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Twists in the Tale
 
 

Twists in the Tale [Kindle Edition]

Raymond Nickford
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

Print List Price: £6.65
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Product Description

Review

Atmospheric; intriguing. Beautifully observed characters. --BARBARA ERSKINE, best selling author of Time's Legacy.

A real page-turner, worthy of comparison with the early John Fowles but distinctively Raymond Nickford. --ALLEN J. MILLINGTON SYNGE , author of Bowler Batsman Spy.

Atmospheric, vibrant, spooky page-turner. --REAY TANNAHILL, historian, novelist and author of The Seventh Son.

Product Description

STORIES

A Musical Calling - Schizophrenic Sam Baldock is given a day out - his last - at the Beethoven Museum in Vienna where he believes he is called by the spirit of Beethoven. What will his little daughter witness at the top of those winding steps to the Pasqualati House on the Molkerbastie, once leading to the composer's rooms in 1810?
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 Miranda 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 beauuuutiful 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.

NOVELLA - A ROMANCE

A Face in a Corridor -
At night-time Amy's teacher enters the closed and dimly lit college buildings and, in the empty classrooms, the silent corridors, he tries to come to terms with what seem the appearances of his students.
They have reduced him, made him suspicious of the girl he wants to trust as his passport to their acceptance.
Can a paranoid stop himself from destroying she alone who might have shown him what love could be?
 
TAGS:  Romance, thriller, crime, mystery, travel, literary, relationships, supernatural, psychological, music, ghost, character, atmosphere, Barbara Erskine. 

UK author, Raymond Nickford, believes people can be as intriguing as fiction, his degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University College of North Wales, subsequently leading to searching character studies. 
Souls, particularly troubled ones; the outsider, the lonely and any driven to extremity, have been indispensable for his novels, now readable through online book stores including Amazon KINDLE.
Of his novel based in Cyprus, Aristo's Family, Barbara Erskine, best selling author of Lady of Hay, affirms "... the beautifully observed characters, intriguing and atmospheric scenes and, above all, the suspense which made me want to read on." 
Raymond's favourite producer is Alfred Hitchcock, and the authors Patricia Highsmith, Ian
McEwan, Ruth Rendell, Henry James and, particularly, D H Lawrence,
have influenced his writing.

Reviews:

'Beautifully observed characters, atmospheric, intriguing.'
Barbara Erskine - best selling author of Lady of Hay.

'A real page turner, worthy of the early John Fowles.'
Allen J. Millington Synge - author of Bowler Batsman Spy.

'Might easily become something of a cult.'
Reay Tannahill - historian, novelist and author of The Seventh Son.

'Raymond Nickford's worlds are so claustrophobic they are almost unbearable to read - yet read we must. The first paragraph of this novel says more than many say in five chapters.....after a few chapters I am engrossed.'
Jane Alexander - author of Samael.

'There is so much to like here - the characters, the settings, the story; emotional, intriguing and full of human interest. Another winning combination.'
Andrew Wright - author of Sanctuary's Loss.

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 851 KB
  • Print Length: 240 pages
  • Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
  • Publisher: www.hauntedbooks.com (25 May 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B0052T3XS0
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #149,775 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A spiders web 28 Oct 2012
By Jon
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I sometimes found I wanted fewer layers of meaning though some might find this more to their taste. As for the plots, most are wickedly ingenious.
The main characters move from the outwardly ordinary but inwardly sinister to the eccentric and endearing, as with nurse Miranda, treated by a Harley Street hypnotist for her phobia of spiders (Dr. Hardacre the 'spider') in 'Voices of a Hypnotist'.
Another one I specially liked was 'The Parchment Recipes' where widow Emily felt the skin-like texture of an antique parchment cookery book, the feel distinctly reminding her of her deceased husband now mouldering in the grave.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Raw enough to chill 22 May 2013
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Some of the stories have a cosy fireside start to them but this is probably what makes the sinister the more effective when the narrative drifts into some of its macabre twists.
What the two outwardly endearing old boys do in the supposedly disused crematorium at the back of the converted chapel where they store and repair pianos is often as fiendishly contrived as a Hitchcock film except in miniature. In "The Parchment Recipes", the covers of the book have a 'creeping' similarity to the feel of dried skin but in following the sixteenth century recipes once written in freehand, Emily is able to 'reach out' to her lost husband's spirit, almost as if she is actually touching him. Generally, unsettling yet moving.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Uniquely creepy 9 April 2013
By Peter
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm not generally persuaded by ghost stories and to be fair only three of the stories actually imply some form of the supernatural but the tales are unique in the sense that the author creates a continuous sense of atmosphere and presence without actually getting into bed with ghosts - so to speak.

When widow Emily tries to "reach out" to her dead husband, Berny, in The Parchment Recipes, there is no crude sighting or necessarily even an implication of an apparition, yet there is the overwhelming sense of presence which at times made my flesh creep. There is always the idea that spirits can - through one psychology or another - tenuously connect and the author doesn't seem to need the standard seance or ritual to make the presence chilling. Although the writing is condensed, economical with back story, I agree with Barbara Erskine's comment and, like her, these stories did "make me want to read on".
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5.0 out of 5 stars Characters come to life 26 Mar 2013
Format:Paperback
Although two of the stories rely on death or the threat of death for their fear factor, I was chilled by the looming eeriness, yet moved by characters who were so well observed that they came to life for me with all the vulnerabilities and needs that may come to some at some time or other of crisis in their lives, granted that fiction stretches the reality.

In 'Family Tree', the stuttering Eddy Glossop is ignored by his father, Arnold, when he tries to warn that something about the great yew tree in the family garden seems to draw him to its roots in the night. The remains of Mrs Glossop's body were found entangled in the roots but death was long ago accounted for by natural causes. there is a play on whether the boy is just a delirious simpleton or whether the movement of the branches which Eddy sees from the little oval windowing his bedroom is, after all, not due to any breeze or wind but instead carry for him a sinister message hinting at some unpleasant fate for him and his father.

One one level, there is the sadness of an adolescent who's lost his mother in a pretty horrible way, who suffers a speech impediment and who appears to be hugely underrated by his father who's ashamed of the boys stuttering. On another level, there is a looming sense of threat, the more frightening because it doesn't seem to come from any particular person.

This technique is also used in 'The Parchment Recipes' where widow Emily senses that the material of the handwritten parchment is strangely like that of skin.

The macabre looms and yet, underlying the plot is Emily's need to get 'closer' to Bernie, the husband she has lost.
... Read more ›
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Waffle and tosh 18 April 2012
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
These stories are horrible, horrible, horrible. The author waffles on and on - often just chucking in words at random - and tries too hard to make the stories creepy. They're just boring and rubbish.
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