theconjurnik
nik || 22 anthro & english student working towards museum work!! i ♡ disturbing books with even more disturbing characters
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2w
A House for Mr Biswas
V.S. Naipaul
Mohun Biswas has spent his 46 years of life striving for independence. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, he yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the Tulsi family, on whom he becomes dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in a struggle to weaken their hold over him.
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2w
Between Two Fires
Christopher Buehlman
The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm—that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict.
Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.
As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.
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3w
ITCH!
Gemma Amor
Josie is at rock bottom. Burned out and recovering from an abusive relationship, she lives a haunted existence after returning to her isolated hometown on the edge of the Forest of Dean. But the tall, dense pine trees are not the only things casting shadows across her skin. When Josie stumbles across a dead woman's decaying, ant-infested body in the woods, she plummets into a downward spiral, facing uncomfortable truths about the victim and her own past - all whilst battling the swarming black ants that seem to have burrowed into her mind . . . and her flesh. Struggling with infestations of all kinds, Josie scratches the surface of an age-old mystery - a masked predator stalks the forest around Ellwood, a place deeply gripped by folklore and strange customs. As the village prepares for its annual festival, Josie gets closer and closer to unveiling a monster, and begins to ask Are these dark crawling insects leading her to uncover the truth? Or is she their next victim?
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theconjurnik is interested in reading...
3w
The Reformatory
Tananarive Due
A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
Gracetown, Florida
June 1950
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.
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theconjurnik joined a quest
3w
Latin American Horror 👻🦇😱
💎 // 1405 joined
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This Quest was inspired by the List "Latin American Horror," winner of Q1 2026 community voting.
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3w
Fantasy Starter Pack Vol I 🐉🧚♂️🏰
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An introduction to the Fantasy genre, these books are part of the cultural zeitgeist or the 'canon' that many would recognize. Look for more niche titles in later Starter Pack volumes.
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theconjurnik is interested in reading...
3w
When We Lost Our Heads
Heather O'Neill
A spellbinding story about two girls whose friendship is so intense it not only threatens to destroy them, it changes the trajectory of history.
Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At 12 years old, with her blond curls and her unparalleled sense of whimsey, she's the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, an affluent strip of 19th century Montreal. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly, and brilliant, moves to the neighborhood.
Marie and Sadie are immediately united by their passion and intensity, and they attract and repel each other in ways that light each of them on fire. Marie with her bubbly charm sees the light and sweetness of the world, whereas Sadie's obsession with darkness is all consuming. Soon their childlike games take on a thrill of danger and then become deadly.
Forced to separate, they spend their teenage years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity--until a singular event unites them once more, with dizzying effects. And after Marie inherits her father's sugar empire and Sadie disappears into the city's gritty underworld, a revolution of the working class begins to foment. Each of them will have unexpected roles to play in events that upend their city--the only question is whether they will find each other once more.
Traveling from a repressive finishing school to a vibrant brothel, taking readers firsthand into the brutality of factory life and the opulent lives of Montreal's wealthy, When We Lost Our Heads dazzlingly explores gender and power, sex and desire, class and status, and the terrifying power of the human heart when it can't let someone go.
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theconjurnik is interested in reading...
3w
Sunburn
Chloe Michelle Howarth
Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023'
It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.
Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.
Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.
But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.
Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.
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theconjurnik started reading...
3w
Bone of My Bone (Deluxe Edition)
Johanna van Veen
Bram Stoker Award–nominee and USA Today bestseller Johanna van Veen unveils a sapphic folk-horror tour de force—perfect for fans of The VVitch and The Salt Grows Heavy. A skull's grin is eternal…
The year is 1635.
Sister Ursula, a young nun fleeing the ruins of her convent, and Elsebeth, a sharp-witted peasant, escape a band of marauding soldiers and disappear into the Bavarian forest. War scorches the land, and no one survives it alone. Amid the devastation, they find something in the arms of a dying the gilded skull of a saint.
It is said that if you reunite the saint's skull with her body, a wish will be granted. Desperate for salvation, and each with secret desires of their own, Ursula and Elsebeth follow a ragged map across the blighted countryside. But darkness follows them. A necromancer, drawn to the relic's power. The saint herself, whispering at night. And as the lines between blessing and curse blur, the women must face a harrowing the magic they seek comes at a cost.
At the journey's end, they'll face an impossible choice—one that could tear apart everything they know… or bind them to each other forever.
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theconjurnik DNF'd a book
3w
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret
Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.
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theconjurnik TBR'd a book
8w
Learning to Live with Climate Change (Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability)
Blanche Verlie
"This book presents an increased understanding and appreciation of how interconnected climate and humans are and offers strategies for coping and adapting to the distressing realities of climate change. In this innovative and empowering study, Blanche Verlie draws on more-than-human and affect theory to argue that if we are to become climate change responsible, we need to learn to 'live-with' climate change and achieve an increased appreciation of the interconnected nature of existence. Engaging with ethnographic case study research from an undergraduate course on climate change in Melbourne and the ongoing School Strikes 4 Climate, the book explores the cultural and sociological dimensions of climate change grief and distress. Focusing specifically on young people, Verlie examines the impact this grief can have on personal identity and relationships and offers pragmatic guidance for making sense of, responding to and living with climate change, without reasserting a domineering, individualistic worldview. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental sociology, cultural studies and environmental psychology"--
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theconjurnik is interested in reading...
13w
A Room Called Earth
Madeleine Ryan
An unforgettable story of a fiercely original young woman, whose radical perspective illuminates a new way of being in the world
As a full moon rises over Melbourne, Australia, a young woman gets ready for a party. And what appears to be an ordinary night out is--through the prism of her singular perspective--extraordinary. As the evening unfolds, each encounter she has reveals the vast discrepancies between what she is thinking and feeling, and what she is able to say. And there's so much she'd like to say. So when she meets a man and a genuine connection occurs, it's nothing short of a miracle. However, it isn't until she invites him home that we come to appreciate the humanity beneath the labels we cling to, and we can grasp the pleasure of what it means to be alive.
The debut novel from the inimitable Madeleine Ryan, A Room Called Earth is a humorous and heartwarming adventure inside the mind of a bright and dynamic woman. This hyper-saturated celebration of love and acceptance, from a neurodiverse writer, is a testament to moving through life without fear, and to opening ourselves up to a new way of relating to one another.
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theconjurnik finished a book
13w
Open Wide
Jessica Gross
A provocative novel about intimacy, love, and consent, following an increasingly obsessive radio host who tests boundaries she didn’t know existed Olive is desperate to get close to Theo—really, really close. She’s always struggled to connect with people. And now she’s in her thirties, single, and so flustered by relationships that she secretly records her conversations, hoping to decipher social clues and find a way to be less alone. Then Theo turns up for a shift at the same food pantry where she volunteers. He’s a surgeon fascinated by human organs, a former soccer player, and possibly as weird as Olive. For the first time, someone seems to crave and understand her. Every recording Olive makes of Theo is a balm, which just makes her more afraid of losing him. The only solution seems to be to bind him to her forever. Luckily, the gap between Theo’s front teeth is just wide enough for something—or someone—to slip inside. Arresting and immersive, Open Wide explores the boundaries of love and the body, as universal human impulses bleed into the surreal.
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theconjurnik is interested in reading...
14w
Organ Meats
K-Ming Chang
Two girls are bound by red string and canine heritage in this vivid tale about female companionship and loyalty, from the National Book Award "5 Under 35" honoree and author of Gods of Want
Best friends Anita and Rainie have made countless visits to their home base: an old sycamore tree and its neighboring lot of stray dogs who have a mysterious ability to communicate with humans. The girls learn that they are preceded by generations of dog-headed women and women-headed dogs whose bloodlines knot them together like thread. Anita convinces her best friend Rainie to become a dog with her, tying a collar of red string around each of their necks to preserve their kinship forever. But when the two girls are separated, Anita sinks into her dreams and lands herself in a coma that only Rainie knows how to rouse her from. As Anita’s body begins to rot, her mind straying farther and farther away from the waking world, it is up to Rainie to rebuild her friend’s body and keep Anita from being lost forever.* Tasked with gathering new organs from the mythical landscape of their shared childhood, Rainie must return to the past and ask herself how far she is willing to go to reunite with the girl who has haunted her and hunted her in equal measure.
In rhythmically poetic and visceral lore, K-Ming Chang veers away from the ordinary and into the macabre. Filled with ghosts and bodily entrails, this is a story about the horror and beauty of intimacy, being tethered to another person across time and space, and transforming our origins.
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theconjurnik commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
15w
Weirdest book you've ever read??
Im a big fan of all things abstract and surreal...you know, weird stuff! Really weird stuff! Weird games, weird music, weird films, and since ive just started reading books for the first time in my life, i'd like to read some weird books. So let me know...whats the weirdest book you've read? (Or heard of)
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theconjurnik commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
15w
Something that irritates me
Why do publishers insist on releasing the hardback version of a book first? i started thinking about this a while ago but was reminded of it with the SJM updates. i would assume that most people who own the ACOTAR books probably own the the paperback version. I haven’t read the series yet but I did purchase the paperback box set (cause i found a crazy cheap deal lol) so for the new books released in the series why would i go out and buy them in hardback … like that literally makes no sense. it’s especially weird to me because new release romance books always come out in paperback and very rarely can you even find a romance hardback… i wouldn’t mind it as much if they released both the hardback and the paperback at the same time or relatively close to each other but most times you have to wait a year for the paperback. like… that’s insane. Do yall feel a similar way? or is this just something that irritates me?
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theconjurnik commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum
15w
Style Trends in Writing
I've run across this a few times in some books, and now again in The Decagon House Murders where the author will name a place or thing, but blank it out like S__ Town, C__ Club, O__ University, etc.
I know it's just a stylistic choice, but I kind of hate it? I think it makes the story lose a sense of place, and it reminds me that I'm reading a book in a weird and unpleasant way, rather than let me get wrapped up in the story.
What are some writing style trends that make your eye twitch?
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theconjurnik is interested in reading...
15w
Solar Bones
Mike McCormack
the Angelus bell
ringing out over its villages and townlands,
over the fields and hills and bogs in between,
six chimes of three across a minute and a half,
a summons struck
on the lip of the void
Once a year, on All Souls’ Day, it is said in Ireland that the dead may return. Solar Bones is the story of one such visit. Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer, turns up one afternoon at his kitchen table and considers the events that took him away and then brought him home again.
Funny and strange, McCormack’s ambitious and other-worldly novel plays with form and defies convention. This is profound new work is by one of Ireland’s most important contemporary novelists. A beautiful and haunting elegy, this story of order and chaos, love and loss captures how minor decisions ripple into waves and test our integrity every day.
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