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Hi everyone,

I've been trying to find a particular book for my husband for a while now but having no actual title, author and a bit of a sketchy description I'm getting nowhere! I would be so grateful if someone could help out, it's become something of a mission for me.

The details I have are as follows; he thinks the title is voyager or voyager something (he isn't 100% sure though!) He read it in the 80's although it could have been written before this for all I know. The vague plot he remembers is that it started as a sort of mystery thriller, a man was missing so the main character travels to somewhere remote (possibly nepal) to find him. When he gets there it turns mystical with the man explaining to him that the earth is intelligent, self governing and adjusts itself accordingly to temperatures rising, changes in atmosphere etc. So humans are a bit like a virus and are controlled in numbers by climate change etc. Something like that anyway, he was very vague and this is the most I managed to get out of him. Anybody have any clue?

elleodee

Hello!

I read this book in the early 2000s after picking it up at a library and haven't found it since. Pretty sure it was in the YA section since the main character was a young female (I don't recall if it was a coming-of-age story).

What I remember:
Someone passes away and a bunch of people are brought together for the reading of the will. The person who has passed away had a lot of money & a lot of people wanted to know who it'd go to. The will is read in order "First... Second... Third..." etc. The end of the third 'bullet point' goes something like "the money will go to the person who finds the... Fourth, blah blah blah" and everyone is super confused.

Eventually the main character figures out that the person never passed away and finds Mr. West, who is the 4th person (mentioned in the story are Mr. North, Mr. East, Mr. South), and she gets all the money.

Any help would be super appreciated! Thanks in advance!

elea_tsubaki

Hi!
I'm looking for a book that I cant recall the name or title of, but what I do remember is that it centers around a young girl who witnessed something and then is hit by a car. She ends up breaking her leg in the accident but the rest of the boom is about how the man who hit her, the one who's crime she witnessed is trying to find her. It's a young adult/juviniele fiction book that is probably 90s to early 2000s. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thehunter

This was a YA book, probably written in the early to mid-1980s. The cover had a dark blue border and a picture of two kids looking frightened and hiding behind a bush, crouched down low. The kids were wearing backpacks and had identical or very similar haircuts, something between a bowl cut and that "curtains" style that was popular in the '90s. I believe one of them was wearing a purple and green striped rugby shirt. A dark figure in the background seemed to be looking for the kids.

I remember very little about the plot. The children were brother and sister (the sister was a little older) and had run away from home together, perhaps because their parents were getting divorced and they didn't want to be split up. I remember them packing supplies in their backpacks, and I think they were planning to live in a public park for a while. The girl may have cut her hair like her brother's, in hopes that anyone looking for them would mistake her for a boy.

If anyone has any idea what book this is, please let me know! Thanks!

Edit: FOUND! The book I was looking for is At the Sound of the Beep, by Marilyn Sachs. The kids are hiding behind a tree, not in a bush, and I don't know where I got that idea about the rugby shirt, but this is definitely the right book. Thanks for your help!

Current Mood: curious

solia

I read this when I was in about Grade 3/4 (almost ten years ago) like early 2000's, my teacher made the whole class read it, we took turns reading a page at a time.

I can't exactly remember how it went but I think there was an Africna tribal boy who for reasons I can't remember wanders in the wild and by some reasons again I can't recall meets a girl who has zero-knowledge about surviving in the wild. There is a some kind of language barrier, so he teaches the girl by pointing out objects (water, ground, sky) and exchange words.

The book ended with the girl confident enough to survive in the wild, I don't know what happened to the boy, but I do remember a scene where they tried to drink water but it was too murky. So the boy took a water plant nearby, placed in the water and drank through the plant then showed it to the girl to do the same.

At the end of the book, it also had a vocab list of words and translations used throughout the novel.

EDIT: Book found!! It's Walkabout by James Vance Marshall.

Current Mood: nostalgic

just_m3h

Hello! I was wondering if anyone could help me track down this book I had way back in the day? It was a hefty book that had a mini story (composed of a handful of short sentences) for each day of the year and showed the progression of the seasons through different events such as the first blue birds singing, the swallows flying off for winter, receiving the results of autumn's harvest, and so on. There were beautiful water colour paintings to go with them as well. This was a thick book, perhaps several decades old now.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance ^.^

Current Mood: determined

friendof_dorothy

Hi! I was recommended here by a friend to help me find a book that I had read to me in school in the mid 2000s! I heard it probably around 2008 but it was probably older. Here's what I can remember about it:

The protagonist was a young boy, about 13 I think, and he had a girlfriend named Cookie. He also had the ability to slow down time by blinking twice in rapid succession. He uses this skill to beat the coach of an AFL or maybe NRL team by grabbing a twenty cent piece faster then him and gaining a place on the team. His mother does not like it when people eat baked potatoes by squishing them with a fork. He befriends a man on the team and his 'thing' stops working, not allowing him to stop his friend being injured.

I also remember one specific quote:

'When you're thirteen, you want to be fourteen, and when you're fourteen you want to be fifteen and when you're fifteen you want to be sixteen and this keeps going all the way up until you're twenty one, and then what you wouldn't give to be thirteen again.'

if anyone has any idea what book this was, I'd be seriously appreciative!

mirado

Hi, friends!

I'm searching for a book that I believe I read sometime around 2002/2003.
The MC is a young girl (maybe 10 years old? Possibly younger...Wish I remembered more!) with a younger baby brother and a mentally ill mother. The MC is always looking out for her brother and taking abuse from the mother in attempts to shield the little boy.

At some point the MC goes to the house of one of the mother's ex-boyfriends, she feels somewhat safe there. The mother's ex is sympathetic, and I think he tries to help/protect/support the kids. Legally, he has no power to help.

One scene that stands out in my memory: The mother is driving with the girl in the front seat and the baby boy asleep in the backseat. The mother intentionally drives in the wrong lane, heading for oncoming traffic and refuses to go back into her lane. She demands that the MC first say "I love you." The MC does to protect her brother.

The kids are separated later in the story. The mother takes the baby and leaves the girl (maybe with an aunt? Or the mother's ex). There is an effort to find the mother and baby boy, and I think the two ended up hiding in a boatyard with the mother's sketchy new boyfriend.

I will be so grateful if anyone can help me!
Thank you!

starshipfox

I read this book in the mid 00s, and I think it was recently published at the time. It was a literary novel about a young woman who is held at gunpoint in a public park. I believe she lived in New York city, and the attack is fairly brief: she isn't assaulted, but is very frightened. She has a boyfriend, and when she talks to him about the attack afterwards he isn't very sensitive. I think the book had quite a lot of literary references, perhaps specifically to Robert Frost? I also remember the cover had colour photographs of autumn leaves.

aerodrome1

Can anyone help on this? I'm looking for the title and author of a travel book I once owned back many a year ago. The author was French or Belgian, and the book recounts the overland trip he and a friend from the Yugoslav coast through Iran to India in the mid-1950s. I recall that the author later went on to write a well-regarded travel memoir about Japan in the 1960s. I wish I could recall more about the book, but my mind is just blank. Can anyone offer any help? Thanks!

esmeiolanthe

Last night I watched Marwencol with my father, which is a documentary about a man who has built a very elaborate tiny town in his yard out of assorted scraps and old toys. Watching the documentary reminded my father of a book he read probably 40 or 50 years ago that he has been looking for ever since. He has been unable to find it, and I can't find it either.

My father thinks it was called something like Small Worlds, and it was about people who built small worlds/elaborate models in their homes or basements. He remembers one man had a scale model of a large city (he thought perhaps Los Angeles) in his basement, and another person who built models of sites of religious significance to Catholics, like the Vatican and Lourdes.

When he got home, my father sent me this additional information: "I remember one of the Small Worlds in the book--there was on section about a black man who worked as a janitor. I believe his small world was discovered after he died as an old man. He had created something like the throne room for the archangel of the seventh heaven of the seventh heaven. Everything in the throne room was covered in silver and gold from gum and candy wrappers he had gathered over his years as a janitor. "

This morning, he sent me a little more information: "The janitor's throne room I wrote about--- It wasn't so small. I think the throne room filled the biggest room in his home. The throne and furniture where human sized, and all surfaces were covered with silver and gold foil from the trash."

EDIT: I asked for additional details about the physical book and got this response: "I believe it was hardback. It had photos, I think some were in color. Memory of size is fuzzy, but I think a little larger than a standard boo, so guess 10 X 7. and My Google searching skills have improved a lot since I last searched. I googled "throne of heaven gum wrappers and this came up:

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/throne-third-heaven-nations-millennium-general-assembly-9897

This is certainly the same guy that was mentioned in the book I saw." This means that the book in question had to have been published after 1964, because the artist died in 1964, and his work was not discovered until after his death.

Searching "Small Worlds" as a title comes up with some weird fantasy stuff and with some modern theological stuff, but neither is correct. My father says it was a non-fiction book.

kitsunevasquez

Super vague because its been about 15 years since I read the book...

A twin is murdered, maybe in front of the other girl?

The surviving twin has a hard time getting over it and eventually takes college courses at the suggestion of a male friend. She sits in on these college courses and he maybe? the professor for a class.

Turns out the murdered twin basically uses the surviving twins body to track down and find the man who murdered her and I believe the end of the book is the surviving twin was actually never able to get over the murder at all and the murdered twin uses her broken minded sister's body for her revenge.

iodama

I think I read this short story before 1989 in Asimov's SF Magazine (which started publication in 1971 and I was reading back through old ones in a collection, so it could be any time in the 70s or 80s). It concerned a young adult male protagonist (on Earth, who thinks he's human) who meets an "uncle" who looks a lot like him, from whom he learns that he is not human, but an alien passing among humans, who goes through a maturational process whereby two genetically related individuals fuse into one, and his "uncle" who is looking younger by the day and he are fated to merge into one person.

( Key scene description )

Anybody recognize this story?

roriebean

Ok hey I have two books that I really can't remember a lot about.

First book, this is the one I really want to get. Ok so it's kinda a dystopian novel and this girl gets "rescued" by these people but she doesn't trust them so she breaks into the leaders office. To do this undetected I'm pretty sure she had to swim through something and in the ocean. When she was in his office, I think she found something about his daughter.

The second book I read like 5 years ago and it was about a girl that had powers and she was getting henna tattoos with this boy and she started seeing birds being slaughtered in a vision and she hurts the boy. She then gets sent to her grandma who lives in like Texas or Arizona.

That's all I remember please help.

thenthsnowflake

This book existed by 2003 at least; it was in my school library so it was probably published before then. I barely remember the plot except for a few incidents. The protagonist was a boy or man, and at some point he and his... girlfriend, I guess, made a deal with some kind of supernatural beings, who temporarily killed them by touching them over their hearts. I remember that at the very end, he was going to lead his people to live in "the world in the lake". The book was a small paperback, in English, in a school library in the USA.

I read this book a little too young to really understand it, and it's been haunting me. My thanks for helping me track it down to read it again with more age and experience.

EDIT: Through some more googling and exploring, I found the book. TThe book is "Anpao: an American Indian Odyssey" and is by Jamake Highwater (born Jackie Marks) who apparently claimed a Native American background he did not possess. Still glad to track down this weird mythic story.

curiousnerd

Hi guys,
I'm looking for a book that I read a good 10 years ago but couldn't for the life of me remember the book title or the author. It was about a baby getting kidnapped and the story centred around the mother's search for the baby and the extent she is willing to go and how the search changed her. If memory serves me right, it was like she was willing to kill or something..
Would love to read this book again so any help will be much appreciated!

blades454

Hello everyone, I recently thought of a book I read about 8 years. But I cant remember any names so its a bit difficult to find it. I remember a few details. Its a fantasy book, it has and human traveling with a halfling, I think, the human had gotten into a duel with an elf and had cut off the elfs hand. Later on the elf had a metal hand and ended up cutting off the humans hand, who ended up taking the hand and using it. Please help.

ragothlham

Hi all,

I saw a horror short today that sparked a memory of a book I read as a kid in the early 90's, but can't place for the life of me. What I remember was that it read as sort of a dark Goosebumps-type book, had a young, maybe teenage, girl as the protagonist, and the plot centered around a Christmas tree. I believe that it perhaps ate one of the family pets, but the climax revolved around it being a portal to another dimension that was accessed by going through its impossibly deep branches, or trying to reach the 'back' of the tree that always retreated? I think the parents, or at least the mom, was eaten and rescued by the end? IIRC, the tree was kind of sentient and could maybe hypnotize people?

If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

full_metal_ox

(Crossposted to

whatwasthatbook.)

I recall having read this one in the Seventies, most likely as part of an Alfred Hitchcock anthology. The setting is somewhere in the Amazon region; a native girl performs a dance that her culture uses as a passionate declaration of true love and eternal fidelity, and some boorish Yankee tourist (I don't remember whether he was the intended recipient) insults her by flinging silver dollars at her feet--as if she were doing no more than busking.

We later learn that a visiting American has been staked out and devoured alive by army ants; turns out that he wasn't the offender, but he happened to pay his bar tab in American silver dollars...

(This story made such an impression that--something like four decades later--I always ask street performers, "Are you accepting donations?" if there isn't a hat or similar receptacle in evidence.)

ETA:

mildred_of_midgard has ID'd the story as "Pieces of Silver" by Brett Halliday, from Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night(1961), ed. Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Arthur (reprinted by permission of the author; copyright, 1938, by David Dresser.)

mrskoz

Hi there!

What a FANTASTIC community! I've read through a good number of posts here and at the previous domain. I actually recognized a long lost book there, too recently. I am hoping someone will recognize one of these two books I read once upon a time.

The first one I read as a teen in the 80s, so probably from 80s or maybe very late 70s. The story involved a teenage girl who was accepted and went away to a sort of super elite boarding school for artistic prodigy types: art/painting, music, also writing I believe? I think she had been selected over her friend who was perhaps even more gifted and that caused some kind of rift. I seem to remember a student at the school with a violin, possibly also someone who painted? The main girl discovered while she was there that she and her fellow students were being used by spirits who were channeling their own talents through so they could make their own creations live again, so to speak. I believe she saw a fellow student in a trance or unconscious and being "used" by the spirit/ghost to create. I think there was a main adult character in charge of the school - I can't remember, but possibly a headmistress. I've explored the usual titles/authors I could find, but even that search was incomplete...

And, unbelievably, in typing this I have suddenly remembered the strange dystopian second book's title that I've tried to remember for 25 years: House of Stairs.

Thank you for considering!

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Recent Entries

Voyager something?? 1980's mystical novel - updated post

(Found)

YA thriller

Paperback about siblings running away

The book cover looked like a scenery set in Africa with setting/rising sun

Old water colour painted book with a story for each day of the year

Y/A Book, probably '00s

Young girl's life with mentally ill mother

Lit fiction about being held at gunpoint?

Lost Travel Book

Elaborate miniature (and not-so-miniature) worlds

One twin is murdered and takes on the persona of the other twin

Short story: aliens that merge into one

I have two books

YA lit? Native American myth-based novel

(no subject)

(no subject)

YA Christmas horror book

Horror short story involving army ants and silver dollars?

2 books that continue to hang in my memories

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