"
Raymond confesses to a passion for plump, docile tabbies and is moved by the music and life of the composer Edward Elgar; his interest leading him each year to a cottage in the Malvern Hills and to the Three Choirs Festival. He is a member of the Elgar Society.
He is currently working on another psychological suspense," Prey to Her Madonna". Here, the author says, "the intrigue moves between Madeira, an eerie French shrine, an English village and London".
