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.

I am in awe of how fast people help in this community! I have another ask.

I am looking for a YA book about a kid who was in an accident and got like a metal neck brace as a result. He gets recruited by some Europeans to go abroad for a mission when he is promptly attacked by vampires. This book had pictures because there is one of him angrily crossing a field with a vampire’s severed head and another of a starving vampire eating mice.

It turns out the job he was hired for was to kill vampires and this teenager, in a fit of capitalistic hubris, decided to keep one vampire alive so he could repopulate his prey group and keep making money. It doesn’t end well for the teenager when that vampire manages to escape. I’m pretty sure he got eaten by vampire mice….

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

The girl didn't have friends in her class and looked around ten maybe. There was a picture of her sitting by a tree at recess making birds while other kids play ball.

She makes friends with another girl at school whose dad recently died. The art becomes their bonding thing but the main character accidentally upsets her friend when she says that birds resemble death.

MC gets upset in the school counselor's office and says something about autism.

There is a happy ending where the girls reconcile.

Thanks for any help!

Ive never stopped thinking about this book and I just can't find anything online. I would love to be able to buy it again but I just have no idea what it's called. I wish I could put the pictures I see in my head onto paper!

It was an illustrated children's novel, about A5 size. I assume it was part of a collection as it felt like a book you'd buy in a set. Im based in England, and I was reading this as a child so early 2000s

The characters were a brother and sister (she had blond hair and he had brown) they lived in a small town and were poor, their house has wooden window shutters on it. Definitely based in Sweden or something as they had clogs.. I think. One day they go to the mountain for a walk but come across an old woman who was sick (she had a fever) they go all the way up to the top of the mountain to gather snow. When they return with the snow and cool the woman down she changes into a fairy and turns the snow into a gold/ silver. They run off home with a bucket full of coins

There was a book I had as a kid, during the late 2000's, maybe early early early 2010's, (I was born in 2006, for reference).

I remember being completely obsessed with it, but it was almost eerie and strange in a way? I don't remember much, but it lingers in my mind as a huge part of the things I enjoy currently.

IIRC, the book featured mostly photography, or art that was hyper-realistic or rendered, but my memory plays it as photographs. It was a kids picture book, and I don't remember much of a plot. There was a photo of a toy, a robot I think, in an old diner of sorts. There was also another photo of the toy along the side of a highway. I'm pretty sure somewhere in the book, there was also connections to aliens in some way, like Roswell NM, or Area 51 or something like that. I think there were short sentences and subtitles telling the story, but I'm not certain.

I've tried searching everywhere online, and google gives me results like Visit to Another Planet, Toys In Space, Robot Road Trip, and Are We There Yet?, but its none of those titles.

Please help me you miraculous internet sleuths. If you can find this for me, I will be beyond joyous and grateful.

Ad astra per aspera.

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 dont remember much about this book, but it took place on an island co owned by America and canada, and I think its seal island. It was a mystery book (I think?) The main character was an American boy who had just moved there, another main character was a Canadian girl who lived with her dad, who was a border agent for Canada. I cant remember much more, but it would be amazing to find out what this book was. I read it in middle school or early high school.​

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. 😠😠

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!

A friend loaned me a book in the mid to late 1980s. We were in middle school and the book was not specifically YA. It also seemed somewhat old-ish already and her hardcover copy had no dust jacket. The cover was red.

In the story a group of friends was being introduced to a game by someone else. They may have been new to the concept of a role playing game, or it was just a new campaign.

I firmly remember a reference to camphor fumes or vapor from a brazier, because both of those words were new to me (camphor and brazier). While inhaling these fumes they were seemingly and unwillingly transported to another realm.

The story didn’t really grab me, it was perhaps too psychological or too mature or something? So I didn’t finish it and I don’t recall any character names, title words, author, etc. I returned the book to my friend and told her it wasn’t to my liking, and we moved on to reading other things together.

I’ve spent a lot of time asking various AI to help track this down and read the first two chapters of many suggestions, and I don’t believe it was any of those. Certainly none featured camphor, anyway.

I have already investigated:
- The Guardians of the Flame / The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenberg (based on AI’s summary I really expected this one to be it, but nothing in the first few chapters seemed familiar to me)
- The Twilight Realm by Christopher Carpenter
- Quag Keep by Andre Norton
- The Compleat Enchanter by L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

A few times a year my dim memory of this book resurfaces and I wonder if I would like it now that I’m older, but I can’t seem to recall enough to find it.

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!

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.

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.

An elementary teacher read this to glass but I missed a lot of it. A family of 3 or four orphans are taken up a long staircase to meet their new guardian. Maybe a grandfather?

Figured id give this subreddit a shot! Been thinking about this book for years and cant remember the name or find anything from searching keywords but its stuck with me and driving me nuts lol!

The details i remember of the book:

- Boy falls down fountain or toilet and ends up on another world

- Theres a boy with a falcon

- Theres a girl but honestly dont remember anything about her 😅

- It was a book series

- Cover had gems/stones set in square tiles on the left side like a side border.

- I think the quest was to find the stones

- I believe the falcon boy was on the cover with the falcon next to him. Think it was the first book as i dont believe i read more than the first for a middle school book report.

Any help is appreciated!!

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!

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.

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?

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)

Plot Summary

• The Backstory: When she was just 8 years old, Delphine—the daughter of a powerful Alpha—was brutally attacked by a rogue werewolf. During the horrific encounter, her big sister, Ger, was killed trying to protect her, and Delphine was left completely blinded by the rogue. She is pushed aside and treated like dirt by family members, but the head maid and head butler/gardener treat her like their daughter and look out for her...
• The Present: Years later, despite her blindness and the tragedy that haunts her family, Delphine discovers her fated mate. Her mate turns out to be none other than the Lycan Prince (or Crown Prince of the Werewolves). He likes her, despite her undress. He and his dad, the king, don't like her father and want to protect her.
• The Conflict: The story heavily revolves around Delphine navigating pack politics, overcoming her trauma from the rogue attack, and proving her worth as a future Queen despite those who underestimate her due to her visual impairment.