Aristo's Family

Why, Pavlos wonders, does his dad dig for family long dead, why his hypnotism, the nausea, that pit of obedience, the next "Greek lesson" ?

Aristo's Family

Set in Paphos on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. A literary and psychological suspense.

Aristo's obsessive need to trace and belong to his family - even though he was told they were all burnt and left unidentifiable during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus - has estranged his English wife, and is gradually distancing his only child while, in turn, Pavlos has an increasing need to feel he belongs to a father who will make time for him.

As the practices at Papas' late-night museum 'staff meetings' unfold themselves to Pavlos, the boy is led deeper into a sinister confrontation with what Papas calls his 'family', but which brings Pavlos, through the ancient face-masks and relics, to the unquiet souls of Greeks believed to have been thousands of years dead.

Both a father's and a son's need to belong, so long mutually exclusive, so long tested.

Aristo's Family reflects the author's fascination, in all his books, with studies of troubled, lonely or dysfunctional characters in family life and other relationships who may find that, ultimately, clouds can have a 'silver lining'. If the end to a story is not happy - in the sentimental sense - then the book as a whole, just as Nature planned it, should be affirmative of life, uplifting.

Other books of family life, psychological and literary suspense by Raymond Nickford
 

A Child from the Wishing Well

A father suffering paranoia fights mental illness to reach out to his lonely daughter.
 

Shortlisted for the Harper Collins ( Authonomy ) Gold Star award May 2010

Sunday Times bestselling author, Barbara Erskine, comments in the Preface
 

" Beautifully observed characters, atmospheric, intriguing... "

Cupboard of Skeletons

Secrets which test and haunt... and those who refuse to be haunted.

Twists in the Tale

Eerie stories of the troubled, the lonely, but places where clouds can, just, have a silver lining.

Mister Kreasey's Demon

Broken by his street-hardened London students, reduced to paranoia, can Amy's teacher stop himself losing she, alone, he might have trusted, might have loved ?