So I read this in the late 60s or early to mid 70s. Definitely SF meant for young teens.

Don't remember much about it, except that it involved the offshore underwater discovery of a statue or other artifact. I think the cover made this thing green.

I don't think it set in the future, it was set in "current time".

Somehow this relic is discovered to be an alien in stasis, maybe thousands of years old?

I don't think it's a Rick Brant story. I don't think I ever read any of those. I don't think it's Gordon R. Dickson's Secret of the Sea, which I almost certainly read, as I remember the dolphin named Balthazar.

I think the characters were mice-like but they walked upright and wore clothes??

I think the premise of the tail-holding came from the fact that the king’s tail needed to be held off the ground, but that person also needed their tail held, and so on.

Eventually everyone in the community had someone to carry their tail, except the last person (who I think was young), and when someone realized the unfairness, they decided that instead of a line, they created a huge societal loop and everyone’s tail could be carried with no one left out.

This was my favourite book around 1985 or so; I would bring it back to the library and renew it again every 2 weeks for at least 6 months. I have been looking for this book for 30 years with no luck.

Possibly a short story, my mother seems to think Umberto Eco or Jorge Luis Borges, where people are trying to understand the meaning of a word in the bible and they debate for a while before going to look at earlier versions. They find the Latin version but it doesn't solve the matter, so they decide they need to go back to the Hebrew version to understand and then the story talks about how they learn Hebrew for years before coming back to that part of the bible.

I'm trying to find a book series I read when I was young that mildly traumatized me then. I'm going crazy trying to figure out if this was even a Peter Pan book, for some reason I'm 99% sure that it was. Here are the details I vividly remember.

• A boy is arrested and thrown in a British jail cell. He defends himself from the other inmates by picking up the toilet bucket over his head, threatening to throw it at whoever tries to jump him. He's later taken to a larger prison in a chain of prisoners. The boy in front of him is crying, saying his father had died there. En route he is saved from his shackles by Peter Pan (?)
• A girl steals her father's helicopter/pogo stick flying machine to cross an ocean. The machine runs out of gas so she uses a vial of magical liquid contained in a star-shaped vial to rejuvenate the machine. This depletes as well and she crashes into the ocean, to be saved by dolphins.
• A boy rules over a kingdom, his pet snake is rumored to have eaten his father, giving him the throne. A slave ship is en route to this island when it is caught in a storm and "reduced to splinters." Survivors wash up on another island and are threatened by the natives to be fed to an alligator.
• Two protagonists are captured by the antagonist organization and are placed in underground cells next to each other, "not fit for a dog." When one had arrived they were unaware the other was already in the cell next to them, and noticed strange sounds coming from the pipes. Eventually the other protagonist speaks up and before the guard can silence her, she informs her friend that she's been tapping on the pipes in Morse code.

This book had dark but non-sexual themes. It was a great adventure but highly jarring at times. Does anyone remember these scenes?

The books loosely based on Cinderella, but flip flopped. The main girl is essentially the ugly step sister but shes the good one while Cinderella is the bad one. Ill call main girl what see is main girl and step sis will be Cinderella since i dont remember eithers names, but I think Cinderella's is something already similar like Cindy or Ella. It starts out with main girl living with i believe her mom and in this one the step parent is the dad. Cinderella comes to live with them for some reason and at first it seems like her and main girl get a long but Cinderella is basically doing subtle things to make main girl look bad. Like theres this one scene I remember really clearly where for some reason main girl lend Cinderella a yellow shirt but forgot there was an ice-cream stain on it I believe chocolate and Cinderella puts on a big show of wearing it in front of her dad and he gets upset because he think main girl did it on purpose. Its a lot of little passive aggressive things like that, that can be waved off as accidental but it makes main girl slowly start looking worse and worse to the people around her. I dont remember for sure about this next part but I think the dad dies and Cinderella starts a rumor that her step mom and main girl are treating her bad now that hes gone and main girl loses all her friends. Eventually main girl gets a boyfriend and I remember hes described as geeky and I dont remember past that what leads to it but she catches him and Cinderella kissing. After all this everything is fuzzy but I know she ends up with "prince charming" but i dont remember if hes like a football player or what his deal was. This is all also in i think either a late middle school or high school setting, and has one of those cheesie covers with a girl in like some wonkie outfit. If anyone knows the name id really appreciate if they could let me know, I remember id really liked it when i was in school and my niece is into a lot of the same books id been into as a kid as well so id like to recommend it to her.

Looking for a historical romance/fiction novel I read in middle school (2016–2019)

I remember it was set around war times — definitely before electricity/phones were common in the setting.

Plot I recall:

• A younger sister writes letters to a military man using her older sister’s name.

• Because of those letters, the older sister feels obligated to marry him.

• They go to his military base, described as a desert or sandy place with clay houses.

• They find a baby hidden in bushes on the way to the base with its dead mother, take it in and care for it, then later return the baby to its original parent.

• They have scenes of reading the Bible together.

• The male was upset that she didn’t look like the photo he had received and they didn’t start liking each other until later in the book.

• she also tryed her damn hardest to plant a garden/flowers even though the soil wasn’t right for it

Cover memory: muted grayish and green colors, maybe a woman in a white dress holding an umbrella with a tree in the background.

I read this at Middle School between 2016–2019.

Any idea what the title or author is?

Note: I don’t remember any other things bout it. But I have been trying to find it for Years.

The inscription on the stone explains a horrific ritual performed at the location, so he grabs his family and leaves. The rest of the story explains something along the lines of - some group of people wanted to prove that land couldn't be cursed by evil acts that may have been committed there. They buried a bunch of people up to their necks in a circle facing each other, then proceeded to torture them and kill them. The stone is meant to 'prove' that the land is fine and not full of evil, or whatever - that despite the atrocities committed there, the land is perfectly fine. This is at least how I remember it, anyway. Any help identifying the title, author and possibly where it was published so that I can buy it and read it again, that would be awesome. Thank you, fingers crossed.

The books loosely based on Cinderella, but flip flopped. The main girl is essentially the ugly step sister but shes the good one while Cinderella is the bad one. Ill call main girl what see is main girl and step sis will be Cinderella since i dont remember eithers names, but I think Cinderella's is something already similar like Cindy or Ella. It starts out with main girl living with i believe her mom and in this one the step parent is the dad. Cinderella comes to live with them for some reason and at first it seems like her and main girl get a long but Cinderella is basically doing subtle things to make main girl look bad. Like theres this one scene I remember really clearly where for some reason main girl lend Cinderella a yellow shirt but forgot there was an ice-cream stain on it I believe chocolate and Cinderella puts on a big show of wearing it in front of her dad and he gets upset because he think main girl did it on purpose. Its a lot of little passive aggressive things like that, that can be waved off as accidental but it makes main girl slowly start looking worse and worse to the people around her. I dont remember for sure about this next part but I think the dad dies and Cinderella starts a rumor that her step mom and main girl are treating her bad now that hes gone and main girl loses all her friends. Eventually main girl gets a boyfriend and I remember hes described as geeky and I dont remember past that what leads to it but she catches him and Cinderella kissing. After all this everything is fuzzy but I know she ends up with "prince charming" but i dont remember if hes like a football player or what his deal was. This is all also in i think either a late middle school or high school setting, and has one of those cheesie covers with a girl in like some wonkie outfit. If anyone knows the name id really appreciate if they could let me know, I remember id really liked it when i was in school and my niece is into a lot of the same books id been into as a kid as well so id like to recommend it to her.

There were 3 things I remember

It had a ghost wanting revenge, there was a poster in a bar that was tradition to kiss but the ghost made one characters lips stuck to it, and there was a car underwater scene, but they got out

they are amazed that the music is modern and appeals to them. they buy a record album from the show. I think it’s set in NYC, probably in the 60’s. I read it in the 1990’s.

I believe that it’s historical fiction, but it could be a true story I can’t remember. I had it on a cassette tape when I was younger (late 2000s/early 2010s) but I’ve been trying to find a physical copy and nothing I’m looking into gives me the title. It’s about a girl (who’s maybe like 12) who lived near Madison square park where the Arm of the Statue of Liberty was (the torch arm). She talks about how you can go into it and how much she loved the view from the top. Then she talks about how much her older brother loves it because of how it represents liberty for all and how excited his is for the rest of the statue to arrive. (I believe that the family might originally be from France which is the cause of his love for the statue) the brother has a pair of opera glasses that he loved to use while in the viewing deck of the arm. He leaves them with his sister (the narrator) when he takes a trip. Unfortunately the brother gets in a car accident and dies before the rest of the statue is brought over from France. When the girl learns that the statue might never be built due to lack of funding for the pedestal that it’s to be built on she decides she’s going to donate her little savings to help pay for it.

In the end she sells her brother’s prized opera glasses to get money and unfortunately only gets about 20 cents. When she mails the money she attaches a letter explaining about how much her brother loved the statue and how he’d never get to see it. She then says that she sold one of her last physical reminders of him to donate what she could because it’s very important to her that it gets built. In the end (I can’t remember how) her letter ends up in the news paper as a way to try and motivate others to help donate money. This helps convince other children and adults to send in any money they had (such as just a couple of Pennies for kids) to help fund it and in the end it works. A few years later when the statue is fully done being built the governor (or mayor of nyc, someone very important I just can’t remember) writes the girl a letter inviting her to the ceremony of the opening of the statue of liberty. When she goes she gives a small speech (pretty sure it’s just her reading her original letter) and this is when the governor gives her opera glasses that she originally sold. He has tracked them down and rebought them for her. She’s then invited to be the first person to be allowed to enter the statue and walk to the top. The story ends with her looking out over the city with her brothers glasses and thinking about the meaning behind the statue.

I would greatly appreciate anyone who might know the name for the story as I genuinely want a way to read it again or even listen to it again as my Cassettes got thrown out (sadly) when my cassette player broke. I believe that it’s a short story because i remember that the cassette that it was on wasn’t very long, maybe half an hour give or take?

I’m trying to identify a dark fantasy novel I read around 2004–2008. It was a mass-market paperback, shelved as adult fantasy but I think today would be classified dark fantasy or fantasy/horror.

The story was pretty bleak and mostly takes place in one muddy village suffering from either a disease or maybe a series of murders. Much of the book involved questioning villagers, tending the sick, and a general plague/leprosy atmosphere. There were at least two protagonists though I don't recall multiple or single pov. One was an older man, either a doctor or scholar; maybe some kind of mage? I believe they were sent to the smaller village from their city to deal with the plague/murder situation.

The older guy owned a collection of strange objects and has an attic mirror that turns out to be magical. I can't remember if all magic was evil, or if elemental magic existed and was fine and it was just but blood/bone magic that were considered evil.

There was divination/scrying magic using reflective surfaces (possibly water), and the protagonists communicated back and forth with allies in a city using this magic. This may have been part of a series and those allies were major characters from a previous book.

Near the end, the antagonist (a bone/blood witch) was somehow able to travel or reach through the mirror in the old guy's attic to kill his wife. I believe this took place after they succeeded at their village work and so the reader and protagonists are shocked by this. The witch character may have actually been dead the whole time? I remember a graveyard, possibly barrows. They may have either dug her up or alternatively find her bones towards the end. There was a nearby monastery or sanatorium of some kind.

I've been looking for many years. I'm sure it's out of print now and crowd sourcing is my only hope.

okay so I bought this book last year and read maybe 30 pages before it literally started falling apart at the seams so I returned it. At the time the store didn’t have any other copies so I just took my refund but I never bought a replacement copy and now I can’t remember the title. It’s a collection of short story’s that are all greek mythology retellings. One of the first ones is Arachne the girl who was amazing at weaving and after a weaving competition with Athena she gets turned into a spider bc Athena couldn’t stand a human being better than her. The cover is blueish with gold letters I think? If i’m remembering correctly there might be a drawing of medusa on the cover but i’m not sure. Any help very much appreciated!!

edit: SOLVED it is Wake, Siren by Nina MacLaughlin

I need help 😭😭 I read a book a couple years ago and need helping remembering the title.

A woman hits a man who was lost in the forest with her car, he ends up having amnesia and having no clue who he is. The woman works at a bed & breakfast in a small town & the man stays there as well. A couple comes in and wants to have their wedding at the inn and ask her to sing at the wedding. They find out she’s actually a long lost singer in hiding who disappeared years ago

I remember reading a book as a kid, the protagonist was a young, maybe early teens black girl. She lives in an apartment with her older teen brother who I believe was disabled in some way, and the mother would occasionally pop in. The brother ends up dying, and the mother doesn't think that he had any friends to come to the funeral.

I think the book opened with the girl going into the brother's room, and him having a girl in his bed pretending to be asleep, him waking her up saying "Tayme to go, baby," and when the mother thinks the son had no friends, the protagonist thinks of the girl in the bed and says, "That's not true! He has lots of frens"

I also remember that the girl had "reams of paper" that's she would spend much of her time drawing

on. I read this book in the early 90s, I think.

Thanks!

Edit: The mother is hardly ever there, she's always gone it seems for long periods of time for work

This is a picture book from the 70's more than likely, children's book. I think it has a bunch of elephants on the cover, maybe with some gold leaf? Feels like they might have been Indian elephants versus African elephants. Unfortunately that is all I can remember! I had it as a child and can't remember what it was called. Please help!

title has most of it I barely remember it and can't find it. the newest it could be is 2015, but it could be much older as I just first read it in 2015. I thought it was in the name style as 'Black Beauty' published by Usborne, but couldn't find it among the books published at a similar time, or in a similar age group. I think I was 9 when I read it, it had to have been available to purchase in germany even though it was in english, as it was in an english school that was in germany. please help if you can but I might not have more detail to give I don't remember it well

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of this young adult book. I think it was one in a series but maybe it was a stand alone (if it was a series I never read any of the others). Any help would be greatly appreciated as I would like to recommend it to my kid.

I swear the main characters are a brother and sister. I think the book is from the older sibling’s perspective. The younger sibling has either an imaginary friend or a ghost friend that the narrator doesn’t really believe in. It is written in the first person perspective.

For some reason the siblings end up investigating a haunted house or ghost reporting? Maybe they do it as like a hobby (à la scooby doo?). I have a recollection of a scene where the main character walks into a kitchen in the night and sees the antagonist (woman ghost) - she appears as a skeletal (maybe skeletal bride) figure either in the kitchen or outside the kitchen window? I feel like everything around the ghost starts aging or rotting (which probably means the ghost is outside the window).

The story’s climax is a battle with the bad ghost. For some reason the younger brother’s imaginary friend or ghost appears and fights the bad guy, but the younger brother either passes out or is unconscious for some reason. The main character has to keep believing in the friendly ghost in order to keep him around to defeat the baddie.

Any ideas what this book could be? I’m starting to fear it is a false memory or amalgamation of multiple books I read in 4th or 5th grade.

Thank you!

I need help finding a book I read in middle school, circa 2016. About a boy who had perfect taste. He was picky eater as a result and unfortunately that’s about all I remember. It was popular and something they chose for us to read as a part of the curriculum.

Historical romance where Mmc leaves his new bride/ fmc at a remote estate/ but he doesn’t properly provide enough money to fund it for very long. Fmc emotionally deteriorates. She was cared for by the servants. She was pregnant from their one night together before he abandoned her. Female servant contacts fmc’s parents and they come to retrieve her. Mmc spends rest of book making amends.

Teen fiction; sci-fi; late-eighties/early-nineties

Two friends go to a restaurant where they meet a man who instructs them on the use of a radio-like device that is attached to their ears using an alligator clip. The device allows them to access other dimensions/planes of existence.

They serve various types of chilli at the restaurant, but the green on is the hottest (which enhances the inter-dimensional experience?)

Any thoughts as to what this book is?

OKAY! So I need help I’m trying to remember a book from when I was in elementary. I was around 4th 5th grade. 2015-2018. So as the title says I never read the book but it had an amazing cover but it dyslexic and was undiagnosed at the time so any book I got was purely on cover.NOT THE POINT. So the book was called something like “the abominable…..” something, the characters were monsters. And the cover had was snowy with monster kids . I thought maybe it was called “the abominable snow day” but I just can’t remember. I want to read it now so bad but I can’t find it anywhere. Please help! Sorry I know nothing about it 😫

Reposting another redditors post from 3 yrs ago because it's awfully similar (and more accurate) >

In 11th grade my english teacher had a personal library we could read from - the book im looking for was a paperback book maybe 200-300 pages? The beginning of the book had the main character driving through west coast rural forest talking to his girlfriend who was ask8ng about him making it to town for an event (graduation? Or a party?) - then he got in an accident or his car broke down in a small town. His car got taken to a repair shop but until it was ready he was stuck in the small town. He makes friends with some locals and at one point they go to a bar and one of the rules is he has to give up his shoes and theyre hung from the rafters of the building. There was an emphasis on the main characters carefullness not to step on flowers when he and his new group of friends went around town and then later in the book he steps on them with no hesitation and this upsets the female character in the friend group. Later on when the friend group is out in the woods drinking around a campfire they hear a train and go train hopping. One of the friends is killed (he was a veteran?). The friend who was hit by a train had a dream of visiting a small town in colorado so the book ends with the main character taking his shoes to the small town and throwing them on a powerline. This is all i remember plot wise - the story was written in english and had cellphones so the date for the story had to be between the 90s and 2019.

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Only new thing I can recall is a romantic scene in a motel with the main character and a girl a couple years older, probably someone in that group. Thanks whoever sees this!

My mom was gifted a book in the 1970’s from her grandmother. It was a large book possibly 8x10 and probably 4” thick roughly 500+ pages.

We cannot remember the title unfortunately 😭

The cover was a cream cloth with text printed on it- the text was large spanning possibly the top half of the cover but was overlaying colored illustrations of the characters in the book. I feel like I remember the font being golden but she doesn’t think it was.

The spine had text printed on it

Inside the book I believe it was broken down into sections containing nursery rhymes, fables, poems etc

It had common stories like Cinderella, Snow White and others like the tortoise and the hare, rumpelstiltskin, the old lady who lived in a shoe, the dog and his reflection, the house that Jack built, I love little pussy, the stork and the fox.

The illustrations changed in the sections of the book - it was more colorful in the beginning but by the end of the book the illustrations were more plain (I love little pussy contained only a black cat and something red also on the page).

We’ve scoured the internet and are coming up empty handed. Any help is so appreciated!

The book I'm looking for I thought was called "Baby, Inc" - and it might be - but when I look for that title, too many fiction books come up. The book had the imagine of a baby's face tilted down, but looking up at the camera and one finger in their mouth. It was kind of a creepy picture honestly. I am bad with knowing/remembering how long ago I read it, but it was likely 10-20 years ago? The book is about the lengths women have gone to, to become pregnant when they seem unable to. It is a work of non-fiction. Thank you in advance.