eulalia_vox: (Default)
[personal profile] eulalia_vox
Ok. I need help identifying a book. I'm like 73% (and declining) sure this is a real book and not something I just dreamed up.

Here's what I remember. My google-fu has failed.

I'm pretty sure I read it in the 90s. Young adult/teen. No idea author/publisher/cover/title.

The protagonist is a 16ish year old girl. Her parents are artists. I think her mom is a chidren's book illustrator. Dad gave up art & became a farmer. They may be separated/divorced. Definitely some strife.

Girl & dad move, i think, to his family home. It's a big old Gothic-type house. Weird, supernatural goings-on. Family's a little kooky.

Girl makes friend in school. Boy lives kitty-corner. Boy is cute but has big ears?

Maybe Canada?

Maybe seances, maybe mirror. Definitely evil family ancestor, Scottish, I reckon. Definitely remember them calling bad guy ancestor "laird." Laird Greagor?

Girl is only one who can defeat him. I remember the family and girl and boy have a plan and a final seance. Maybe a black cloak, swirling evil spirits trying to break chain of hands.

Girl prevails, happy ending.

Please, please, please somebody recognize this book with this crazy description. It is driving me up the wallllllllll.
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[personal profile] meatina
This is a book I read at primary school in the UK, so would have been published before 1991 as that was the year I left the school.
It was a slim hardback book about ghosts, I think it was just called "Ghosts", and the cover was blue with a shrouded skeleton with glowing eyes on. I think it was published by Scholastic, but that might be my memory playing ticks on me.
Pages I remember include these pink creatures that lived in graveyards, that were fatal to look at, so someone put mirrors up to kill them, and an account of the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. (Clocks stopping at the time of his death as a ghostly train went through a station?)
It isn't the recently republished Usborne World of the Unknown "Ghosts" book, but it is very similar in style.
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[personal profile] full_metal_ox
(Crossposted to [community profile] whatwasthatbook.)

I seem to recall that said author was a woman, and the series as fairly recent/ongoing. The Species Hat of these mice was a compulsion to imprint religiously--the way that ducklings will imprint filially upon the first living creature they see--on whatever might happen to awe them; I recall objects of worship including a cake, an oak tree, and a chicken (I imagine the last was a short-lived denomination, to judge by various YouTube farming videos.)

The most fortunate bunch chose the protagonist and her family--who were prepared to deal with and protect eccentric sapient critters--as their pantheon.

ETA: [personal profile] nocowardsoul has identified the source as Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series.
[personal profile] faz_rach_92
I read a book a couple of years ago (2016-ish) and cant remember the title for the life of me.

It was about a girl whose younger brother goes missing during her childhood. He was a bright boy and a bit strange, always drawing something (I think it was a map or a maze)
The book follows her through several stages of her life, from the 1970s/80s in her childhood to an imagined near future when she is a grandmother.

I cant remember any characters names or even much of the plot but a few scenes and details stick out.

She runs away from home and gets a job picking fruit at a farm. There's a boy on a bike who she has a romantic link with, they sleep in a barn one night.

There's a moment where she sees a woman fishing on a dock by a canal and she draws something in the dust, it becomes significant much later in the book when some time travel elements come into play.

She witnesses a horrible double murder but gets her memory wiped.

There's a secret society that was involved in the vanishing of her brother. I think her actual brother died very early on and one of its members came to use his body.

she gets married to bike boy and they have children who have children.

In the closing chapters she's raising her grandchildren in a dystopian Ireland where Global resources are running out and society has regressed. the secret society save the children but the whole think is pretty bleak.

I read it in Australia but I think it's set in the UK. I always thought it was Labyrinth by Kate Mosse but having recently got that book and read it i realised its completely different and I'm now very confused.
Please Help.
[personal profile] cjmcnally
I’m searching for a novella/short story I last read in primary school (late 1990s/early 2000s). It was one of a series of short spooky stories by the same publisher - another was about teen vampires, I think there may have been an alien one too.

This book was from the perspective of a teen girl whose best friend has recently died (I think from suicide), and is now haunting her. The friend (I think her name is Fern) taps on the girl’s window and shows her a pendant or necklace, which I think is a fish or fish tail. The girl works out that Fern has left her letters or a journal inside an old tree that they used to hide letters to each in as young children. These tell the story of why Fern died.

Fern became obsessed with a new, young teacher who started at the girl’s school, to the point where she would start predicting the colour of his ties or clothes. I don’t remember if the teacher might have an interest in Fern too, but I think she gets rebuffed. Either as a result of this, or for some other reason, when she sees the teacher get into trouble in the ocean, she doesn’t do anything to help and he drowns. She then kills herself a short time later.

I think this fish or fish tail necklace or pendant also plays a role (maybe given to Fern by the teacher?) and might feature on the book cover art, or be in the title in some way.

I might have a few details slightly off, but if this storyline sounds familiar or you can help identify the series of short scary stories it could be part of, it would be so appreciated!
[personal profile] bellashmobella
I have googled so many things to try and find this book. It's about a young boy I believe and he goes to maybe Scotland to stay with relatives. In the night, he can't sleep and ghosts come to him. Something that might help is that there is a ghost that is only a foot. I believe there is people trying to buy the land and at the end there's something about unicorns and their horns.
[personal profile] silent69
This one had to be late 70's early eighties.
Couple out hiking on vacation in another country.
finds a stone that looks to have a cameo type carving on one side.
they take it home and mysterious things start happening, they discover the rock turns into a small whitish dinosaur creature at night. at first it's cute they seem to want to hide and protect it, seems to really take to the wife's mothering, and there ok, till the deaths occur.
the creature retaliates for them..? anyway the soon find out it's best not to upset it.
I believe,The husband makes a decision to attempt to escape the house.
I remember the scene where he makes it to the car,and it steps in front, but he turns on the headlights and it immediately falls to the ground, having transformed back to the stone. foolishly he believes he's in the clear, drives forward,over the stone and the creatures clawed arm comes through the floor getting him. it was so sad because, although she's heard her husband die, the creature comes back into the house and lays it's head in her lap, she rubs it's head, while silently crying because she can't show any fear.
I believe it auto returned to you, and i also believe she wound up keeping a light trained on it 24/7.
the cover had the picture of a white oval stone, with some type of semi-vague carving of a face?
I use to read a lot of physiological horror, so as to have a story to convey to my nieces and nephews when they came to visit back then.
i really loved this one, because it was also compassionate.
[personal profile] deanne98
Starts with a guy showing up to a house with a mom and young daughter. The daughter tells the mom they need to go with the man before the bad (?) come. This guy and the mom touch and a tattoo appears on the mom but won’t stay unless she accepts the mating. Can’t remember if it’s two factions of vampires or vampires v demons. Anyone know the name of the series? The women end up catching a virus too...a virus that only hurts their human mates
[personal profile] zhundert
I'm hazy on a lot, but it is young adult sci-fi/romance ish. I think it starts out with a girl being attacked in the park and these boys save her. She is confused about how they were able to use some of their abilites - I think they made something appear or dissapear to save her. She then soon/later finds out by doing some digging that she as well has these abilities as it runs in the family. (which is why those guys that attacked her were after her - bc she has those abilites) I remember that the guys that saved her were there for a reason (to train her on her abilites). They take her to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere ( for safety) and it is extremly decked out with flats screens and pool tables and they have motorcycles that they all created with their mind. I remember one part of the book that really stuck with me was that in part of her training she is thrown into a deep ditch (that is a creation of one of the guys minds) and she has to manifest objects with her mind in order to get out of the hole. She freaks out and is like "why are they doing this to me", but it was to train her so that she is prepared for attacks. She also I believe has a love connection with one of the guys as well. I'm pretty sure its a series!!! And I would love to finish it because I don't believe I ever did!!!! I would be so appreciate if someone knows what book I am talking about. Thank you!!!!!
[personal profile] twinkie_16
okay so long shot, I can remember a lot about this book (except the name, HA) so here it goes:
- highschoolers
-girl is a loner who wears gloves so she doesn't touch anybody as everybody she touches becomes covered in boils
-popular boy who can heal
-loner girl finds out his secret when he brings a dog who was run over back to life (might be loner girls dog, cant remember)
-popular boy going out with popular girl who turns out to have supernatural power that lets her make people fall in love/do what she wants
-popular girl eventually uses this power to make popular boy do something he doesnt want
-popular boy and loner girl fall in love (duh)\
-turns out popular boy, popular girl, loner girl reincarnations
-in past lives popular boy and loner girl always cursed to never end happily ever after
-cue back to present, popular boy gets shot as popular girl incites town to lash out at couple? (hazy on this part but I'm pretty sure he gets shot)
-ends with loner girl going Carrie on town (killing people left and right)
-somehow popular boy comes back to life
-hazy on how the book actually ends


so yeah if anybody knows, please enlighten me
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[personal profile] buttonsbeadslace
 This is a series of YA books (I think three books, but maybe more?) set in a more or less normal "present day" world, where a small minority of children are able to shapeshift into animals. At some point in their teens (on a birthday, I think, but I don't remember at what age) they lose the ability and get stuck in whatever form they're in at that moment. Some of them choose to become animals permanently. There's a lot of angst.

The plot of one of the later books revolves around some of the shapeshifters discovering that they can take the forms of supernatural creatures, too-- unicorns, phoenixes, vampires. But these creatures aren't really meant to exist and getting stuck permanently in a supernatural form messes with the balance of the world somehow. I think what happens is that someone takes an "evil" form permanently (a vampire, I think), and that forces someone else to stay in a "good" form permanently to balance it out? But I don't remember for sure which happened first.

I read these in the mid 2000s in the US.

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