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Grandmaster Fritz Leiber is more well known for his Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser series, about a barbarian pair of adventurers. Conjure Wife was his first published novel in 1943.
The conceit here is that all women are witches and secretly rule the world while pretending to be the weaker sex. The men are completely oblivious. The women use all types of spells and charms to advance the careers of the man of their choice, protecting him all the while from the predations of other women and their men.
Norman Saylor, a cultural anthropologist, is a professor at a small New England university. He has a successful career and enjoys a nice lifestyle. He loves his wife,Tansy, but doesn’t think much of her intelligence. When he accidentally finds a bunch of the tropes of magic, charms, boxes of dirt, and such, he recognizes them from his researches. Believing Tansy a superstitious little woman, he destroys everything and extracts a promise from her to stop this nonsense.
Things start to happen after that.
A number of minor accidents, Saylor accused of seducing a woman, threatened by a student unhappy with his grade, passed over for promotion. Saylor still believes it’s all coincidence(oh the arrogance of man).
The book paints a not very flattering picture of small college life and is very much a product of the time it was written. A bit dated, not very long, it’s still a fun read.
It’s been filmed three times.
Weird Woman(1944) with Lon Chaney
Night of The Eagle(Burn, Witch, Burn)(1962)
Witches Brew(Which Witch Is Which?)(1980)
I don’t know much about any of them, though elsewhere on the net I’ve read good things about the second, awful stuff about the third.
The book is worth looking up. There are various editions available at the used book sites.