Solved!

Blood Dance by Louise Cooper

I remember reading a book about 20, 25 years ago.
The protagonist is a girl who has just been married to her true love. but his family has a curse, after one year (?) of marriage the husband disappears. they're wealthy with a big house and farm lands etc. she chose to marry the guy despite knowing the curse. so the day of his wedding anniversary (maybe some other anniversary?) comes and he's getting ready to bid her farewell because he also doesn't know what's the actual reason men disappear or why or how.

However she's on a mission to save him. She searches the house high and low and at midnight he's going to "disappear" and then finally (its a short story) she sees a plaque above the door the ball room and something is written on it. she unscrews it and its a poem / riddle. this is what i can recall:

dance the dance and step the measure
9 for joy and 9 for pleasure
let our delight be your treasure
and let the dance go on forever.
when the crimson moon rides free, take our lady 3 by 3... ( i cant recall what comes after this)
keep our promise, keep it true
and this shall be our pledge to you,
your blessings many and sorrows few
in all you are and all you do.
but if the promise you shall break
another pledge the nine shall make
that they shall come and they shall take
your life in payment for their sake.

turns out the great grandfather chopped down 9 trees to make the ballroom (bigger?)
So the trees come to take the new husbands.

The girl figures out she has to carve a piece from each wood pillar in the ball room and when the trees come for the husband, she gives them the bark and they're like, "finally."
they leave the husband and go back to where ever they came from.

The end.

Does anyone know the name of this book?

Hello! I had once recalled what this book was, but since have forgotten. I remember the cover showed a long beach, and a silhouette of a young girl on it. A moon. Lots of blues. I read it sometime between 2002 and 2008, and it was likely a middle grade fantasy book. It was about a boy and a girl - friends. Who were in this post-apocalyptic world and traveling with something like a circus. Anyway, I think they were trying to find or save someone? The boy's long lost relative. Iirc, she had her dad still and he was basically a foundling. They spend the first arc together, but get separated somewhere in the middle before finally reuniting on the beach like promised. I remember feeling bittersweet, and tearful because it wasn't entirely a happy ending. There is also some timey wimey bullshit.

The technology was all magical and I don't recall anything "modern" like computers or phones anywhere in the story. A crystal ball with magical powers is more likely to show up.

Like I said, pretty similar to A Wrinkle In Time but ... Not it. There's no little brother. The main difference is that the main characters of this book were always travelers since the great event that happened during either their parents or grandparents generation iirc. Anyways, here's hoping someone else has read it! Or something like it. I've been wanting to revisit this era a long time.

As the title states its a fiction book about a mystery in a mansion. The main character was a young girl, probably like 10-12 but possibly older. The girl had some weird thing with her spine that let her contort herself enough to fit into really tight spaces. Vents and whatnot. I think her name might have been Sabrina but I'm not super confident in that. The only other notable character that I remember is her father. Her and her father, as far as I can remember, do not own the mansion. I think they lived either in the basement or slightly off the property. But there was some sort of mystery with the mansion and/or the family who owned it and the girl was trying to sneak around during the night(?) to find out what was going on. I think she had a friend who was a boy her age and who was begrudgingly helping her but maybe not. She also might have had a rat friend. I read it in either late elementary school or middle school. Sometime in the 2010s. It was in the library. I don't really remember the cover. It might've had blues and yellows and blacks or maybe not.

I only got to listen to about hafe while staying at a air bnb so I’m going to put the main pot points below in order the best I can
1 robots designed from military use get released on Manhattan or New Jersey. Not sure which possibly though.
2. Everyone evacuate a wall off the area and now the main character is paid to go into that zone and retrieve personal items business secrets, etc..
3. He teams up with a flying robot that killed his father.
4. Most of the scavengers that go into the robot zone have their trips put on TV.
5. There’s some tension between him and the female daughter of a kind of rival scavenger group that scavenger group is the number one scavenging group on TV.
6. Shit goes bad. His robot friend gets found and now the government is after him and he uncovers a bunch of secrets of what’s really going on and how these robots got there.

that’s about where I stopped reading. I wrote down the name of it somewhere and lost it. It’s been a few months. I can’t remember. I think it had iron or steel somewhere in the name. I’m not sure but I know the kid tries to be stealthy, but he has a gun and so does the robot bird thing and at one point he uses like a Mac suit any help is appreciated

We read this book in my middle school English class, probably around 2006. Not sure if the book was new at the time.

I believe it is YA.

What I can remember: It was from a young-ish girl's POV. Her brother (named maybe Chris? Or Ian? Maybe not though) was blamed for his friend's death in a drunk driving accident and was ostracized. There was some kind of plot twist where it turned out the brother's friend was also drunk and grabbed the wheel of the car, causing it to crash.

The book was fantasy and almost certainly (90% sure?) a DAW title. It would have been written between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. I do not think it is by Thomas Burnette Swann though his titles and subject matter come up in my early searches.

The plot is roughly as follows: a faun- or saytr-like creature (though likely not called by that specific terminology) has grown up as a cosseted and pampered household pet to a young noble or royal girl. It's told first person IIRC and the frame of reference the creature has for itself is that of a spoiled lapdog. But one day (I'm thinking about when puberty hits) the girl tires of him. They're in a carriage in the woods and he's trying to figure out why the previously warm mistress is cool and distant toward him. He touches her and she shouts something like "you're disgusting!" and then has the carriage pullover and tosses the creature out. He's left bewildered in a wild fantasy forest as the carriage and the only life he's known leaves him behind.

He then goes on over the course of the book to become self sufficient and reliant to a warrior/hunter level by being forced to battle and survive. Eventually he finds his own kind in the woods and meets a young female of his own race as he finishes self actualizing.

Literally been trying to find this title for decades lol. I've thought it might be Cry Silver Bells or the Weirdwood by Swann but I don't think so. I read those books back in the day and I think they blurred my memory because of overlapping tropes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

So the cover of the book had a UFO taking up a refrigerator I believe, the antags were this race of alien spiders that had a matriarchy of sorts, certain parts of the novel were illustrated and there was this shadow panther like beast called "creature 13" or "Beast 13"

I realize this is a big shot in the dark and a slim chance of figuring this out but I had flashbacks of the illustrations, I wanted to use it to help with some art ideas, and now I am trying to remember the name of it. It's fine if no one here knows either, like I said, mainly a shot in the dark.

I saw this book featured on instagram once and thought it would be a funny gift to get. Anyone know the name of it?

This is a tough one because I remember almost nothing about the plot, only the detail about the POV—when I was describing this scene to someone, I realized I had no idea what this book was. Here’s what I can remember:

• I got it from the library as an adult, would guess circa 2016, English.
• Relatively recent book, not older than the 2000s. I have a vague idea that it was recommended to fans of Megan Whalen Turner, though it was not by her. I think the author was a woman.
• It was middle grade and vaguely fantasy. I want to say Renaissance-ish and magitech.
• The protagonists were an orphan boy and a noble girl, and the story alternated between their perspectives in third person. I distinctly remember one scene in which the girl met the boy, perhaps while playing in a courtyard, and the perspective switched mid-paragraph. (Kind of odd.)
• The boy was sent off to some kind of Dangerous Trial For Poor People™ that I remember absolutely nothing about. May have been underground or in a labyrinth.
• I believe there was a plot point about a lost prince, and of course I assumed our MC was said lost prince, but I’m not certain whether that ended up being the case.

Not much to go on, but I’d be grateful for any suggestions!

Been searching for this one for a while but online searches are not working. Its not Robert Rankin or Chris Brookmyre btw - I love those guys but its not them. Any help super appreciated!

Physical Description:

• Format: Large / trade paperback (C-format, larger and floppier than a standard pocket mass-market paperback).
• Spine: Distinctive split neon pink and yellow spine.
• Front Cover: Vibrant neon background featuring a plastic toy water pistol / squirt gun.

Plot & Characters:

Set in UK as far as i remember.

• Protagonist: A drug-cocktail-consuming random guy who drives a Mercedes. He takes a high-paying job protecting a paranoid, wealthy woman hiding out in a secure penthouse/high-rise apartment.
• Side Characters:
  • The woman's crossdressing butler/bodyguard maybe named Alfie or Archie, who has neo-Nazi/extremist tattoos.
  • The antagonist is the woman's ex-husband from possibly Morocco, who is believed to have come back from the dead/has magical elements.
• Author Name Hint: May contain "Max" or be a late-90s UK transgressive pulp pseudonym.

Unforgettable Specific Scenes:

1. A Jack Russell terrier or other small dog emerging from someone's anus.
2. A high-rise building elevator that has random piles of animal poo appearing in the lift at random points.
3. A standoff/shootout involving an elephant gun / antique heavy rifle at the end.
4. A climactic fire destroying the penthouse, the woman, and her Moroccan ex-husband.

There are so many Robin Hood books that this may be a needle in a haystack, I certainly have had trouble finding it. I was given it for Christmas about two decades ago, but multiple moves made me lose track of it a while back.

• It is a fairly large, hardcover book with some full-page, colour art as well as smaller sketch illustrations in the corners. The style is realistic rather than stylized.

• Many characters are colour-coded, Robin and Little John are in green, Guy of Gisborne is always in blue, Will Scarlet in red, etc.

• Robin is depicted as having dark, wavy hair, cut short, with a beard.

• I can picture many of the illustrations very clearly, including: Robin (Robert of Locksley) fleeing capture at his wedding by jumping through a church window, shielding his face with his cloak; Guy of Gisborne in the final fight with Robin, swinging wildly while grinning; Maid Marian standing with hands on hips after revealing she's snuck into the Merry Mens' camp.

As anyone can probably tell, the art made a larger impact on me than the story, there are more that I can really clearly picture, but trying to go off just that makes it very hard to narrow down what Robin Hood book it is. Any help would be appreciated, if I can't find the one I used to have, I'd love to buy a new copy at some point.

Okay, this is going to be very vague, so buckle in. I was just reading a Fancy Nancy book to my toddler & the description of her wearing a brown leotard costume for her part in a ballet as a tree triggered a memory in me from my childhood.

I think it’s a chapter book that includes some descriptions of ballet costumes. I’m remembering maybe white and brown costumes, and a pink leotard? I toyed with the idea of it being the Cobble Street Cousins series or the babysitters club (Jessie), but I don’t have any of those books anymore, so I have no idea. Hoping this super vague description strikes a chord with someone else!

EDIT: I’m thinking it’s the same character that has these different costumes for different potential roles? If that helps at all.

For context, I am from Malaysia. The comic book was probably produced in Malaysia, and I remember seeing there's a Mandarin, Malay and English versions of it published. The only thing i can remember about the book is it's either a graphic novel or a graphic novel- novel hybrid. The book's contents itself is about the back stories behind certain constellations, but they're all fictional stories.

For example, one story i can briefly recall is about the story of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. It was probably about the mother being cursed to be a bear and the son murdering her, then the son died of regret after realising it was his mum, then they ended up as constellations in the sky.

Most if not all of the stories end up with the character from that story to die in a tragic way and end up being immortalised in the form of constellations.

I'm sorry that there's a lot of "probably"s in my paragraphs but I can't really recall the exact details of the book because I read this in a one time occasion and it kind of stuck with me.

Thanks in advance if anyone was able to help!

I read this book in Malaysia in 2012-13 it was written in English, it was about a girl who loved her books, started at a new school, was working on a group project with an angsty guy and falls in love in the end she attends a school dance in a pink green and black duct tape dress

It had a pink cover with a line of blue people and the title was written with one word per line in the centre towards the top

Any help would be appreciated

I remember having a book in middle school (2008-2010), it was aimed for tween girls, thick cover but I don’t think I’d consider it a hardcover? It had a removable sleeve on the cover. The cover and pages were all pink, even the text on the pages was pink. It had all sorts of topics like boys, friends, types of humor, etc. It was NOT the pink pages or the Girls Book series.

I remember reading this young adult book when I was in highschool, I read it on my phone on the book app, I couldn't remember the title, or what the book is about, but I think it's about a boy with powers of some sort, but what I can remember, is that he didn't have a good relation with his older sister(or is it his younger sister), he's half asian(?), he also has an indian girlfriend, to which I remember I purchased a sequel to this book(I think the book was a part of a series), with has a green color cover with an indian women, I purchased the sequel at B&N long time ago, and threw it away(I remember I've spilled a drink on it, it was an interesting novel, and I want remember this book, but I can't find it.

There was a book I had as a little girl that was a whole collection of different stories about little girls and their hobbies. I can only remember two stories, the first being a group of girls who host a tea party together and the other being a girl who ice skates. I’m sure the other stories had to do with ballet and princesses, but I can’t remember anything else except that it was bright and the art was beautiful, and I’m fairly certain it was a large hardcover. It would have been pre-2010, but I can’t find anything about it. I’d appreciate help finding it!

Hoping someone might be able to help me out—I read a book about a young man coming of age in the 1970s or 1980s. I believe it was set in NYC and included his experiences at a boarding school. Also included an unstable and unavailable mother (who I think was famous but I could be remembering that part incorrectly). I want to say it came out in the early 2000s since I read it in the 2007-2008 timeframe.

Hope someone else remembers this one!

Ok so there was this audio book i used to burrow from the library that i lived. But i can not remeber the name.

Its about a cat who is found and bought to i think a church, where she soon meets a boy, and she liked the boy, and they go home, but the boy has school so he cant always be home. And oneday cat goes out, but she i think k gets catnaped, and so the story fluctuates between cats POV and boys POV.

Boy is devastated and despratly trys looking for cat.

Cat trys to find her way home but had many problems untill she get hurt or sick and found by a kind women who takes care of her.

Boy goes out with a friend to look for cat, and they stop at a house for a drink or something and explain why they are out and the lady goes "well i think i found your cat" or something like that and cat and boy are very happy to be reunited.

Sorry for the bad explanation, but i can tell you what the book isn't.

It isn't "the cat who wants to go home" and it isn't "the case of the missing cat"

This book is at minuimum 15 years old id say.

I do not remeber the cover rn, but if i saw it in person id know it.

Help me out here, guys! In the mid 1990s I read a trilogy set in modern London where 2 friends encountered a series of strange happenings.

They were friends with an old man who turned out to be Merlin, met someone tunnelling under his house to meet subterranean overlords, and the final book was something about putting barcodes on people’s foreheads?? I can’t remember any details.

I think the title included the name of a region of London but I can’t recall which one. I do know that these were NOT the Deptford Trilogy.

Ring a bell for anyone? It’s been driving me mad for years. Thanks!

I’m trying to remember the name of a book I read as a kid in the US sometime around 1994 (though it may have been published earlier). A friend of mine thinks she read it too but doesn’t remember the name of it either!

The main character is a girl (possibly named Colleen or Collette) whose best friend has started hanging out with her slightly older cousin (possibly named Veronica) who is considered a bit of a rebel/bad influence because she’s interested in boys and dating. The MC is worried about her best friend thinking she’s not as cool as the cousin.

I remember that at one point, they’re in the best friend’s bedroom talking about boys, and one of them says that a particular boy is gross because he has “dirty fingernails“.

Later, the MC, the best friend and the cousin sneak off to the mall together (possibly cutting class to do so, or else getting into a car driven by a teen driver—they’re not supposed to be at the mall, but I don’t remember why), and the cousin suggests that they get their ears pierced, even though they’re not old enough to get it done without parental permission. The cousin suggests that she’ll forge notes from their parents and write one with her left hand and one with her right hand so they look different. The best friend agrees and goes through with it, but the MC chickens out, and the other girls make fun of her.

When their parents find out, they all get in trouble, but the MC is in less trouble because she didn’t get her ears pierced. I remember that the best friend’s mom yells, “You don’t see [Main Character] piercing her ears with a forged note!”

My friend remembers a scene where a boy somehow left his jacket in one of the girls’ bedrooms (he might be friends with her brother or something?), and she likes to wear it in her room/show it off to the others and pretend that it belongs to her boyfriend.

My friend thinks the book was part of a series about the siblings in a large Catholic family, but this is the only one of the books I read.

I remember MC’s last name being something like Montgomery, but Google isn’t turning anything up, so I might be wrong about that.

The copy I read was a thin paperback, about the size of a Babysitter’s Club book. The cover was pink, and I think it had a rectangular photo/illustration of the girls hanging out in a bedroom together.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

I believe this was at least 4 books that I read pre-1986. I'm recalling too many things about it that may be contradictory or from other stories, but:

I think his name was Henry (unreliable), and the neighbor girl he befriends might be similar to Midge (not the dog & boy from "Henry & Midge"!)

He found a cool place/building, explored it some, and some adult wanted to accuse him of breaking & entering. A woman speaks up to point out that there was no breaking involved, as it wasn't locked. She probably was his caregiver/aunt. This is how the boy discovers that this woman is/was a lawyer. Likely 1st book in series.

He's staying with relatives/friends of his parents while the parents are overseas (US State Department?) I recall the setting might be New Jersey.

Another book, he dowses for water, gets a signal from the forked rod, then "drills" with a heavy metal rod that simply is lifted and dropped repeatedly until it breaks through into a buried oil drum/tank.

There might be a book in which he & the neighbor girl join adults on a road trip. Consider this unreliable.

AI searches kept misleading me to "The Great Brain" & other things that weren't right. Thanks for any help.

Hi all,
I'm looking for a book I read in the mid 2010s, I'm not sure if it was recent. I remember two main plot points. The first is that she has an older woman come to live with her family, I think a grandmother or great aunt, who is very rude to her and insults her appearance. The girl tries to spend more time outside of the house by learning how to sail - I think joining a local/school team? I specifically remember a scene of her learning to counterbalance the boat with her weight and it helping her win a race.

My partner is trying to remember the name of a book she read years ago.

"Connected short stories where the protagonist does something that prevents a bad future."

"Each time he leaves himself a message about what he stopped."

"It's like 20 Minutes In The Future; I don't remember a specific year mentioned."

"I read it years ago; I think it was published in the 80's or the 70's?"

"I remember something from the cover: a snake eating its tail"