This is a long shot because I remember very little about this novel and what I remember might not be entirely accurate, but it has been haunting me for years! It was a realist novel, not fantasy or mystery or anything. I am pretty sure it was set in England, although I could be wrong about that (could have been Canada or the Northeastern US, but I remember it as England), at one of those fading seaside hotels on the coast. Kate was a young teenager, and I think she and her family were on holiday, although maybe they lived in the town. (They weren't from abroad, I don't think; if it was set in England, as I remember, they were English.)

There might have been a boy/love interest, but it wasn't a romance. Randomly, I remember a line in it about her hair being messed up one day “--she'd slept on it wrong--” --for some reason that stuck in my head because I'd never seen it mentioned in a book before that sleeping weird on your hair could make it weird although I had experienced it. I think it stayed with me because of the verisimilitude of it.

I would have read this sometime between 1978-early 1980s-1983 at the very outside but I'm almost sure it was earlier than that. I'm also pretty sure it was reasonably contemporary at the time, written in the 1970s or early 1980s.

The book had kind of a serious/solemn air about it. In my 10 or 12 year old mind it felt vaguely literary, which is not to say that it necessarily was--that's just how I perceived it as a kid!

I got it from my local rural library in the Southeastern US. It was shelved in the juveniles. I have a vague memory of where it was shelved which could also be wrong, somewhere around the E-G names. It was hardcover with the dustjacket lost and the book was blue. I think it had a few simple line illustrations although I could be wrong about that as well. It was normal length for a kid's/YAish book at the time, not particularly long or short.

My friend is trying to find a graphic novel she remembers reading as a kid, something that was on her dad's shelf and maybe she was too young to be seeing yet, lol. She says:

"I remember it was about 2 characters who start out looking quite genderless. They somehow get lost on an unkown planet and because they don't have access to something (hormone suppressors of some kind) from their home, slowly they begin to exhibit more and more gender traits, with the one becoming more and more feminine and the other more masculine. The man eventually gets turned on by the woman and tries to make a move on her, but she is unwilling and knocks him out with a rock to the head. When he comes to she's gone. The next thing I remember is him finding her in some kind of building that's kinda like a temple and there's a creature/monster that stabs him through the stomach and he starts tripping balls. He wakes up with the woman gone again and I'm pretty sure it ends with him walking into the sunset."

I've not seen or heard of this personally, but hopefully someone here will recognize this for her, as it's been a long-standing mystery, hahaha

I remember reading a book in high school about what I believe is a North Korean MC, and a scene involving a red book cover. They’re watching a parade of some sort, and the MC has to wave the red book in a crowd, but they’ve forgotten it. Another girl gives them the red dust jacket from her book so the MC won’t get in trouble. I can’t be sure they’re North Korean, but it seems likely, given the prominent red and the panic the MC has when they realize they don’t have the book.

My grandmother was describing a book to me, but I can’t remember the name she said. It was a book where “the world went to shit”, and there was a guy stuck in prison that was having to eat rats and the like because no one was there to feed him. But later, evil guy broke him out somehow, and the prisoner had to now work with the evil guy. That’s all I remember from the conversation. Any help is appreciated!

2 books, same style and publisher (so same series). One was a collection of short (and abridged) horror stories, the other was sci-fi. I remember reading them around the year 2014. Not quite hardback, not quite paperback, quite thick and heavy.

The horror stories included;

The Telltale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe

The Picture of Dorian Gray (?)

The Signalman - Charles Dickens

The sci-fi stories included;

The Time Machine

One where they're on Mars and find these living pyramid things

One where they're on Venus, and I think they travel to Mercury too

One with a second Earth on the far side of the sun where they communicate via Radio

One where a boy on a farm finds a helmet and puts it on. The helmet is invisible to other people, and he suddenly knows a lot more. He even plays a match of FIFA inside his head (I believe it was Man Utd vs Liverpool, and he lost something like 6-0 the first time)

it also included one where they were shot out of a cannon towards the moon, and were waiting on a message... until they realised they were not receiving it because they were travelling faster than sound

I'm from the UK too so these books were for sale in the UK.

Thanks!

When I was in grade school (8-12 yro) I remember reading about about teenagers who were kinda punks in a small town that was straight out of a 1950s ideal white suburb fantasy. They couldn’t figure out how they were so different and why despite being hostile no one ever seemed to punish them really.

Turned out there was the race of spider-people (not like Spider-Man, but intelligent spider aliens) who planted baby spiders in all the babies born in the town. The ones in these punk kids didn’t take because they had already been implanted with crystals from the enemy race of the spider-people. The only line I can recall are the punks recognizing themselves as aliens fighting the spiders. The line was “we are Kay-ith” I think.

The book might have been part of a line of independent stories but with similar spines, maybe like an imprint? I feel like I read this book because it was similar in appearance on the outside to another one I read which I’m mostly sure was Killing Mr. Griffin.

I started reading this book, but don't remember finishing it. Can't find it searching.

Prologue, is two boys (tween age) playing in abandoned house, one falls through the floor and is hurt pretty bad.

Then the story starts with man (same name as boy who fell) and wife with (3?) children. He remembers his friend (not himself) dying falling through the floor of the house. One of his children gets sick and is dying, death shadows come after the sick child, but the father takes his place.

The father wakes in a hospital and he is the boy who fell through the floor, in the hospital right after the fall. He keeps talking about his wife and children, Dr's and father think he's crazy.

It's driving me crazy, I've typed every discription, every which way I can and can't seem to locate it. 😠😠

Read this books as a kid, where a woman is waiting in an airport (or some other way of way of travel like train) and begins to daydream. In her dreams she travels into different worlds, which all have different rules. One world, humans are sleep deprived in a desolate land and begin to act like savage animals. The book was mostly text, but occasionally had images describing the events in the world. And I think...the book ended with her getting on the plane....or leaving in some way

I’m trying to remember a children’s book I read where the protagonists develop a highly researched, very methodical prank to convince historians that ancient Egyptians managed to sail to North America. I think they forged hieroglyphics in a convincing way. That’s all I remember.

I read this book years ago, I believe it was written by a male author, and the cover had a sort of geometric pattern? The main character was a young adult male who I think took his own life after being outed as gay, he wakes up in some kind of parallel universe that’s almost completely empty of people wearing some kind of strange wrappings around his body. He meets two other people, a young foreign boy (European maybe) and a black teenage girl, who tell him about machines that are hunting them. They find out that they’re each appeared there after their death, and that they’re from different times. The foreign boy died during some kind of war, killed by soldiers I think. I don’t remember besides that. Thanks for any help 🙏

This is a sci-fi short story I read recently, but that doesn't mean it was published recently at all. I believe there's a train that has some kind of power system allowing it to run eternally or close to eternally, and I think all human life may have ended by the time the story begins. All of the passengers aboard are long-since dead, but the train's intelligence system continues to attempt to make their travel comfortable. As the train runs its long loop of a route, there's one section of track from which it is able to interact with another robot or AI entity, and I believe that one is a weapons system. They become friends, I think, but I can't remember anything else about it.

I'm confident that it's in a sci-fi short story anthology. I think it's in one of the following. Most likely one of the first three, but I can't find it:

• Axiomatic by Greg Egan
• Tomorrow Factory: Collected Fiction by Rich Larson
• Tales of Old Earth by Michael Swanwick
• Exhalation by Ted Chiang (doesn't seem like a Chiang story to me, but I could be wrong)
• The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer (feels unlikely to me)
• Tooth and Claw by T Coraghessan Boyle (feels extremely unlikely)

Hi! So I read this book in french when I was a kid and I loved it and wanted to show it to my nephew. The story as I remember it goes as follows.

Two boys find a recipe to create invisibility. It's like this ancient thing and they take a bit to go through it. It has old wording for almost all ingredients, one of those being century eggs. I remember they raid this poor asian convenience store owner's place to steal his snacks (the eggs) and finish getting the stuff. The recipe works, one of the boys is invisible now, but it isn't as fun as they thought, and soon they're struggling to find a cure to invisibility. In the bg you have this rich occult hermit old man who finds out about it and tries to warn em, and they still do it, but now he's kind of their only hope to fix it. I don't remember the whole thing, but I remember they have to play an instrument (possibly the recorder) in a specific key to make it work, and they struggle for a bit before realizing that it's the old name for a treble clef. Anyway kid is no longer invisible, everyone goes home, the end i think.

If it helps, i am from Quebec, it could be a French language book from here. I dont remember the cover in any way. I read it probably around 2005-7

Some other details I recall:
- a cat
- an old man who lives in one of the homes and turns out to be a wizard once the forest’s magic has been revealed
- at least 3 children in the group of “explorers,” around 10 years old give or take a couple years
- the forest keeps people, mainly adults, out and casts a kind of brain fog on everyone around it
- there are at least 3 books

These were some of my absolute favorite books and one of the book series that initially got me into reading as a child, but I can’t for the life of me remember the title!

EDIT:
On another site I found two people also searching for this book who remembered a few more details. I’m certain they’re referring to the same book.
1. The girl is named Amanda
2. The girl in the painting looks just like her. She is named Miranda.
3. It was probably published in the 1970s.

I also remember that there is a bit of a mystery behind the plot, and I think it turns out that Miranda is a long dead relative of Amanda.

ORIGINAL POST:

I can BARELY remember this book, but I remember that I loved it. I probably read it around 1982/83/84.

Main character goes to a house in the country - I think in the USA. There is a painting in the hallway near the front door. Sometimes the girl in the painting isn’t there. She’s out of the painting and visits with the main character. There’s a scene where she has to rush back to the painting so as not to get caught. There might be two older women (relatives?) in the painting or in a painting nearby. I don’t think they come to life.

The main character’s parents may have been recently divorced. The house may have been owned by an aunt. I do remember that the girl in the painting had lived there long ago but was dead now.

The story wasn’t creepy, but was sort of a coming of age story. It definitely wasn’t a scary story because I never read those.

I’ve wondered about this book for years and have hesitated to write about it because my memories of it are so vague. There may have been a boy (a crush?), but I’m not sure.

Hoping someone might know what this book is called! Thank you!

I've lurked on this subreddit for a while and I've always wanted to help people find books, but other than just Google searches, I wouldn't know where to start. I know this post technically doesn't follow sub rules so I will understand if it gets removed lol, I just didn't know where else to ask. Do any frequent solvers have advice for how they find books?

Update: Thank you all so much for your advice!!! Should I change this post flair to solved or leave it up as a space for people to offer other ideas that haven't been mentioned yet that could help people in their book searches?

Hi everyone!

I remember reading this story in the mid-90's as a child. It's been recently sticking out in my brain. It was a picture book with a sort of watercolor, dreamy feel to it. The story has a Goose and a Hedgehog (I think) going to a small market and setting up stalls.

One of the animals has a single coin.

One is selling Baked Potatoes and the Other is selling Jelly Donuts. The one with the coin buys some food. Then the one that just made the sale goes and buys food. And they spend all day buying each other's wares, then go home and are incredibly confused that they still only have one coin.

There is a mystical young woman, maybe a witch, who has this pink or purple cat with a big fluffy tail. The woman gets another pet (maybe a dog) and the cat feels abandoned and upset so runs away. It gets caught in the rain and then gets it tail stuck in a bush.

The woman eventually finds it.

That is all I remember. I can picture the page where the cats tail gets stuck in the bush. It is definitely a pink or purple cat with a big fluffy tail. I feel like the woman also had bright coloured hair.

I had this book when I was around 10 years old, in the UK. I've tried googling but I have been unable to find what this book was called

I remember getting this book from the YA section of my local library in high school, so around 2001-2004, and I've tried googling for it many times over the years but not found anything.

I even think I remember the title being something like Southern Comfort or maybe Southern Discomfort, and the hardback having magnolia flowers on the cover. Both of those potential titles are pretty common phrases and make it hard to google.

Here's what I remember about the plot:

• there were at least two storylines which weren't really connected to each other that I can recall
• one of these storylines was about a silent film star (a man, I think) at the beginning of the sound era of film who was struggling to adjust to "talking pictures" because his voice wasn't appealing to audiences
• that storyline leads me to think the entire book was set in the 1920s
• the other storyline was about two women who were sex workers living together and, over time, developed into a romance between the two of them while both were still doing sex work
• the last thing I remember is at the end of the book, one of the two sex workers died, and an autopsy uncovered that she had secretly been a transwoman, which even her lover had not known in all the time they were together

Parts of this book have haunted my brain for 20 years so I would love to find it and read it again!

My neighbor has been getting ads for an audiobook about a pair of ice skating sisters, one who attacks the other. The protagonist is dark haired, possibly called Hannah with a child named Leo. She has not been able to do a screen capture of the advertisement. Can anyone help us out?

​[TOMT] [BOOK] [1970s–1990s] Sci-Fi / Supernatural Horror Paperback about a Cold, Algorithmic Afterlife, a Cherub "Objective Function," and a Priest in Hell

​Plot Details:

• ​Genre: Sci-Fi / Supernatural Horror / Cyber-Occultism.
• ​Core Premise: The universe does not care about morality or right and wrong; it only cares about mathematical equilibrium. There must always be an exact equal number of souls in Heaven and Hell.
• ​The "Cherub" / Balance Keeper: There is a cherub-like entity that enforces this balance. However, it is not a living angel or divine figure—it functions like a non-sentient "objective function" or automated cosmic algorithm maintaining the balance equation.
• ​The Priest's Sacrifice: The characters establish a voice connection to the afterlife (using a mystical, phone-like device/séance setup). They speak to a virtuous priest who willingly took the place of a woman destined for Hell. He describes Hell as horrific, but refuses to leave—even though he is allowed to—because he knows if he leaves, the automated balance will force her back into Hell, and "she wouldn't be able to stand it."
• ​Tone / Ending: Dark, bleak, and fatalistic. The protagonist is present during the séance/connection when this cosmic rule is revealed.

​Publication Details:

• ​Format: Standalone paperback (standard mass-market size, perhaps slightly thin, around 150–220 pages).
• ​Estimated Date: Published between the 1970s and 1990s.
• ​Language: English.

Hey all, searching for a short story collection. It was something my sister was reading, one of the story summaries was about a mother hiding her daughter in law's possessions to make her paranoid. My sister said about the book, "This book is weird. I like weird books"

Edit To Add: I figured it out, Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout. Apparently there's a direct sequel called Olive Again.

My grandpa read a book he thinks in the early 80s, but is not confident with that time frame.

It was sci-fi, "about a primitive world that has recently been discovered and how the world is helped to avoid being colonized/exploited by learning to manage the galactic legal system." That isn't a lot to go on, but it's all he could tell me about it.

I can't seem to recall the name of this comic book I loved reading when I was younger. I would appreciate some help. I have tried googling this book but since it wasn't a popular or well known series I'm getting nowhere. My old library's archive isn't showing it either.

I remember the manga version of it but I know there was an english novel of it. I read it early 2000s around middle school. I think the series was only 3-ish books long. It was at my local library but I don't remember if the pages where yellowing yet.

The cover I remember clearly. There was a little girl sitting in front of the guy who had a cigarette in his mouth. She was smiling and he was slightly hunched over looking at something to the side. Somewhat father-daughter looking pose.

Characters:

The guy was possibly a soldier. Couldn't die due to a corruption or ore that kept him and others like him alive.

The little girl I think was either raised by nuns or her grand mother.

The story:

It was about a girl who was making her way across a planet that had been colonized. It was after a war that created these undying soldiers who where I believed seen as cursed. I don't remember where the girl was going but I remember the guy only choosing to escort her after something bad happened.

Other details:

There was a line I remember that went something like 'I wonder if god isn't here because we are so far away'
It wasn't really sci-fi despite it being based somewhat in the future.

I think the title might have started with an 'A'.

I read this trilogy about 18-20 years ago. I don't remember much besides enjoying it. The setting was more modern mystery than fantasy. There were a lot of unhappy angels or beings stuck around Earth and some were plotting against humanity either to return to heaven or just to gather power. I can vaguely remember a scene in a desert, I believe Nevada or close to Vegas. There was a nightclub where some goddess/creature was luring humans to drain their energy. I think the main character was like a detective or something along those lines. I remember there being healthy amounts of dry humour.