SkywardStrange

Skye - she/they 🩷💜💙 Horror aficionado 💀 Prairie varmint 🦫 Unrepentant yapping gremlin 🤡

1065 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Nightwatch on the Hinterlands (The Weep, #1)

Reading...

In My DNA: My Career Investigating Your Worst Nightmares

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

SkywardStrange is interested in reading...

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance. "What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

SkywardStrange TBR'd a book

19h

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Adam Higginbotham

The story of Chernobyl is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth. Adam Higginbotham has written a harrowing and compelling narrative which brings the 1986 disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, this book makes for a masterful non-fiction thriller. Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. It is a story that has long remained in dispute, clouded from the beginning in secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation. Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of history's worst nuclear disaster, of human resilience and ingenuity and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will - lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats - remain not just vital but necessary. Now, Higginbotham brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy.

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19h

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich

Norman Ohler

A groundbreaking book that discovers a surprising perspective on World War II: Nazi Germany’s all-consuming reliance on drugs The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. But as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping new history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs. On the eve of World War II, Germany was a pharmaceutical powerhouse, and companies such as Merck and Bayer produced cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, to be consumed by everyone from factory workers to housewives. Meth proved particularly attractive to some German army leaders, who not only dosed themselves but also incorporated the drug into their battle plans – it was rationed out in pill form to millions of troops. The elevated energy and feelings of invincibility associated with the high even help to account for the breakneck invasion that sealed the fall of France in 1940, as well as other German military victories. Drugs seeped all the way up to the Nazi high command – and to Hitler himself. Over the course of the war, Hitler became increasingly dependent on injections of a cocktail of drugs – ultimately including Eukodal, a cousin of heroin – administered by his personal doctor. He ended his life as an addict in the throes of withdrawal. While drugs alone can never explain the Nazis’ toxic racial theories or the events of World War II, Ohler’s investigation makes an overwhelming case that drugs played an important and shockingly overlooked role in the Third Reich. Thoroughly researched and rivetingly readable, Blitzed throws light on a history that, until now, has remained in the shadows.

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19h

Vertigo Peaks

Dion Anja

An unexpected guest. A tempestuous liaison. A marriage falling apart. In the eclipse of her marriage, Valerie’s days are cold and lonely. As Ethan Vertigo’s new bride, she suffers from isolation and hostility from the townspeople. That is, until an unexpected traveler appears at her door to seek refuge from the snowstorm—Mircalla Karnstein. The mysterious and charming visitor’s presence is accompanied by feverish nightmares and itching puncture marks, and Valerie’s reputation is threatened when Mircalla draws her close with passionate midnight escapades. As rumors of a plague terrorize the town and the dark secrets of Vertigo Peaks surface, Valerie struggles to reconcile her growing desire for Mircalla and her role as Ethan Vertigo’s wife. When every love story begins with blood, does it matter who bleeds first? Inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu’s timeless Carmilla, Vertigo Peaks is the first book in a sapphic vampire romance duology. It is best suited for mature readers.

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23h

The Family that Couldn't Sleep

D.T. Max

For two hundred years a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. In England, cows attack their owners in the milking parlors, while in the American West, thousands of deer starve to death in fields full of grass.What these strange conditions–including fatal familial insomnia, kuru, scrapie, and mad cow disease–share is their cause: prions. Prions are ordinary proteins that sometimes go wrong, resulting in neurological illnesses that are always fatal. Even more mysterious and frightening, prions are almost impossible to destroy because they are not alive and have no DNA–and the diseases they bring are now spreading around the world.In The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, essayist and journalist D. T. Max tells the spellbinding story of the prion’s hidden past and deadly future

SkywardStrange commented on a post

ohsunnyaa

Edited

Thoughts from 52%

This book didn't have to be over 500 pages. I feel like everything is overdescribed and overexplained and because of that reading it feel very slow and tedious. If it was shorter and paced a little bit faster, I would have enjoyed it so much more than I do now.

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What Kind of Mother

Clay McLeod Chapman

After striking out on her own as a teen mom, Madi Price is forced to return to her hometown of Brandywine, Virginia, with her seventeen-year-old daughter. With nothing to her name, she scrapes together a living as a palm reader at the local farmers market. It’s there that she connects with old high school flame Henry McCabe, now a reclusive local fisherman whose infant son, Skyler, went missing five years ago. Everyone in town is sure Skyler is dead, but when Madi reads Henry’s palm, she’s haunted by strange and disturbing visions that suggest otherwise. As she follows the thread of these visions, Madi discovers a terrifying nightmare waiting at the center of the labyrinth—and it’s coming for everyone she holds dear.

SkywardStrange started reading...

Senseless

Ronald Malfi

A page-turning, supernaturally-tinged LA puzzle-box thriller – Zodiac with teeth, from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated and bestselling author of Come with Me. Perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Lauren Beukes.What do you see...?When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can't deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. Media outlets are quick to surmise this is the work of a budding serial killer, but Detective Bill Renney is struggling with an altogether different a secret that keeps him tethered to the husband of the first victim.What do you hear...?Maureen Park, newly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg Dawson, finds her engagement party crashed by the arrival of Landon, Greg’s son. A darkly unsettling young man, Landon invades Maureen’s new existence, and the longer he stays, the more convinced she becomes that he may have something to do with the recent murder in the high desert.What do you feel...?Toby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human. In Ronald Malfi's brand-new thriller, these three storylines converge to create a tapestry of deceit, distrust, and unapologetic horror. A brand-new novel of dark suspense set in the City of Angels, as only “horror’s Faulkner” can tell it.

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Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird

Agustina Bazterrica

A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,” a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,” and in “Candy Pink,” a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps. Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.

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Hot Wax

M.L. Rio

The highly anticipated new novel from M. L. Rio, bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift A nostalgic love-letter to the 90s rock and roll scene, Hot Wax follows a band of rocker misfits, rivals and trailblazers on the tour that could have catapulted them to super-stardom, if it all hadn't come crashing down. COMING 2025

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The New Seoul Park Jelly Massacre

Cho yeeun

At New Seoul Park, Korea’s greatest theme park, an enigmatic man tempts visitors with a mysterious jelly candy that promises an unbreakable bond. As the sun beats down on a muggy summer afternoon, a child separated from her disinterested parents, a single mother striving to create a memorable day on a shoestring budget, and a couple on the brink of splitting up, all end up tasting this ominous candy. Little do they know that a sinister force lurks beneath the innocent facade. The sweet and innocent soon turns grotesque as the jelly becomes the catalyst for a sticky, sweet massacre. Masterfully translated by Yewon Jung, The New Seoul Park Jelly Massacre weaves a chilling tale of deceptive sweetness and the body horror of slowly melting into your loved ones.

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The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

Olga Tokarczuk

The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas. In September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior? Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone--or something--seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target. A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.

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It’s Not a Cult

Joey Batey

Callum, Melusine and Al play in a band with no name, baffling audiences in terrible pubs across the north-east of England with their 'sound' and occasionally reaching the dizzy heights of 97 viewers on their livestreams. To say they are losers would be to imply they were in the race in the first place. But they believe in their music, and in each other. Their songs tell the stories of the Solkats: fictional northern gods of small things, mishap and mayhem. However, when an act of violence at a pub gig goes viral they catch the eye of a disillusioned influencer and suddenly go from having a cult following to having a cult, following. All the Solkats want, Callum insists, is to have effect on the world. But as fans from LA to Australia and everywhere in between flock to Northumberland, and each gig becomes larger and more lawless than the last, this effect starts to feel scarily. real. And if they really do exist, which is it more dangerous to anger: a wayward group of elder gods, or your biggest fans? Because gods and cults both demand sacrifices. And one way or another, they're going to get one.

SkywardStrange commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

catsano

Silliest DNF

What the title says! What is your silliest reason for dnfing a book?

I'll start - I got about 60% of the way into David Copperfield before I realized he was never going to become a magician because it's a freaking Dickens book of course the magician is unrelated. Felt so dumb and was so disappointed that I rage quit. 🤦‍♀️ 🎩🪄 A decade or more later, picked up Demon Copperhead and was struggling a bit. Then I saw that it was a retelling of David Copperfield and I was like - it's fate. It is only appropriate that I dnf this as well. 🐍 🫠

How bout y'all?

SkywardStrange TBR'd a book

A Winter Haunting (Seasons of Horror #4)

Dan Simmons

Dale Stewart's life has become a shadow of what it once was. A respected college professor and successful novelist, he sabotaged his career and his marriage with an obsessive love affair that ended badly.With darkness closing in on him, Dale decides to return to his boyhood home in Illinois. Drawn by a recurring nightmare that has plagued him since his youth -- and a troubling certainty that something is waiting for him there -- he hopes to exorcise his demons.In the last hours of Halloween, he reaches the outskirts of the dying town of Elm Haven. There, he moves into the abandoned farmhouse that was once the home of his closest boyhood friend, the strange and brilliant Duane McBride, who lost his young life in a grisly "accident" back in the terrible summer of 1960. Hoping to find peace in isolation, he settles in for the long, harsh winter.But Dale is not alone. Soon after he arrives, cryptic messages begin appearing mysteriously on his computer screen while he struggles to work on his novel. He sees black dogs roaming the grounds. And an old enemy has reemerged, a bully who seems as determined to persecute Dale as he was in childhood.

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The Thing

Alan Dean Foster

It fell from the sky and lay buried in ice for 100,000 years. Soon it will be free... TWELVE MEN Trapped in the Antarctic. ELEVEN Discover the intruder. TEN Battle the alien force. NINE Agonise for the answer. EIGHT Desperate to be spared. SEVEN Consumed one by one. SIX...FIVE...FOUR...THREE... They will all die. Unless something, anything stops... THE THING ----------------------------- Novelization by American author Alan Dean Foster of screenplay to the 1982 Hollywood film The Thing directed by John Carpenter and written by Bill Lancaster, based on the short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr.

SkywardStrange commented on a post

oxireads

Thoughts from 43% (page 166)

this book has the sexiest non-sex scenes i have ever read

SkywardStrange commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

jenniferPagebound

New Feature: Feed Customization Preferences [11/26/25]

The long-awaited feed customization toggles are live both on web and app (please update your apps!!). You can customize the following elements of your home feeds:

if non-spoiler posts from TBR books show up in your Main and My Books feeds
if non-spoiler posts from Interested books show up in your Main and My Books feeds
if Pagebound Club activity from people you follow shows up in your Main and Following feeds

Everyone is default opted-in to each of the above options, so you must manually opt-out if you don't wish to see that content. You can access these toggles from the Preferences menu in Account & Settings (click the gear icon on your profile, or click "Settings & FAQ" from the More menu in the app).

We know folks have strong opinions on if PB Club and TBR/Interested books should be in your feeds, so we're really happy to be able to provide a customized experience for everyone :) If you previously wished to take away TBR/Interested books from your feed for fear of spoilers, we're happy to share that the spoiler toggle is auto-on for all book forum posts and now must be manually toggled off if the post does not contain spoilers. Since we do not show spoiler posts from TBR/Interested books, you can now be more confident that you will not be spoiled. Keeping TBR/Interested posts in your feed can help remind you which books are on those lists, and give you inspiration for which book to pick up next as you see discussions roll in.

A note about Book Forum Posts We've seen a ton of growth since the app launch, and while it's been wonderful to see how lively the forums have gotten, there's also been some unforeseen challenges. We've seen an uptick in people posting dozens of times in a single forum, sometimes dozens of times a day, and have been forced to implement a 5 post per forum per day cap. We never wanted to implement a post cap, and are sad to have to do so now, however the forums are like a public resource that can only stay enjoyable for all if we take care of them and stay community-minded. Abundant low quality posts bloat the forums and make them overwhelming and unenjoyable to navigate. Most folks will never reach this cap; this limit won't affect you if you're using the forums as intended (a place for evergreen discussion), posting thoughtfully, and engaging in the comments on existing posts rather than always making a separate post (reminder: posts and comments are worth the same amount of points because comments are just as essential to quality discussions as posts are!) We have other ideas to improve the forum experience that we will be working on early 2026; our intent is always to preserve both the joy of posting and the joy of reading the forums, so you can expect more fun & positive forum features in the new year.

Readalong Note: The Fall Readalong will end and the Winter Readalong will start on Dec 1st at 12pm CT to give folks in all timezones the full day on Nov 30th to complete the Fall Readalong. You cannot earn the Winter Readalong badge until it officially starts at 12pm!

Thanks everyone and happy reading, Jennifer & Lucy

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SkywardStrange is interested in reading...

Coffin Moon

Keith Rosson

From the author of the “exciting, suspenseful, horrifying” (Stephen King) Fever House, a Vietnam veteran and his adopted niece hunt—and are hunted by—the vampire that slaughtered their family. It’s the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon, after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger and keep his drinking in check, keep his young marriage intact, and keep the nightmares away. Things get even more complicated when his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with Duane and his wife Heidi. But slowly, carefully, guided by Heidi’s love and patience, the three of them are building a family. Then Minor crosses the wrong man: John Varley, a criminal with a bloody history and a trail of bodies behind him. Varley, who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia filled with rage. The two of them are left united by only one thing: the desire for vengeance. As their quest brings them into the dark orbit of immortal, undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men drawn to Varley’s ferocity, Minor and Julia follow his path of destruction from the gritty alleyways of 1970s Portland to the desolate highways of the Northwest and the snow-lashed plains of North Dakota—only to have Varley turn his vicious power back on them. Who will prevail, who will survive, and what remains of our humanity when our thirst for revenge trumps everything else?

SkywardStrange commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

JadeLovesBooks

Who’s Who Wednesday

Hiiii It’s time for Who’s Who Wednesday where every Wednesday we introduce ourselves and make new friends. This is part 9. I think

If you participated any of the times before, you don’t have to introduce yourself again but you can share some different facts about you, an opinion you have, or how your week is going.

If you’re new, introduce yourself!

I’ll go first.

My name is JadeLovesBooks.

I just found diamond painting and I am obsessed with it I don’t like thanksgiving food My middle name is Noelle because I was born on Christmas Eve

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