findthatbook | Entries tagged with genre: adventure

Okay; this one has been causing me a nagging itch in the brain. I recall having seen—probably on some incarnation of Scans Daily on another platform—a U.S. romance comic from the 1940’s or 1950’s that had an anthology host—something more characteristic of horror comics. He was a Zorroesque Masked Lover who narrated love stories throughout history (and may have been an immortal or time-traveler who’d personally witnessed/taken part in them); the specific story featured a girl who was concealing her blindness—which she felt made her unfit to marry.

Even after specifying romance, the sheer number of masquerade balls, highway robbers, masked vigilantes, and tragic disfigurements in the genre has made this a royal pain in the kazoo to Google.

ETA: FOUND: Jon Juan #1, with the help of

superfangirl1 on

scans_daily, who directed me to https://comicbookplus.com/, an online archive of public domain comics; there I found Great Lover Romances #1 (Toby/Minoan, 1951)—an anthology including a story starring a character called Jon Juan: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=41459

That, in turn, gave me the search term I needed to track down Jon Juan’s own comic (under One Shots rather than Romance):
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=1829

Shout-out as well to the helpful folks at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2023/08/habo-vintage-comic-search/#comments

Jon Juan was an immortal from Atlantis who went swashbuckling through history, dallying with history’s legendary beauties and rescuing damsels from Durance Vile, only to ride off into the sunset as wandering adventurers are wont to do; this didn’t stop him from archiving cherished memories of all his paramours (housed in his own Inner Sanctum, the Secret Archives of Love.)

The story I remembered was “Lady in the Dark”, pp. 27-35; the setting is (19th-century?) Spain, and Jon Juan is dressing and comporting himself very much as a capa y espada adventurer—but it’s the titular Lady who wears a mask/veil, to disguise her condition; the Reveal, coming abruptly from her duenna, has the air of an ableist punch line: sorry, Carmelita has a ding in her, and that’s that.

It’s easy to see what doomed Jon Juan to be a one-off experiment: Spicy Adventure is a genre that Siegel and Schomberg couldn’t do justice to under the restrictions of 1950’s US comics, and romance readers tend to want commitment as a payoff. It’s still an exercise in delightful cracktacular weirditude, much like The Continental or Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music.

And here’s the

scans_daily post, from 14 January 2011: https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2691288.html#cutid1

Current Mood: agitated
Current Location: The Secret Archives of Love.
Current Music: ”Trance Dance”.

bratfarrar

Okay, I'm on the verge of concluding that I somehow made up this book, but here goes:

Star Wars novel, set after the original trilogy of movies
Luke Skywalker as a main character
A significant portion of the story took place on some sort of desert/desolate world
The identifying feature is that the world was home to these creepy sub-cutaneous parasites. The bigger they were, the more they could influence the host. I think there was a scene were Luke discovered that someone had basically been entirely taken over by the parasites and was pretty much just a puppet
Also, once you're on the planet and outside of a sealed room they're pretty much impossible to avoid picking up, so even Luke winds up with a whole bunch of them
I think eventually he managed to purge them out using the Force?

Anyhow, I have no details about the plot, or what other characters were in the story or anything. Pretty sure it was written prior to 2004, but looking through Wookiepedia's list of novels yields nothing that matches what I remember.

Help me, findthatbook, you're my only hope!

ETA: Ha, never mind--I post this and then five minutes later figured out that it's Planet of Twilight by Barbara Hambly. So nice to know it's not just some weird nightmare I dreamed up on my own.

lottief8

I'm trying to find a novel that I read on Wattpad within the last 3 years, although it could have been written earlier. It's a combination of fantasy, chicklit, ya fiction, romance, and adventure. The female protagonist is a princess (or some type of royalty) in her late teens or early twenties and has the ability to manipulate/bend water. Her powers can be dangerous and hard to control at times, which is a plot point that jumpstarts the novel. She accidentally kills someone at the beginning of the novel which leads to her running away and joining a group of pirates. They go on a series of adventures that build up to a massive battle at the end. The pirates don't like her at first but they grow close and she becomes part of the crew. She and the pirate captain - whose name I'm pretty sure is Gideon but I could be wrong - fall in love along the way. It's one of those will they-won't they situations and one where their feelings are obvious to everyone around them. One of the plot points includes them searching for a magical ring or similar object connected to the female protagonist's powers/some ancient force. Ending scene includes a battle with plot twist (included at bottom of post)

Other random details:
- The author started a sequel that I remember having a reddish orange cover and was more fire based/had fire as a plot point (as opposed to the blueish cover/water based plot of the first book), but then discontinued writing it because of writer's block or a similar issue. She never said anything that I can remember about taking the books down, so the first one at least should still be up.
- the female protagonist's mother is dead and her father remarried. I'm pretty sure the stepmother ends up being the big bad but I could be wrong.
- Gideon/the pirate captain has a tragic past that includes a dead fiancée (I think she died in a fire? which might have influenced the second book)
- there's a scene in the book where the female protagonist and Gideon are alone, somewhere on an island or a beach. She touches an ancient sword/magical object (it might have been the one they were looking for) and blacks out/has a vision. She wakes up to Gideon holding her to his chest, thinking she's dead
- I vaguely remember the main character cutting off her hair/having to disguise herself as a man to hide in an army

- at the end of the novel, the female main character and Gideon end up fighting the big bad. AND ***SPOILERS*** IN A MAJOR PLOT TWIST (at least to me, I totally didn't see this coming)

Gideon betrays the female protagonist, in a move related to his past trauma. The main character was trying to persuade him to either kill or not kill the villain, or something like that. He does the opposite of what she whats him to do, despite loving her and having gone through so much. It was a really upsetting moment for the characters and the second novel picks up immediately afterwards.

Thanks in advance for any help!

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.)

drikkity

, I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to tell me the name of a series that I am trying to remember.
Details I remember about it are:
The main character is a superhero who is a male but can change shape and turns female to protect his identity when doing super things.
His powers come mainly from an experiment that gave him the ability to change his power level in ways such as more speed but less strength, more strength but less durability, and so on.
At first he doesn't want to be a hero but is convinced in the first book.
In one of the books he starts a school for super powered children on an old villian? base that's technically not part of any nation. It gets attacked and some of the students are kidnapped.
He has a relationship with one of his superhero teammates both as his normal self and his female alterego. (Same sperson and she does know about him being both)
His neice attends the school

findmethisbook

I once read a book 4-6 years ago. It was not new at the time, however I do not know how old it was, either. It wasn't too large, maybe a centimeter and a half thick. It wasn't all that hard either, you could just get through it easily. But I found myself liking the book. However, I have no idea what it was called nor who the author was.
Firstly, I can describe how the book's cover looked. It had the three siblings in the front. One in the middle and two on each side of him. Two boys and one girl. A boy in the middle, who I assume to be the eldest of the three, had blonde hair and a red scarf that covered his mouth. I do not know how the other two children looked(they were all ages 10-14 or something, I think). The background before them was mixes between light grey and dark grey. There were probably designs of trees in the back, but I really do not know.
The plot is something I can hardly grasp. I'll explain it the best I can, though. I know that the three siblings had lost their mother and I think lived with their single father. The eldest son lost his ability to speak at age 8, when their mother died. Also, I don't know if the mother died or disappeared. I think she died, though.Then, the brothers and sister went on adventures??? For a reason I cannot recall??? And then something about a middle-eastern prince or princess. Maybe they were middle-eastern. I don't remember, really.
Please, I would really appreciate it if someone were to help me with what this book is called! I would be extremely thankful. Thanks for reading this, if you did.

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Find That Book

Find That Book

Entries tagged with genre: adventure

Golden/early Silver Age romance comic with a masked host? (FOUND: Jon Juan #1.)

star wars novel. desert planet with creepy parasites

FantasyChickLitAdventure Novel, female protag w/magic powers, falls in love w/pirate. Wattpad

Horror short story involving army ants and silver dollars?

Superhero book

A book about three siblings with no mom and adventures.

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