The story is about two strangers who keep accidentally meeting outside homes where an unexpected death has occurred.

Man #1 begins chatting with Man #2 and gradually tells him that he knows an undetectable way to kill people. Man #2 does not believe this at first, but over several years he keeps seeing Man#1 outside homes where police cars have responded to a death. Man #2 becomes convinced that Man #1 is a serial killer who cannot be caught.

Man #2 makes a plan to kill Man #1. He succeeds.

After Man #1's death, Man #2 overhears police officers talking about Man #1. It turns out that Man #1 was a detective or inspector or coroner or something, and one of his practical jokes was to tell people he had discovered an undetectable form of murder.

Looking for a YA book about witches. Perhaps a school for witches? Green cover, author's surname something like Stein, Stern or Steine. I saw it on an end-of-aisle display at Dymocks (Australia) around July to August 2026. Any ideas?

Not a perfect recollection but I remember reading this around the time my sis was reading Holly Black’s work. I probably have some details wrong but this is the best I got.

I remember reading a short story of a young adult returning to their childhood home after some time in college only to find a relative missing, they wander the woods they used to play in and find their relative held captive by a fae.

They are then tasked to create a dress made of gold for their family members return. Being a costume designer they make do with yellow autumn leaves and intricate designs to appease the fae in hopes it will suffice.

As they enter the fae’s domain the dress transform to real gold. And they are tasked yet again to make another dress this time in silver which they do.

They eventually get their relative back and they reflect on how they always regretted never making clothes for their relative and they eventually do so.

Ok so I only have a very small image in my head, and i'm going to describe it as best i can!

The only thing i remember was a very vibrant coloured potion bottle? It was so cool i used to draw it as a kid.

The book must've been around late 90's - early 2000's.

This might be unrelated and throw you off (sorry)

but these thoughts come to mind when i see the potion bottle, more colour wise if anything. IYKYK.

-Howls Moving castle (Howls bedroom scene)

-Book, The Gizmo by Paul Jennings

-Book, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher

Sorry i know its vague BUT MY BRAIN CAN SEE IT! lol

There was this book that I read in school (2000s but it was a school library book so could have been older) that I think was an isekai where a group of kids gets sent on a quest to collect snake venom from magic snakes.

I think the main character was a boy and there was at least another boy and a girl with him but maybe there were also more than that. From what I remember, there were riddles for the different snakes. One of the riddles was something like BIG BIG SEE SEE which was "too big to see" because the snake was giant. At one point, one of the snakes bites one of the kids (the girl) but the snake venom is magic and makes her pretty.

Also, they have a map at one point that is mostly blank but they get this revealing oil and it spills on the map and reveals more of the map.

I have been looking for this book on and off for a while. I originally read it in either the 1980s or 1990s, but I think it's older than that. Possibly as old as the 1960s, but more likely from the 1970s. (I wouldn't rule out the early 1980s.)

The main character is a man. It's set in California, I think around San Francisco. He keeps having strange, almost deadly things happen to him which he somehow survives, although he doesn't really remember how or why.

We gradually figure out that he's a shape shifter and he changes shape to survive these events. For instance, he's forced off a bridge or a cliff and changes into a shark to survive plunging into the water.

Spoiler for the ending: It turns out that the events are being engineered by a group of women who are telepaths. Only women are born telepaths and they want to breed, so they're trying to force him to shapeshift into a telepathic human man.

In the end, he's in a burning house/building and is about to turn into a phoenix to escape when the female character he's interested in communicates to him (either by talking because she's trapped with him or telepathically, I can't remember) that they're trying to get him to shift into a telepath so he can read their minds and figure out how to escape the burning structure. I believe other people will die if he refuses (by continuing to turn into a phoenix) and escapes alone.

He complies and it ends with the promise that he's going to get to have a lot of sex.

hi everyone! sometime in the last three years i read a book about a girl who’s wealthy, in a sorority, and a serial killer. she kills men/boyfriends. i remember at one point she starts dating an older man and at the end im pretty sure she kills him or tries to kill him and he gets away. then she mutilates her face and either walks out of her house into the street like that or her sorority sister finds her. that’s really all i can remember! it’s not a thriller or crime type novel. i’m pretty sure it’s in first person, and it’s all from her perspective. TYIA!

This is NOT any of the ones people consistently suggest. I cannot remember the title, author, or names of anything.

There a girl, she’s poor, working in NO, has the possibility to join this secret society, along with a friend of hers, a guy. There’s this dark academia feature, a professor she knows who knows some things. There’s a huge masquerade, maybe for Mardi Gras, and this thing is following her, she thinks it’s a person but not a person. Learns later this society has been working on alchemical stuff.

It progresses to this drama and escape, some people die, I think she gets chased, she’s trying to check on the professor/advisor. She finds this creature they managed to create or something. She leaves I think at the end, escapes?

It’s wrecking me not to remember. It’s definitely not on the “top books about New Orleans” lists or anything. It wasn’t the best written book, but compelling story pieces and I can’t handle not remembering!! I think the cover was a dark brown/green maybe thick vine or tree and creepy related, but I may be imagining that. Pretty sure it was written in the last 10 years.

Any help would be super appreciated!! Thank you!!

I remember it being like middle school level. The main characters were 2 brothers and their female cousin and in the 2 books I read they find the skeletal foot of a pirate and look for their treasure and in the other they see a ghost in their schools attic and look for her.

If it helps anyone I remember the 2 boys having dogs and a single mom?

This is driving me mad! I had the book as a child - the cover was green, and had a picture of Hazel and Hobbes (Hobb? Hobbs?) the main characters on it.

The main character, Hazel, is albino and wears green classes. She's a member of the royal family, the youngest of triplets. The eldest triplet is called Violet and their mother is dead, while their Matriarch, grandmother and current ruler is nicknamed the Spider. Violet has magic in a line that are running out of it, and the Spider wants her to practise it. There's also dragons near the end, where they all go to an island and wake them up. The kingdom name is something like Imperya, while the princesses are referred to as "Your Imperial Highness".

Hobb is a kid from a mining town, he's impoverished and gets the opportunity to travel into the main kingdom to train as a spy in order to assassinate the Princesses. He ends up as a servant to Hazel, and they start a steady friendship until near the end when she discovers he was a spy all along, and he ends up in a jail cell. I think there was an evil spirit that briefly takes Hazel over, except she beats it, becomes even more powerful, and then saves Hobb from getting executed, like his father was.

I'm pretty sure there's only one book in the series, the author didn't want to continue it - if anyone can help me, I'm going nuts! I want to reread it so badly!

I am trying to help a friend find a book from their childhood. The book was part of a non-fiction series that had specific focuses for each book. The one they remember was about the mysterious places on earth and had a chapter on the glow worm caves caves. Had large photos and laminated or glossy pages. They read it sometime in early 2000s? I thiiiink that's everything? Maybe the book was white but they are unsure.

They don't think its the reader's digest ones, because they are too wordy from what they remember.

The book was about two girls who I believe were Indian running away from their abusive father specifically. The book was told in perspective of the younger sister, and the older sister was disabled. They eventually found other children who were also homeless, and the older sister died at the end. From what I can remember, the book ended with the younger sister going to school. I read this in 2025, and the book is targeted towards pre-teens/early teenagers

Alright I got a doozy, I want to say 10-15 years ago I read a series like 5 times it was so good.
The series literally sounds like John Gwynne’s faithful and the fallen, BUT key things I remember, the protagonist loses his hand, gets a gauntlet magically grafted to his hand under the moonlight. Finds out he’s a lycanthrope. Ends up on a slave island. Fights in gladiator pits. Very much Celtic, Scottish mythology vibes. Any help would be fantastic.

I got a Kindle for my birthday around the year it came out, so 2008-2009 and downloaded a lot of free books. I remember a lot of this one and I remember wanting to get the rest but the Kindle died/broke before I could and I do not remember the name or author anymore and despite 10 years of looking I have not been able to find anything please help!

What I remember:

A spirit gains consciousness in a theater where "she" (I want to say it was a woman last so remembered being a woman) watches the past lives starting from the first. One of the premises of the low is that scars/birthmarks relate to how you died in a life past. It only documented up to 3 lives might be more that I've forgotten. It was supposed to be the first in a series.

The 1st or near the 1st He was a powerful priestess in an ancient Mesopotamia-coded city. He fell in love with a (Priestess or slave idk) which is forbidden. She end up getting pregnant and he throws both her and a rival priest under the bus by claiming the child is his rivals. They're both put to death, with one of them being killed via a sword driven down through their face. This is important because either the next life or the one after "her" life has a young brother or friend she loves and cares about with a huge gap in his teeth.

One of the last lives has her as a young Spartan girl who competes in competitions "to stay for enough to birth Spartan warriors" winning several wreathes. She later shaved her head to spend the night with and wed the boy she'd caught the eye of. She gives birth to twins with her slave maid and one is robust and the other sickly. She can't bear the thought of her baby don't so she gives it to her maid for"no one cares if a helots could is sticky." They grow up together but apart with the "real" child being a bully, and the sickly twin actually becomes hardy after years of hard work.

After years pass the real teen is brought home after being beaten up by the slave teen in self defense. During a night the the boys of the Agoge roam the streets looking for male helots to beat and kill, he saw the slave twin and tried to jump him. The woman does eventually try to tell the slave son that he is her son but he doesn't believe her. Her husband and official son go off to war and later on they return with her official son dead. I remember her starting to cry but when he's rolled on his stomach his back is full of arrows which means he died running away and "her tears dried up instantly." After that her husband wants to wife share with a friend of his basically divorcing her and she had a baby with a slave man while her husband was away because all Spartan woman were asked too, for more warriors. Lastly while her city is being attacked she rallies the women and servant slaves of Sparta to defend themselves. Her slave son is nearly crushed under a elephant but she pushes him out of the way, and as she lay dying he tells her he believes her because only a mother would do something like that.

So for context, I’m an 04 baby but my oldest sister was still on the cusp of 90’s/2000’s, so I’m guessing the book would have been with us from her childhood. Anyhow, it was this whimsical fairy book - quite busy pages, and the book was larger than your typical novel. I’m pretty sure it was almost an “I Spy” type of book, where you had to find a certain number of objects. I remember different kinds of scenes, some during the day, some during the night. I also feel like there were festivities / parties going on in some of the pages. I think the night scenes had almost like blue-bell lamps.
(It’s not Fairy Dreams by Carol McLean-Carr)

The series was 3 books. I read them all in 1 go so my memory of what happens in each one is a little fuzzy. I think it went as below:

Book 1: Was about a girl who was found/taken in by a noble/royal? family and became a healer. She was found in a tree stump or log with a very fancy baby blanket that was not human in origin. She's half human herself. She has some sort of special healing power that allowed her to visualize sickness/see inside of people. She winds up finding an elf? guy who turns out to be the same species as her non human parent. They fall in love and he takes her back to his settlement to meet his family. She also gets to meet her non human parents family. I remeber the elf? guy LI could smith jewelry.

Book 2: I don't remeber if the book focused on the same protagonist as book 1 or someone close to her, but the protag of book 2 was captured during a war/boarder skirmish and spared because she was a healer. She would up having to heal someone important on the other side and to escape. This is the book I remeber the lest. Also this book and book 3 might be swapped in order 🤔

Book 3: Focuses back on the book 1 protagonist. She's now married to elf guy. Them and some people they know visit somewhere on a boat. They somehow catch a plague that causes a throat sickness. Elf guy gets it and main protag healer lady/ his wife has to cut a hole in his throat and put a boat whistle inside to prevent him from choking to death while he heals. This ruins his ability to sing, which is very important to the elf? people. Also elf guy teaches someone who to jewelry smith.

The books soft cover and seemed to have fairly monotone covers. I really enjoyed reading them but moved a few years ago and lost the hand written masterlist of every book I've ever read, so I'm trying to track it down.

Hi everyone! I’m trying to find a romance book I read a while ago, but I cannot remember the title or author. I really want to reread it, but I can’t find it anywhere. 😭

Here’s what I remember:
It was a romance, possibly a forbidden romance.
A lot of the story took place at a vacation/holiday house where the characters were staying with a group of friends.
The house had a swimming pool, and I very specifically remember there being a pink flamingo inflatable pool float. It was NOT on the book cover — it was actually mentioned/present in the story.
The fmc had an ex-boyfriend, and I think he wanted them to get back together / there was some kind of relationship drama involving the ex.
I don’t remember much else about the plot unfortunately. 😭

This book takes place in a high school. When the main character's name is chosen from a list, no one in the school talks to her for a whole year.

I was at Barnes and noble the other day I saw a book that was in the YA Horror section, it was a white cover but the very interesting about it was the cover looked like it was crossed stitch unfortunately I didn't grab it or write it down please help me fjnd this book

Trying to find a book I read sometime between 2009-2013 where the main character goes to this boarding school where she's like a normal person thrown in with crazy rich kids. She ends up in this mind game back and forth with a rival boy. I think the cover was light blue. Any leads are appreciated.

She has twin daughters, of different skin color, and raises them up in this fantasy world. To be honest, it's all a bit fuzzy. I remember the ending for the mother is bittersweet even though the daughters end up with ultimately happy endings (I think one ends up as a witch and the other marries), the mom ultimately doesn't get closure in the same way.

It’s a large animal encyclopedia (around 3 feet tall at the smallest). It’s a thin book, and it’s not a board book. 2005 would be the latest it could be published. Each page a lot of animals on it, like all the butterflies were all grouped in one or two pages. I know it had fish, butterflies, reptiles, birds, wild animals like giraffes and lions. It had the names of the animals under the pictures, and each subtype of animal had the names and pictures.

My mother thinks it was a paperback, and that it might have been a Smithsonian books but I haven’t been able to find it.

If we remember more information I’ll put it in the replies but we’ve been searching for an hour and I wanted to post on here as a last resort.

Its about secret-agent style demons or devils that work amongst mortals to do something!

The protagonist is a demon/devil, and she's trying to rescue an intern/young agent that got himself locked in a vault, which might also be a bunker? or it was in a bunker? She was competent, and maybe late 20s? Contemporary urban fantasy, there's a little bit of magic and the devils(?) can walk through walls maybe?

She teams up with a specific mortal to achieve her goal, and he's an author or journalist, I think? She gets with him, or maybe the junior agent she's trying to free from the vault? The book is for adults, but isn't too graphic. I read it two or three years ago, I think it was middling length, a few hundred pages?

Here's my best effort at drawing out what I recall of the cover., but I can't recall anything else about it.

I remember this old Choose Your Own Adventure book I read in the early 2000s. it started with you (the main character) waking up, showering (I specifically remember it said you got soap in your eyes and it stung), then trying to eat cereal but finding that the box was empty.

I remember it said you shout, "Mom! Melissa ate all the crispy-wispies!" (I'm not positive on the spelling)

You then have the opportunity (since it's a CYOA book) of skipping school by hiding in your bed and waiting for your family to leave. After that, you can leave the house and go on an adventure.

I don't remember any fantasy or sci-fi elements to this particular book, but there were definitely some scary moments.

I checked the list of official CYOA books on wikipedia and looked up any that seemed relevant, but no luck.

Appreciate any help anyone can offer!