Overview

Norman Saylor is a successful sociology professor-rational, skeptical, and devoted to empirical truth. When he discovers his wife Tansy has been practicing witchcraft to protect him, he demands she stop and destroy her charms. But Tansy's magic was real, and with her protections gone, Norman finds himself targeted by forces that move through faculty politics and suburban rituals. To survive, he must accept what his rationalism denied: beneath the mundane surface of academic life, a hidden war is being waged-and the women have always held the real power. Fritz Leiber's first novel, Conjure Wife remains one of the twentieth century's most important works of supernatural horror-a foundational text by a writer who influenced everyone from Michael Moorcock and Harlan Ellison to Kelly Link and George R.R. Martin.

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Reviews

""Easily the most frightening (and necessarily) the most thoroughly convincing of all modern horror stories."" -Damon Knight ""No twentieth-century writer is more crucial to the development of supernatural horror fiction than Leiber."" -Ramsey Campbell

Author Information

Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was born in Chicago on December 24, 1910, to Fritz Leiber, Sr. and Virginia Bronson Leiber, both Shakespearean actors. After touring with his father's repertory company in 1928, he attended the University of Chicago, graduating in 1932. He then studied at General Theological Seminary in New York and was briefly a candidate for ordination in the Episcopal Church. He continued performing with his father, appearing together in the films Camille (1936) and The Great Garrick (1937).In 1936, Leiber married Jonquil Stephens and moved to Hollywood, where they had a son. He corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft, who encouraged his literary development. Returning to Chicago, Leiber worked as a staff writer for Consolidated Book Publishing (1937-41), contributing to the Standard American Encyclopedia.His first professional fiction publication, ""Two Sought Adventure"" (Unknown, 1939), introduced Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, launching a series that spanned over fifty years and helped define what he named the ""Sword and Sorcery"" genre. In 1941, he taught drama and speech at Occidental College, and during the war worked as an inspector at Douglas Aircraft.His first novel, Conjure Wife, appeared in Unknown in 1943 (published in book form in 1952/1953) and was filmed three times. His next, Gather, Darkness!, was also serialized in 1943. From 1945 to 1956, he edited Science Digest in Chicago while publishing novels including The Big Time (1958), which won a Hugo Award.In 1958, Leiber moved to Los Angeles to write full-time. After the death of Jonquil Stephens Leiber in 1969, he settled in San Francisco, the setting for Our Lady of Darkness (1977). He received a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1976 and the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1981. Leiber married Margo Skinner in May 1992 and died of an apparent stroke on September 5, 1992, in San Francisco. He was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2001. Born in 1979 in Daytona Beach, Florida, Travis D. Johnson wrote his first horror story at age four. At eleven, his poetry traveled to space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-41 mission. His early influences included H. G. Wells and Ray Bradbury.Johnson's film criticism appeared in Screem Magazine beginning in 2007. From 2007 to 2012 he served as a film programmer for the St. Johns County Public Library. From 2011 to 2023 he operated two independent record labels before returning to writing as his primary vocation. He founded Frolic Press in 2025.He lives in St. Augustine, Florida. The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as ""Britain's most respected living horror writer"", and the Washington Post sums up his work as ""one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction"". His awards include the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature.Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and still lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, and good food and wine.

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