The Influence (Fiction Without Frontiers)

Now a major Netflix movie."This is a chilling work and the fullest treatment of one of Campbell's recurring themes - the psychic violence family members wreak upon one another." Publishers WeeklyQueenie is the ageing matriarch of the Faraday family, and even death can’t break her hold over her eleven-year-old granddaughter Rowan. She’s buried with a locket that contains a lock of Rowan’s hair, and soon afterwards Rowan is befriended by a mysterious uncannily intelligent girl of her own age. Only her aunt Hermione suspects how sinister this is, but will retrieving the locket save her niece? By the time anyone sees what effect the ghostly influence on Rowan is having, it may be too late for her. if the child who takes her place in the family isn’t Rowan, Rowan may be somewhere else not quite like our world…FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

From Publishers Weekly

Campbell, probably the foremost practitioner of the horror story in Great Britain today has produced his eighth novel under his own name. The author's longer works tend to be rather muted, unlike his intense short stories; this one, after the usual slow opening, is more lively and effective than his previous efforts. It concerns a strong-willed, wrathful spinster known as Queenie, who has spent a lifetime terrifying and controlling her siblings, nieces and nephew. Her death is a reliefbut Queenie returns, in the form of a young girl, to further destroy the family by befriending and then abducting her grand-niece Rowan, changing her from a sweet-natured, generous child into something "other." This is a chilling work and the fullest treatment of one of Campbell's recurring themesthe psychic violence family members wreak upon one another. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Campbell, who has won many awards for horror fiction, has outdone himself in this tale of a woman who refuses to die. Despite the death of her body, supreme egoist Queenie tries to live on by taking over the body of her niece, eight-year-old Rowan. Campbell shows the child's increasing confusion and fear as Queenie preys on her and finally triumphs and the mother's growing horror of her child as she becomes convinced that Queenie is inside her. For readers who can suspend disbelief, there is great emotional realism in this novel of psychological suspense and evil. Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ., Davenport, Ia.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Ramsey Campbell has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award.

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