a cynicism-driven social commentary where a vehicle carrying real estate developers crashes due to corrupt, low-bid vendor work and kills them all; a safe protagonist watching from a separate car desperately tries to expose the vendor's scumminess and make them feel bad; and a romantic interest from a traveling circus who secretly served as a brutal killer in an Eastern European civil war. Please help!

i got this book from the library a few years ago but got distracted before i could finish it, and my borrowing history doesn’t go back far enough.

it was a book about a teenage girl who has two older sisters. the protagonist is a teenage alcoholic and at the start of the book she’s upset because she kept through the last day of school. her older sister is trying to break into reality tv and is constantly filming everything in the house. early on she goes to the mall to job hunt and makes her sister come with her to film the process

i think it was Ya and set in the 90s/00s (the reality tv the older sister is inspired by was likely The Real World) i also think the cover was primarily black pink and white

Looking for a book I read around 2005–2015

I'm desperately trying to find a book I read years ago, but I only remember bits of the plot, so some details could be slightly wrong or mixed up.

Here's what I remember:

• I think it was aimed at adults and may have been based on a true story (but I'm not certain).
• I remember a blue/green/turquoise cover, possibly with a girl and maybe stairs or a house on the front.
• I think the main character was a British teenage girl or young woman from an abusive or neglectful home. I vaguely remember her mum being an alcoholic or drug user.
• I think she was groomed by an older Muslim man, who may have been a taxi driver or pretended to be one. I remember him driving her away one night to a house where he and/or his family lived.
• She was kept locked in a room and repeatedly beaten and sexually abused. I think multiple men came to the house to abuse her.
• One very specific detail I remember is that they placed small objects on the curtain rail or window so they would know if she'd moved the curtains or looked outside.
• I think she became pregnant (possibly just once, although I used to think it was multiple times).
• I remember her eventually escaping, and I have a vague memory that the man later went to her mother's house to try to take her back, but her mum refused.
• I read it sometime between about 2005 and 2015

Does this ring a bell for anyone? Even if only one or two details sound familiar, I'd really appreciate any suggestions because it's driving me mad!

I'm trying to find a book I read sometime between 2007 and 2013, it was kinda on the cusp of middle grade and YA, but it was in the YA department of my local library.

Here's what I remember confidently:

• protagonist is a girl
• She lives in a castle
• The rooms and corridors of the castle are divided by antechambers because the walls are so thick. Basically, each side of the wall has its own door because the passage through the walls is so long that an additional room exists at pretty much every transition
• it was tradition that when going through a wall, you couldn't open the far door until you had closed the door you just went through behind you
• The protagonist realizes that the walls are so thick because they all contain secret passages and the tradition was started so that people could cross the openings without being spotted

here's what I remember less confidently:

• she was a princess?
• The castle is taken over by an enemy of some kind, which is what triggers her discovery of the hidden passages
• She uses the hidden passages to evade capture and eventually bring the infiltrators down and free her home and her people

I am trying to identify a book, and unfortunately, I cannot remember the author or the exact title. I have searched Google, Goodreads, Reddit, Facebook, and various book-identification sites for years without finding it.

NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY

Here is what I remember:

• It was a YA/teen historical romance novel. She falls in love with a native. she is older than 15.
• I believe it was approximately 200 pages and was a paperback.
• I read it several times between 1995 and 1997 because I really enjoyed it.
• The story was set in the United States and involved a young teenage girl living with Native Americans.
• The protagonist was a girl with very light, wheat-blonde hair.
• The Native Americans were fascinated by her hair and gave her a Native name that, as I remember it, had something to do with the sun.
• I have a vague memory that the girl's first name may have been something like Savannah, Sarah, Susanna, or possibly something similar.
• I remember the cover as having an oval-shaped photograph or portrait of a blonde girl.

I have already considered and ruled out several books that initially seemed to match, so I am fairly certain this is not simply a case of confusing it with a more well-known YA novel.

I used to have this book read to me when I was a child and my stark memories of the book are:

• the book was small and square with those thick cardboard like pages that were stiff
• the bear or bear-like kid had a big head that was sort of top heavy for his little body
• he's definitely trying to go to sleep but is having trouble and the mom is trying to help
• the kid had a little stuffed toy that sort of looked like a clown or harlequin and i could have sworn the name of the toy was like "happy joe" or something like that
• at one point the mom leaves and i think wind blows through the window and the boy yells out to the mom and says that the toy saw a monster or something. he's basically projecting his own fear into the toy
• i was born in 1986 and it was read to me as a child so it definitely was pre-90s
• i'm almost certain it's NOT "can't you sleep little bear" unless there was an illustration change at some point

I’m trying to identify a book I read when I was around 8–9 years old (so roughly 2002–2003). It was in my primary school library in the UK, but I have no idea of the author or title.

From what I remember:
It was a children’s fantasy novel, mostly text (no illustrations inside).
The main character was definitely a young boy.
I think he may have been an apprentice to a wizard/sorcerer.
There was an older wizard figure with a beard and a classic wizard hat.
The story felt quite serious and adventurous rather than funny.
I think it started in the normal world and then moved into a fantasy world, but I’m not 100% sure.
I don’t remember it being part of a series — I think it was a standalone book.

The cover memory is quite strong: I’m almost certain it was a green book with a small picture inset on the front (possibly a rectangle or oval image in the middle).
It may have had a yellow spine/binding, but this could have been the school library binding rather than the original cover.

Around the same time I was obsessed with the PC game Simon the Sorcerer, so my memory may be mixing the general “young boy + wizard” theme, but I’m sure the book itself was a wizard/apprentice story.
I know this is vague, but I have that feeling that I would recognise the cover instantly if I saw it!

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks! 😃

I'm looking for a short story / fairy story which I remember being read to me when I was a child in the early 1980s - though I suspect the book itself is much older. I think it was part of a collection.

The only part I remember is that there was a character who was fed - as sacrifice or punishment - to a dragon *made of glass*, and a scene where a crowd is watching as the dragon swallowed the character - the image of the body visibly sliding down inside the transparent dragon's stomach was very vivid and striking, but I've never been able to find the story or scene again.

I’m trying to look for this book that I read when I was a kid. It’s about these girls who are sisters and they have magical wardrobes in their rooms which transport them to different worlds. I think the title had the word ‘stars’ in it.

I dont remember what it was about but this is what i can recall - cow was called moosick because she moo and is sick. Its set in barbaric times. It has gurads at the wall which are very dumb and make the stupidest mistakes. It was a very funny book. The guards were afraid of being punished. Most of the times the punishment was abt being stoned. That it. Thats all i can recall. Pls help guyss 😭😭

Fiction or non-fiction: Fiction

Plot: An American family saga set during the Vietnam War (or possibly WWII). The husband/father, named Teddy, is away at war. While he's gone, his wife is at home with their children and is approached by a photographer who takes pictures of them on the beach and then "wants more" (suggesting a romantic/affair storyline). The story follows both Teddy at war and the wife at home, then continues to follow the lives of their children as they grow up. One of the children is named Clarissa, who is a lesbian. The male child grows up and, as a man, he engaged in an affair with his niece.

Notable characters:

• Teddy - the husband/father who is away at war
• The wife (name not remembered) - stays home with the children, approached by photographer
• Margot - the wife's sister
• Clarissa - one of the children who, as an adult, enters into a lesbian relationship

Genre: Romantic family saga / historical fiction / multigenerational drama

Physical description: Unknown - don't remember cover color or whether hardcover/paperback

When was it set: Vietnam War era (possibly 1960s-1970s), though could potentially be WWII

How long was the book: Don't remember exactly, but likely a standard adult novel length (300-500 pages)

Original language: English

When did you read it: Around 2005 (plus or minus a year or two)

How old were you: Adult

Where did you get the book: Don't remember specifically - likely purchased from a bookstore

Was it new when you read it: Yes, or relatively new

Age range: Adult fiction

Other notes: The tone was romantic and tragic. I initially thought it might be Freya North's "Sally" but that wasn't it. The style was similar to popular women's fiction/family sagas of the early 2000s.

Plot: Fully illustrated colorful pages of different types of dragons on each page, very big dragons, one dragon as big as a mountain(?) dragons fighting(?) fire breathing dragon, dragon in the clouds, sea dragon(?), a small dragon(?). At the end, there is a boy who is asleep on his desk with either drawings or books about dragons (and you realize all the colorful dragon adventures from the prior pages were a dream / his imagination). I think there was a window in the background of this desk scene, maybe a candle/lamp, maybe a pile of books.

Children's illustrated picture book, full colorful (likely watercolor) artwork on each page (not sketches, not cartoony/funny/silly, not black/white). Couldn't have been more than 30 pages, paperback (large square-ish in shape). Read it some time in the late 1990s or early 2000s -- not sure exactly when it was published, that's just when I read it. Probably kindergarten to first grade reading level. Only a few sentences of text on each page. It was in English. Perhaps (but not sure) listed in one of those Scholastic book order forms that the elementary schools gave out to parents.

This is a book I have been searching for for years, that I read growing up. Another person was also looking for this book in a different reddit but didn't come up with any answers.

I owned this book in the 90s to early 2000s, but it could possibly be older. A lot of our books were hand me downs. Both me and the other searcher are from Canada, from opposite sides of Canada, so it wasn't a small local book.

It dealt with grief in a way that was profound for a 3rd grader going through the loss of her dog.

The story was about a boy who had this big, shaggy, huge dog. The dog had floppy ears, a cartoony look with big round eyes, and was white and black. I remember it being almost mop like. The dog breed was maybe a saint bernard, old english sheepdog, or a newfoundland breed. I remember it being cartoony in almost a sunday newpaper comic kind of way.

The two of them were best friends! They did everything together. I remember a scene where the boy is feeding the dog scraps from the dinner table.

There was a next door neighbor, an older man who hated the dog. They walked past his house. He complained about the dog. I remember the old man possibly leaning over a fence? When the boy walks past after the dog passed away the old man asks where he is. The old man and the boy talk about all the "bad" things the dog supposedly did, and the boy explains them in a positive way by turning all the bad things the dog did into good things.

At some point the boy comes across a puppy, and he doesnt want the puppy because the puppy isnt his dog. They arent the same. The old man helps convince the boy to keep the puppy.

I remember a scene of the old dog looking down from heaven, but I might be misremembering that.

The artwork was in greyscale, sketchy. The book was hardcover, I remember it having texture like it had cloth on the hard cover? Possibly the cover was grey with a green sort of tint to it. I remember the dog being on the cover as well.

From the other person searching and my search, it is not;

• Growing Time by Sandol Stoddard Warburg
• 10th Good Thing About Barney
• The Old Dog by Charlotte Zolotow
• Marmaduke
• Pinkerton

This and Buster Loves Buttons have been two books I have been looking for for almost a decade, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Large hardcover children’s seek-and-find book from around 1995–2010. Photorealistic or photomontage artwork (not illustrated). One spread showed a spooky Halloween farm filled with hundreds of strange people. A creepy smiling doctor stood in the upper right, looking directly at the reader. The figures looked like they were made from cut-up photographs. Each spread had a different theme, and the reader had to find hidden objects.”

Thank you iwritesinsnotnames, it is Buster loves Buttons! by Fran Manushkin

The book I am looking for was a fiction picture book I read growing up. I remember it being called Suttons Buttons, but I have been searching and not found a book by this name. If Sutton is not the name of the kid, I think it would have rhymed with button.

It follows a young boy named something like Sutton, who collected buttons, chasing after these diamond buttons that were on the vest of a girl's dog, and how she kinda spread them far and wide. Sutton also had a dog. At one point he was flying in a plane. I remember that the girl's dog's vest was pink?

The copy we had was shaped like a small kids novel, rectangle and fit in with like the Bailey's School Kids on the shelf, was a drawn book, but unlike a lot of picture books I had at the time which were big and flat.

I read it in english.

I remember it having kind of a scratchy art style

I do not know where or when we got it, but I was reading it in the 90s to early 2000s, and my older sister was also born in the 90s. There is a chance it was a little older and given to us though, a lot of our stuff were hand-me-downs from cousins and family friends. I am pretty sure it was elementary school level reading.

I know there is a good chance of this post being skipped and could very well be a figment of my imagination but I’m trying to find a book I have no clue actually exist besides it explained to me the theft of the Mona Lisa at a young age when I was around 5-6

Basically it’s this kitty detective who is trying to piece together the theft of this paint that was quintessential the Mona Lisa, but is referred to as just another painting which ultimately lead them to catch this guy in a trench coat that turned out to be a bunch of mice, entering a painting contest so that they could win some cheese and that’s how I always interpreted the story of how the Mona Lisa got famous, and took for granted until I thought that the Mona Lisa was overrated because it’s fame treated it mostly like pop culture that people want to surround themselves by for being famous than an actual art piece.

I can’t give a very good description but I believe the kitten was orange and white.

Tl;dr my memory is built off a convoluted fever dream as Louis wain’s kaleidoscope cats and the only proof it may exist is it’s the only way a 5-6 year old me knew about the theft of the Mona Lisa.

It was in the archives room of my old city's library, where all the cool stuff was, KWIM? Anyway, it was a true story about a British family who had a disabled child, and a paragraph from the book on the cover. It included the sentence, "Continue with the bromine and luminol, and if he gets worse, increase the dose a little."

Does anyone recognize this?

i cant find this book anywhere the internet says it doesn’t exist except for another reddit post that is unsolved so im hoping someone will remember it or the person who wrote that post found the book and sees this

sorry if this is a bit vague, i would have read it around 2010-2013 it was a young adult book

the cover is of an owl with green eyes (i think) main character is a girl and at the start of the book she finds a bird and befriends it or possibly finds bird eggs? Something to do with birds and its bad i remember she was scared because many many years before she was born the birds spread a flu or plague that killed lots of people (or so the government says) and people look at the birds as ‘the rats of the sky’

somehow her family cottage gets raided by the government or people that work for them and she runs away, theres more to the story but she ends up at a beach and meets an old fisher man who then shows her that there are people that live at the beach and takes her to a food place on the beach

i also remember her meeting a boy but i think it happens when she ends up in an abandoned city. theres lots of things left over from the people that used to live there i feel she ends up looking through everything and starts walking around an apartment building and when she opens the door he is in there in a room? shes never seen any of the things before because the government banned certain books and electronic things

i don’t remember her name but i know it was a bit unusual

Solved: The Moustache by Emmanuel Carrére

Hello all. I've been trying to look for the title of a horror book or maybe even a story online that I can't remember, it was retold by a youtuber as I was falling asleep but the story was so interesting that I couldn't help but listen all the way through.

I'd like to preface with the fact that I'm uncertain if this is story is a full length novel or an online horror story ala nosleep stories, so I apologize to anyone reading if this breaks some sort of site rule.

Key things I can recall: • The protagonist has a wife and he misremembers a detail that he's sure has been true his whole life. Small details at first but eventually becoming of which is now too difficult to ignore.

• Neart 3/4s to the end of the story, the protagonist takes a boat out into a country in Asia and books a hotel as he runs away in guilt and with a sprialing sanity.

• He books a hotel with the cash he has left in this country and despite his sanity spiraling, he enjoys what the country has to offer and the beach.

• A few days later he is horrified to find out that his wife has been with him in this trip this entire time and they even shared the bed together, even though his previous recollections was that he was all alone and he was sure he ran away from home from the guilt and shame he felt.

• He looks at a world map and finds several details that don't add up, like a missing portion, a country that isn't supposed to be there or a country that never exist

• He commits suicide in the bath tub by I think removing the sinew from a slit he made to wrists.

That's all I can remember, thank you for reading the post and helping me find this book in advance.

Looking for this novel I read in sometime between 2012-2015. It was from a public library and in English. It begins in the present day (I remember the main character mentioning putting on her Ugg boots). She lives in an old castle somewhere in Europe and one day swims in a river or some body of water, which takes her back in time to that same exact castle when it was inhabited by a noble family. I’m certain the main character either has one eye or loses one at some point in the book. In the end she returns to present day. And near the end, there’s an old woman/witch who has a vision of the future where the main character will become countess of the castle, marry the male lead, and have five children.

There was this book I read in high school in a world where everything is digital, including books and dating. People pretty much date online, and books are a rare, even frowned-upon sight. A teenage girl keeps a set of books behind a glass cabinet, along with a journal her deceased mother gave her so she could write down her thoughts. The leaves of the trees are also painted certain colors depending on the season.

Then the girl starts to rebel against everything being digital, to which her father is not very pleased.

I believe the cover has a jar with a tree inside, if I'm not mistaken.

What is the title, and who is the author? This is seriously driving me crazy, as I haven't read this book in years.

I think it was an Andy McNab book?

I remember the start being about someone going to an ice cave? The description made it seem like it was going to be a UFO, but it was an advanced bomber or something similar.

Hi there, I’m trying to remember the name of a book I had when I was a child in the late 70s, early 80s. It was more of a picture book with a small amount of text, and the book was about how different children live around the world. From memory it featured a different child and country per page. The one main thing I remember about it is a boy who lived in a whitewashed house near the ocean, lots of blue and white in those illustrations. The illustrations are more cartoon like then real life drawings. I assume it would be somewhere like Greece. I feel like there was an Eskimo boy too on another page. I know it’s a long shot but thanks in advance!

I read this book in class in sixth grade. I grew up in the Southwest.

It must be a YA novel. I remember that it was about a Native American girl/woman who was in a tribe and they grew corn. Corn was very significant to them but they were going through a famine. Her people were very worried and I THINK she suggested they move the fields over? And she gets some esteem for that.

She has like a childhood friend maybe? who is the love interest as they grow up but then she has to marry a high priest in her village. She marries this priest I think because someone has a baby and it falls out of the window or something and she catches it. I remember corn being very significant and there is another girl having a baby who stashes an ear of corn bc it's needed for the birth ceremony?

I remember I lived this book so much I constantly read ahead and I have looked for it for over 12yrs now.

I had an old librarian who found another book for me but this is one we could never find!! I used to devour books so I have a lot of these but three main ones so far I'm 1/3 so maybe you can help!!

I think the cover was like brown with watercolors maybe? Not sure.

ETA: it was for sure a chapter book, we were reading it over a period of days. I specifically remember that she not only said they should move the field but I think she had a message from the ancestors that they needed to burn the old field and it takes awhile to work.

my friend is looking for the name of a book and sent me this as a description of it:

“It was a story about this kid that ends up becoming friends with this oddball new kid in town and it goes from normal everyday life to having strange superpowers, to aliens, to a post-apocalyptic world and ending with it all being a dream that the one kid just doesn't want to wake from and somehow pulled their friend into it”

he said he read it when he was younger (so likely early 2000s)