The Inhabitant Of The Lake

Featured in Library Journal's Top 20 Horror Bestseller List “An absolute master of modern horror. And a damn fine writer at that” - Guillermo del Toro Book 1 in the Three Births of Daoloth trilogy. 1952. On a school trip to France teenager Dominic Sheldrake begins to suspect his teacher Christian Noble has reasons to be there as secret as they're strange. Meanwhile a widowed neighbour joins a church that puts you in touch with your dead relatives, who prove much harder to get rid of. As Dominic and his friends Roberta and Jim investigate, they can’t suspect how much larger and more terrible the link between these mysteries will become. A monstrous discovery beneath a church only hints at terrors that are poised to engulf the world as the trilogy brings us to the present day… 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.

The first adaptation in the form of a graphic novel of the lovecraftian story 'The Inhabitant of the Lake' by Ramsey Campbell. A young artist escapes the crowded city to create in the peace and quiet of his new home in a remote, abandoned area. Drawn to the solitude and atmosphere of the thick woods and large, dark lake, he has no idea that far from being alone, he in fact has many, many new neighbours. Strange beings stare across at his home from behind the shadowed tree line, and he can't shake the sense that something in the lake is watching him. When Cartwright's dreams turn dark and vivid, he discovers a set of arcane books titled 'The Revelations of Gla'aki' and realises at last how much danger he faces. The presence in the lake is an ancient one of cosmic terror, and its servants-beset with the 'green decay'-are beckoning him to join them as Gla'aki, the three-eyed being crashed to earth from outer space, rises again from the depths of the ebon lake. From Ramsey Campbell's Introduction: "I wrote "The Inhabitant of the Lake" in 1962, when I was sixteen years old. It was my first attempt to create a Lovecraftian deity-that's to say, an alien entity taken for a god by its human worshippers. He has become central to the Brichester mythos, my small contribution to the Lovecraft tradition. He started life as Glaaki, but a later revelation made it clear that the correct spelling is Gla'aki, needlessly simplified by the Victorian editor Percy Smallbeam to make it easier for human speech. In almost sixty years Gla'aki's influence in the world has grown beyond anything I could have imagined as a teenager. He has lent his name to Facebook profiles and Twitter ones too, and has been the subject of songs and games, and depicted by painters and sculptors. An entire anthology, The Children of Gla'aki, was assembled in tribute to him, and I feel touched and humbled by all this. I recently revived him in a novella (The Last Revelation of Gla'aki) and tried to do him the justice I didn't have in me as a teenager. Now the excellent Alessandro Manzetti and Stefano Cardoselli have adapted my tale into a graphic novel, with splendidly expressionistic art by the latter gentleman, and I'm inspired all over again. You can't keep a good monster."

Short stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos

Ramsey Campbell is perhaps the world's most decorated author of horror fiction. He has won four World Fantasy Awards, ten British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, and the Horror Writers' Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. Three decades into his career, Campbell paused to review his body of short fiction and selected the stories that were, to his mind, the very best of his works. Alone With the Horrors collects nearly forty tales from the first thirty years of Campbell's writing. Included here are "In the Bag," which won the British Fantasy Award, and two World Fantasy Award-winning stories, "The Chimney" and the classic "Mackintosh Willy." Campbell crowns the book with a length preface which traces his early publication history, discusses his youthful correspondence with August Derleth, illuminates the influence of H.P. Lovecraft on his early work, and gives an account of the creation of each story and the author's personal assessment of the works' flaws and virtues. In its first publication, a decade ago, Alone With the Horrors won both the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. For this new edition, Campbell has added one of his very first published stories, a Lovecraftian classic, "The Tower from Yuggoth." From this early, Cthulhian tale, to later works that showcase Campbell's growing mastery of mood and character, Alone With the Horrors provides readers with a close look at a powerful writer's development of his craft. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.