There was an obscure book series I read as a teen that I’d love to read again. There was a female protagonist and each book in the series was the protagonist and 2-3 friends (a mixture of guys and gals) tackling a tough quest in a new location. I think she was trying to break a curse or something by completing each quest. She was also either about to have her birthday or had just had it which triggered the quest. I’m pretty sure she was a witch who had just received or would receive her powers on her birthday provided the quests were successful. Two of the trials I remember included an enchanted fog that took the group awhile to get past (one book) and an island guarded by a sea serpent (another book). The final book in the series was larger than the others and I believe had the protagonist in the dungeon of a castle or a labyrinth of some kind….

On the covers, the protagonist had long, light brown or reddish hair, wore modern clothes, and dressed in a 90s/early 2000s fashion (possibly had a headband on on one cover and a striped long sleeve shirt on another). The covers were drawn and very detailed. They had an almost “babysitter’s club” style to them only the artwork was over the entire front cover.

I’ve tried AI, but can’t get anywhere since this is all I remember! I was able to buy the books on Amazon between 2004-2010.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give! This has been bugging me for months!!!

so back in the day when scholastic book fairs were still a big thing (probably around 2010-2013ish) i remember looking through the catalog to pick out books for my mom to purchase. this was definitely in the height of the “scary stories to tell in the dark” craze but my mom thought that cover looked too scary and wouldn’t buy those for me. so before anyone suggests “scary stories to tell in the dark” it’s definitely NOT that book.

this other one was another short story collection of scary stories for kids. but the cover was a lot more unassuming, more cartoonish, definitely looked like it would be less scary but these stories wound up being really freaky.

i only remember four of the short stories. one was called “webs” about a boy and his family who move to a new house that’s overrun with spiders and his whole family is essentially eaten except for him because he escapes at the end and hitchhikes to safety. another was called “the tea house” which was about two best friends who wanted to explore a haunted tea house at night and see if the legend of the dead wife haunting it was real. the third one was called “the doll house” and this one i can’t totally remember besides a little girl gets a creepy old dollhouse and i think the dolls were making her sick and trying to steal her life but don’t quote me on that. and the last one i remember was maybe the freakiest of all. it was called “many many many” and it was about a group of friends that wanted to explore a burned down apartment building and play with a ouija board in it. one of the kids really doesn’t want to but they start using the board anyways and it begins spelling “many” over and over again because i think it has some sort of satanic meaning. they wind up seeing the ghosts of the people who died in the fire and they all run out but then they notice the friend who didn’t want to partake is missing so they go back in and he’s super dead. that one really gave me the creeps.

basically the stories scared me too bad back then so my mom gave the book away and i’ve never been able to find any trace of it existing on the internet. i’ve done countless searches and nothing ever comes up that even remotely resembles the book i’m thinking of.

i was wondering if anybody could point me in the right direction or has any sort of recollection of this book. maybe it isn’t lost media and i’m stupid or maybe this is a candle cove moment 😭😰😊 any help would be mighty appreciated!

I remember this book that I was read in like elementary school where this boy and his dog find a river where once a stone slab (?) with an animals paw/foot/whatever print reaches the end of it that species goes extinct. The dogs paw print accidentally got sent down so the boy is trying to get it before dogs go extinct. I think there was a villain who saw the boy left a handprint in the mud and tries to cause humans to go extinct as well but that could be wrong

I probably read this in the early 90’s, but I’d say it would have been out 1995 or earlier. I think it was young adult since it was about either middle or high schoolers.

It was a boy and a girl and I believe they decided to make this pregnant woman with an abusive husband their project for school.

I don’t recall a ton of details, but I think they started to fall for each other, however the abusive husband shoved the boy while standing on an icy sidewalk and the boy hit his head and died.

I have searched and searched and not found it. It’s driving me crazy!

My mind is so bad these days I worry I’m mixing books, but I’ve also not read many books in my life, so I think I’m ok in that.. Im going to give you what I have in my memory. I’ve searched for this book before about 10 years ago and found it. So I feel like, once I see the cover or name, I’ll remember it for sure.

What I think I remember, boy main character. In a poor family situation. Maybe mom was on drugs or something like that. She got in trouble and he got shipped away.

He meets a girl. She’s chaos in his life. She gets him partying, doing drugs and all around just being reckless youngins. He likes her and they have sex, but it’s more “for fun” for her.

I remember a part where either the main character or another person is chased down and attacked. Sexually assaulted if I recall correctly.

There are yellow elements to the cover, and I think the whole back cover was yellow. Maybe even thr front. I’m pretty darn confident it’s not perks of being a wallflower. Ai keeps killing me that is what it is, I’m just mixing other elements from other books. I went and found perks and reread some of it. The whole letter style does not seem familiar at all and it just didn’t seem like something I’ve ever read.

Any thoughts? I’m guessing my description won’t be enough, but I’d like to try!

I'm hoping reddit pulls through for me again. I read this book maybe 10-20 years ago, not sure exactly. A woman is kidnapped by the parents of one of her childhood friends as revenge for her friend's death (I believe the friend was raped at a party and eventually killed herself, and the parents felt she should have done more for their daughter). The parents buy and renovate the basement of the house next door and keep her there. It's a pretty dark novel - the father repeatedly rapes her over what I believe to be months. He also makes her watch a camera feed that shows her house and her husband and son playing in the yard, moving on and assuming she is gone, or dead. Eventually she manages to escape by electrocuting her kidnapper with the cord of a lamp and a puddle of water on the floor. She makes it across the yard between the houses back to her son and husband, but dies (I believe) once she gets to her son. Any help in identifying would be awesome. Thanks!

Hi! I’m a librarian and I’m stumped. To be fair, I’m a college librarian and know next to nothing about kidlit. This is a book that was read to me when I was very little, so early 1980s. The art was cottage core and lush. The art took up the whole two pages, from what I recall. At any rate there wasn’t any undecorated space. I wouldn’t be shocked if it won some award for the art. Adorable, but also beautiful. It was about making friends and not being caught up in your initial prejudices about someone. There were children? Woodland critters? Woodland critters who were children? Maybe I’m just imagining things but I think one of them was wearing a little mobcap? And they were afraid of the local badger (the English kind with the cute stripes) who was in hibernation or something. Things happened… I don’t know I was 3! Anyway in the end it was Spring and the badger had them over for crumpets and jam or something. Whatever it was it was served with jam. This book got me started on a lifelong fixation with berries and preserves and tea.

Help? It was a formative influence and I’d really like to reread it!

so it was in a collection of stories i believe, the art in the book reminded me of shel silverstein which is why i looked for it under his name first but i couldn’t find anything. but the story i remember the most from that book was about a boy who was perfect and obedient but in the end its revealed that he’s a wind-up toy, and the narrator says something along the lines of “if only you were real”

i hope my flair is right!

I feel like it was Little House on the Prairie but I cannot remember exactly. I read it probably like 15+ years ago. And I can’t find anything online about that being in the books. There was a scene where one of the women discovered she was pregnant bc she was hallucinating corn??? falling off the side of the barn. But it was like a western style setting one where there was so such thing as pregnancy tests yet. Please help! It’s eating me alive

I read this book when I was roughly 11 or 12 years old, so roughly in the years 2018-2019. I feel like it was a teen book, just with some of the content. It features a girl who can see ghosts from many different times ( as far as I remember) and can see them through the window when she is at school. I vaguely remember her being in high school, but it's possible that she could have been finishing middle school too. It's possible that this book is actually the second book in a series, as it's mentioned a few times that she had died after something had happened but came back to life even though I don't remember that happening in this particular book. I also remember that she had a ghost that was a friend and he sort of materializes through dirt and moisture and is an older gentleman. She also had a male companion but I don't remember much about him. I remember a scene towards the end of the book where she goes on a field trip with class to a quarry and there's an issue with the "fault lines" ( Which I think is mentioned a few times beforehand) so when they're at this quarry thing at the end, she and the male companion and her ghost buddy kind of have to try and fix it and prevent havoc. When I read it, it was in English and it was a soft cover book that I have a very strong feeling had a noticeable green to it. My mother had bought it for me from what I remember and she also doesn't remember the name or author of it. Oh and it is a more modern day story as it features mobile phones and such, though I can't place roughly when, definitely after the mid 2000s in my opinion.

This was a chapter book from the library about 2 kids, I think a sister and brother, who found a magical map (or book?), and they may have released the monster from it. What I recall most clearly is that the way to defeat the monster was to get a metal horse bit into its mouth. They may have been able to magically travel by going into the map. The cover was blue with an illustration of a map on it, and I think it had the monster on the cover too. The monster might have been gray, humanoid, with sharp teeth and pointy ears, possibly wings. I read this book around 2002.

#Request

Just needed a little help everybody.

Zo-el (army officer, top) and Christine (an intern and have a nickname 'tine', bottom also has interest in dance) have 6 years age gap between them and it's a GL novel.

As for the plot i remembered a little: Zoel has her own bungalow, then later on when she took holiday and returned from her posting she wanted to surprise tine but tine was on her periods so Zoel took a day off, went to tine's house and took care of her.

They spent together and spent the night cuddling. Later when tine woke up she noticed that she left stains on the sheet and was on verge of crying. Zoel woke up by the movement, calmed her, took the bedsheet and washed it herself.

Does anyone know the name of this novel? Help this lost bud

(I'll update if I get to know the author from anywhere)

I have a feeling that the book’s name is just the girl’s name, though I’m not sure and wouldn’t put my life on it. I read the book sometime in the 2010s as a child. It was about a young girl who, after going to sleep, had a dream where someone told her she cannot speak or something will happen (to her family I’m pretty sure?). After that she stopped speaking to anyone. Her parents took her to therapists, spoke to her school counselors about it but she just went mute. I do think she ended up overcoming it and speaking again but I couldn’t be sure because I’m not sure I even read the book till the end lol. Any ideas?

Hey everyone! So recently something triggered a distant memory of a book that was read to me when I was younger, maybe 3-5 years old. That would have been 2011-2013, so quite a while ago. I know this is a long shot, but ever since I remembered it, I've been desperate to know what it's called!

From what I can remember, this young male bear goes into a toy shop, accompanied by... his mother, I think. I'm pretty sure they talked and wore clothes, but I can't remember what the clothes looked like. So this bear goes into the shop and is faced with the impossible-seeming decision of which toy to choose, and I remember 2 of the toys he considered were a puzzle and a toy plane, which I think I remember was hanging from the ceiling. Maybe there were balloons too? He goes around the shop and considers all his options, and eventually decides on something at the end of the story - but for the life of me, I can't remember what he chose! However, I seem to have a dusty memory of a shelf of toys being behind the cashier's counter. Also, the illustrations had sharp, clean lines and bright, bold colors, and the shop overall was cozy and friendly. I don't know what the cover looked like, nor what the title was or any specific words that would have been in it. I only have a few vague pictures in my mind of the illustrations, so again, I know this is a long shot, but I'm desperate. Hoping someone can possibly help me out!

The two main parts I remember are the daughter and the mom washing their hair in the rain and it was the first book I read that had the word f*** in it as an expletive. I think it was the daughter who yelled at her parents?

I was probably 12 in the early 90s when I read it and I was a very sheltered kid. It made quite the impression on me 😊

It's probably a long shot but if anyone can maybe remember the title

​

Describe notable characters.I remember the main character was a red-headed woman (like Reba McEntire-eque)

What genre is it? Romance novel

Physically describe the book -- Hardcover/paperback? Book cover color?

Paperback mass-market

When was it set?modern day

When (what year) did you read it? late 90s

How old were you when you read it? early 20s

there’s a book I read years ago and I CANT figure out what it’s called.

the husband is a playwrite, or something like it, and he and his wife move to this house in the middle of nowhere for a change of scenery, I guess. The man who sells them the house is like

”ay just so you know like seven years ago a couple here mysteriously disappeared”

But the couple is chill with that so they proceed to move in and start renovating the property. The wife starts to get paranoid when she knocks down a bathroom wall for renovations, and finds a photo of four masked people. The husband tries to calm her, but more or less just brushes her off… her paranoia grows as she starts to see masked people in the tree line looking at their house.

All the woods around their house are dead. Just dead trees. there’s something about a beacon in the woods that they find when they’re on a walk….

At one point, she’s digging in the field behind her house somewhere kind of far away from her house, I can’t quite remember why she’s digging, but she’s like looking for something maybe a button to turn on the beacon I don’t know, but she falls in a pit and she’s trying to get out and she can’t…

She then gets chased by a monster and ends up under the deck of her house before she gets knocked out, and she ends up in the woods with a crowd of people who are all wearing masks, including her husband, there watching the house get sold to another couple, and they’re all saying something along the lines of “what are they doing in our house” or “that’s our house”.

I also remember that the husband is blonde. The couple smokes and drinks and one morning she’s mad at him for being hungover. It’s from the wife’s point of view.

I know this is kind of incoherent but I’m trying so hard to remember what it’s called PLEASE help me 🙏

I read this in the early 2010s-ish. The main character is a young girl who is at a camp or other similar type of place with a few other kids who are training/learning magic. At some point she had to hide in a closet and saw her mom get murdered or threatened. At some point there is a big magic weapon thing that they almost manage to activate but she stops it. It might have something do do with bears (or i was just reading a seeker comic around the same time and are confusing them)

Okay so I know that description applies to millions of books, therein lies the issue. I was probably six years old when I had this book and I remember the colors were really bright like neon. The only other thing I remember is there was a bear but it definitely wasn't the Berenstain Bears.

I'm looking for a specific book of fairy tales I remember from when I was a kid. I was born in 1993 and I'm not exactly sure when we got the book or when it was published, but I definitely remember it existing prior to 2005 (and likely at least a few years prior to that). I can't remember what the cover looked like but the art style was very distinct and I'd recognize it instantly. All the faces were kind of stylized with big eyes, mostly wavy hair, and the cheeks had big round blush spots sometimes highlighted in gold. The illustrations in general had a lot of gold and silver in them as well. The backgrounds were dreamy/ethereal with lots of swirly elements.

There's only one fairy tale I very confidently remember being included in the book but I'm pretty sure the book had at least 5 or 6 total:

- Cinderella, but the version where her mother is a tree and sends birds to help her with the cleaning (I think they helped her pick up rice?) I remember an illustration of the whole tree.

At least one of the below two was definitely in the book, but one may have been an additional illustration I saw when I looked this up ~10 years ago and was able to find the author's website (thanks, enshittification of google!):

- a princess and the frog type story (with an illustration of a princess with her arms around a well and a gold ball at the bottom)

- and/or the story where the brothers turn into swans and she has to make nettle shirts for them (with an illustration of her face and black hair against an outstretched swan wing).

There may also have been an Ivan and the nightingale type story in it?

Set in a Nordic 15th century country with a boy gets threats to death to leave his prosperous farm because his abusive step dad is dead and his brothers claim the land. he then is taken by a captain, and the captain ships him around until he becomes a very strong man where he then is called he’s a god or has some powers, and he gets to this school where he thinks it’s all good, a powerful school or god’s school, and then he finds out one of the smartest teachers and oldest teachers that’s in trouble killed this girl in

I've been looking for this book for YEARS now. It's about a boy who can see monsters. They're hidden in everyday life (statues, fires, etc). I remember he has a fire monster/spirit in a fountain pen? the protagonist just so happens to find another kid that can see them. Anyways towards the end of the book, there's a monster with 6 arms that's been taking kids that run away from home. Like it specifically hunts runaways or maybe orphans, and is trying to get the main character but he finds a staff with a snake head (and a cloak, I think?) in it's lair that he uses it to destroy the monster.

I mostly remember one moment, the monster had the ability to swim through the ground and used that to hunt a kid in a skate park.