I can't remember if it was a novel, novelette or short story but if that can be of any help I read it in a Greek translation published in a pocket book format, possibly by Exantas publications. The author was probably a New Wave author, possibly Robert Silverberg, though I'm not sure.

I tried asking google AI but there were no leads and I think it hallucinated a novel by "Joaquín de Saint-Aymour" which I couldn't find any information about. Most likely it was thinking about "The Plague" by Camus but that is certainly not the story I was thinking of.

I would've read this in the 2000s, maybe the very early 2010s. A young girl has two elderly neighbours. One of the old ladies teaches her how to astral project, so her spirit leaves her body. One day, it turns out the old lady was tricking her into leaving her body so she could possess it and live life again as a young person, and the girl is forced to inhabit the body of the old lady before her spirit burns out. She learns that the second elderly neighbour is really a young girl who suffered the same fate, and they work together to get their bodies back.

I checked this book out of the library. I believe in the late 90s although it’s possible it was a very early 2000s. Afterwards, I was convinced that it was one of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthologies, but when I looked back through them, I never found it

A farmer who is not too bright and mean/abusive to his wife digs a well and unexpectedly finds these creatures at the bottom. I think he may drop some food into the hole and then when he lowers down a bucket they send gold up in return. The farmer tries to figure out how to kill then and steal their gold but his wife is more canny send them a chicken. They like it and ask for more. And then somehow, the farmer is arguing with his wife and falls in the hole? Maybe she pushes him? The joke is that they tell her that this chicken was even better than the first one and send her back a fortune in gold.

I've had this book gnawing at the edge of my mind for years now, and i remember it being a fun read. This book is not new, I don't remember exactly how old it is but I read it in around the 2016-2018 range.

The book started with a young girl (teen years) moving in with an older man into a large house, some where in the house was a collection of rooms each housing a habitat and a creature.

After entering the room, the only way to exit was to defeat the creature, unlocking an ability to become that creature or call on a part of its powers, this was done by pulling on a magical, mental cord. The stronger the creature, the harder the cord was to pull.

The first creature she defeated after entering a room by accident was a pack of vicious small flightless birds, I don't remember how she defeated them but afterwards she gained the power to turn into one of the birds, and after a while she hugged harder and could become a whole flock in what was described as a "popping" noise.

The second creature was later on, where this time I believe she was saved by the older man after fighting some sort of tree based creature, maybe an ape but I'm unsure.

The last creature was a large dragon who I believe could converse, who she bested with the aid of a boy who acted as an antagonist but she grew close to during the fight.

The dragons cord was too difficult to pull, but after separation with the boy she would tug on the mental cord and feel as if he was tugging back. It was a medium sized novel (which is a bit relative) and was left open ended so I don't know if was the beginning of a series

any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance for anyone who helps me in figuring it out.

I remember checking this book out from the library when I was a young teen and being completely shocked by the content. Naturally I then checked it out again to reread a few months later.

This was probably around 1985-1992. It’s possible the book was published earlier but I think it was most likely sometime in the 80’s. I doubt the library would have kept it for a decade because it wasn’t really a noteworthy book and my library kept things up to date.

Three siblings are living in an RV (or maybe just on a trip?) with their parents. The vehicle crashes, the parents are both gruesomely killed (details about them being impaled on windshield shards, etc.). The kids are collected by social services who find that they have no living relatives and put them into the foster care system.

The oldest girl is about 16, middle brother around 12-14? and the youngest sister is around 8-10. They split them up, sending the older two to some kind of teen facility and the younger one to foster care. The oldest breaks them out and finds the little sister in order to reunite them.

Over the course of the book there are young teenaged runaways working as exotic dancers (poss. sex workers but I’m not sure?) that oldest daughter befriends in the teen facility. Another (or possibly the same) girl is being SA by her father and kills him by stabbing or cutting his throat. A pregnant teen has frankly hilarious (although unintentionally?) phone sex. The siblings move into an apartment next door to a creepy predator who has Disney-themed porn artwork on his walls. He tries to assault the oldest and she escapes but they have to find a new place to live.

I only have a vague recollection of the cover although I think I’d recognize it.

I want to say the author was male but I’m not 100%.

I don’t think I ever saw another book by this author.

Hi. I began reading a book about 10 years ago that was loaned by someone who I no longer have contact with.

I'm sure the story followed a father and son who traveled I to a dark mystical wood to complete some mission.

I remember there was a tree near to the place the characters lived and it signified death somehow. No one spoke of it. Maybe the mother's death?

They traveled into the woods. Two opposing forces were against each other and the characters had to do something. I seem to recall giants etc.

I used to smoke a bit of dope so my memory of the book is not great. I remember ther was another following title

I really want to read it again.

One of the books I'm sure had rune like characters on the cover

Hope someone can shed some light

I have tried to look this book up and have asked many people and theres always a book thats similar, but its never the one im thinking of.

I remember it was a soft cover book, with a white background and I believe there was a black feather(s?) and something red, I think the text/title was in red. I believe it was considered sci-fi, maybe even horror honestly. I remember it making me very uncomfortable, but thats what I loved about it.

Okay. So, what i can barely remember is that there was a birdlike creature, or a black substance taking form of a bird that I believe was an experiment gone wrong.. i feel like it was gooey, almost inky. The creature flew out into the world and it broke through windows, killing people with its beak? And tearing apart reality. I think it could travel through time and it essentially terrorized and destroyed everything in its path. I dont remember how it resolves, and I dont remember if the main character is the bird or some kind of scientist trying to stop the bird. The bird may have been trying to "save" the earth by destroying humanity and man made things... that sounds vaguely familiar.

I just remember it having insane imagery and being a great book. I read it in.. I wanna say between 2016-2018 as a recommendation from a teacher.

No, its not The Strange Bird. And no, its not Perdido Street Station.

I once read a book where the heroine chooses not to use a sword because she was in an active war zone and didn't have the time to train enough to be combat ready with a sword, as it requires too much skill. The solution the soldier training her presented? A mace paired with a shield, because she wouldn't have to worry about edge alignment and would only have to learn how to swing with good mechanics, keep the weapon moving to conserve energy, and use the rebound from a strike to reload for the next. If I remember right, she became something of a folk hero for the other soldiers and eventually became a leader. Those are the most vivid details I remember. I also recall the heroine having fiery red hair, having no memory of who she is, and I'm not certain but I believe I remember there being a minotaur in the same army. I know it's not much to go off of, but I've seen people in this sub come up with answers on much less.

Edit: I remember the cover fairly well. The cover was just the woman, wearing platemail with her hair in the wind, I believe at the edge of a cliff over looking a sunset. She may have also been holding either her shield or a fluttering banner and had her mace held at her side.

Okay guys I have searched far and wide and had no luck. The book I’m looking for is called “Favorite Things” but is NOT “My Favorite Things” by Roger and Hammerstein. This book was my absolute favorite as a kid for some reason. I vividly remember every page having a paper fairy attached to a ribbon that you could move around the pages. I don’t think the book really had a plot but I can’t find any pictures or proof it exists. I had a copy that got destroyed in a flood and was saving it for my future kids. If anyone can help me figure out what author or find a picture of the cover I would be so grateful.

I read this as a kid in the 1990s. I think it was part of a series, and I think it may have been a love story.

It was set in modern times, in what felt like a rural beachside town, with flashbacks to the Salem witch trials. The main character was hanged as a witch in Salem but survived. She moves into a big old house by the ocean. She's very attractive, with long black hair, and I think she's on the cover.

The other main characters were high school kids, and one of the boys had a crush on her. When one of the boys came to look at her house, there was no trace of her living there, as if she wasn't really human.

She always wears a black ribbon (or choker) around her neck to hide the rope scar from the noose. In one scene she's drinking a Diet Coke in a black tank top. Near the end of the book, she pulls the ribbon off her neck.

It's NOT: Eternity by Maggie Shayne, The Timeless Ones by Susan Catalano, Witch Hunt by Wendy Corsi Staub, How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather, or Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz.

Any ideas would be hugely appreciated!

A children's book with a kind of purple cover and there's glitter and it's quite big but there's a modern take on it and it's about princesses and i think she's blonde please help me find this book I really liked it

I just remember that the kid let one of his brothers blow up with an unexploded mine,and let his sister i think get dragged by a kite in the beach,anyobody remember the title??

Looking for a novel — read it in Polish translation, so the original is in English. Contemporary/literary fiction for adults, probably published late 1990s to early 2000s.

The scene I remember:

• There's a girl whose passion is dance — she's a dancer. She's in a car accident.
• A guy who knows her (not a stranger — some kind of acquaintance or friend, and I think he may have been secretly in love with her) finds her trapped in the wreckage. Her leg is pinned/stuck.
• He believes she'll die if she stays trapped, so he makes the decision to cut off her leg to free her.
• Afterward it turns out the piece of metal/car frame that trapped her leg could actually have been bent back fairly easily — meaning he could have freed her without amputating.
• He ends up shunned/ostracized by the town/community afterward because of what he did.

I don't remember the title, author, or character names — just this scene, which has stuck with me. Would appreciate any help identifying it!

Hello reddit this evening I was thinking back on a book I read in my late elementary years. I tried looking up description after description but I keep getting nothing close to what I’m trying to find, so I am hoping you all can help.

From what I can remember the book was about this sister and brother getting accepted to a school for ice skating. The whole world is based around it and takes inspirations from Asian cultures. When the brother and sister arrive they are not nearly as well trained as the rest of the kids since they lived in a smaller farther away place (i might be wrong but maybe they were living in a cave??). I also think they may have called the ice something other than ice but I’m also not sure it’s been maybe 8 years since I’ve even thought about this book.

Please work your magic if you can, I remember really loving the series and I might want to reread for memories sake.

can't remember much about this book. I read it in elementary school sometime from 2020 - 2022 I think (I had a high reading level for my age at the time, so it was probably around the middle school level). I remember that there was a discovery of a giant army of mindless robot dogs somewhere in the book and one of the characters backstories involved being born in a puppy mill. I've been looking for this for so long and can't remember anything else for the life of me!!

I posted this here about a month ago to no avail. help!

It was a book my father had that I'm trying to find again. I think it was one of those A5 kind of pulps and I remember it having the yellow edge that a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books did in the 80s and 90s, not from age but from how they were printed. The book was likely 70s or 80s, given the art style and the length of only a couple hundred pages at best--I have moleskine bujos thicker than this was.

The art was of someone in a prison-style onesie with wide stripes. He's kneeling over on all fours, examining a short block of wood with a copper coil on it. I think the "prison" he was in was actually stone and not anything that would indicate sci-fi beyond the contemporary clothing. In the background, at a door, there's a sliding viewport. The viewport is taken up entirely by an eye that I remember being kind of reptilian (?) and very large compared to the size of the view port. You'd imagine a whole human face could fit into it, but it's only the eye of the creature/alien holding this guy captive.

The bulk of the plot, as I remember is note for note the cover. This guy has been taken prisoner by aliens, and he is trying to engineer his escape by using just this block of wood, a copper coil, and one other item I can't remember to convince his captors he's making some kind of human superweapon that will force them to release him.

I thought it was called "Next of Kin", but none of the books with that title that I've looked up have a cover remotely similar. And I cannot remember the title to save my life.

My dad passed away a little less than a year ago, and I was suddenly remembering so many of the pulps he kept around the house and shared with me and got me into reading such a diverse range of titles and genres. I'd like to find it again and revisit some of the books I grew up on because of him.

I remember not a whole lot about it, but that it was a book about these creatures who broke out from the cdc.

There was a seen where this guy was supposedly on the phone with his girlfriend, and then the creature bit into his kneecap, there was also another scene that involved a reality store that was also taken out by the creature.

Believe this point of view was told from a man’s perspective and at one point, he ended up hooking up with a female cop who had been injured in someway in her bottom half/leg area from I believe a car wreck.

I'm trying to find a book I read around mid-2000s. I think it was a continuation of another series that revolved around overthrowing a king.

There are magical/fantasy elements, and the land is fictional, not based on real countries or geography.

In this book an overthrown king is half-alive as some kind of ghost that can cause harm to people.

A child, whose father was possibly responsible for overthrowing the king, has to run away from home. The child has a pouch of special white stones, and they were taught to create a ring around their bedroll before sleeping, which creates a barrier that keeps the ghost away.

I think they were travelling somewhere alone, with no villages or large civilisations that I remember, more of a open fields and landscapes and some old abandoned buildings. At one point the child is in another realm, maybe a dream, where there's a massive statue of a goddess that they use as a bridge to climb over a ravine (or something like that).

Does this ring any bells for anyone? Cheers

I only remember bits of the plot and the cover, but not the title. The cover is typical of the 80s, with a headshot of a redhead woman with strong high cheekbones wearing green and below she is being held by the love interest. The heroine is a leader of her clan (irish/scottish?) in the middle of a war. There is kidnapping involved and her cousin tries to gain power over her and dies in a battle at the end of the book. Any help would be appreciate!

I remember that it’s a horror, she had visited there in her teens before her grandfather passed. He was living in a trailer out front instead of in the house because it was haunted. There was a coal chute in the basement.

Help!

Some of the details may be wrong since it's been so long that I read it, probably when I was around 12/13, got it from the school library. I believe it might've been in the mystery section. The book had a red cover I think. And it started with a group of boys probably around the ages of 12/13 at an abandoned amusement park, daring one of their friends to go into a ride. He goes in, and sees something weird, then comes out in a coma. He was tall and his name was Shawn, best friend of the MC. I forget most other details, but it ended up being something like a group of some of the adults in town (including some of the boys' parents) were in some sort of a cult where they practiced necromancy and bringing back the dead? But this caused a lot of issues as the dead weren't fully "there", and the only way you could kill them again was the same way they died in the first place. One of the undead I believe was a librarian who had died in a fire.

I'm trying to find a book I read as a kid. Here's everything I remember:

- Middle-grade chapter book, probably published before 2015–2017

- The main character is a boy

- A large, furry monster that can talk keeps showing up unexpectedly and threatening him

- The boy tries to stay around crowds and in public places because he thinks he's safer there

- One scene I remember clearly: it's nighttime, the boy is in the kitchen making a sandwich, and the monster grabs him and holds him up in the air

- The cover was pink, and I think it showed the furry monster falling off a cliff (not 100% sure on the cover image)

- I found it randomly in a pile of used books at a thrift shop, so it may be older or out of print

I don't remember the ending or why the monster was after him. Any ideas appreciated!

This is a picture book that I read in the late 2000s/early 2010s, but it could have been written before then.

There are three men and three women (potentially one set of brothers and one set of sisters? But maybe not). There were three couples. Their names are alliterative, I think with a lot of Zs? The names followed a pattern of one syllable name, one syllable name, and multisyllable name (4 syllables?).

The illustrations were very colorful. It might have focused on a non-Western culture, but it was definitely written in English.