"I am trying to find the title of a realistic fiction paperback book that I read around the early 2010s. It was an older book (likely published in the 1990s or 2000s) that I found at a yard sale/swap meet.

The Characters: The protagonist is a teenage girl who is fiercely protective of her younger brother.
The Journey & Setting: They are traveling/on the run from a bad situation and head toward a coastal beach town. They move into a trailer park here, which is supposed to be their safe 'haven' or fresh start.
The Twist/Betrayal: The main character gets into a relationship/dynamic with a boyfriend figure. Near the end, she discovers a massive betrayal involving his lies or abuse.
The Climax: The little brother is intentionally absent/hidden away safely during the final confrontation. It ends with a dramatic, tense scene taking place outdoors where the main character holds the boyfriend at gunpoint.
It is a completely grounded, realistic fiction book—not a fast-paced or glossy detective thriller. I previously tracked down the title years ago but lost access to the email account where I saved it. It is not 'The Rules of Survival' by Nancy Werlin, 'If You Find Me' by Emily Murdoch, or 'The One Safe Place'."

I can barely remember any details about it. I think it had a beach setting. I have a picture of not even a full page to provided if asked

Witch series, read ~2014-15, English. Heroine is a 30-something “loser” who has a bad breakup, then finds out she has magical powers that run in her family. Her car is named “Purple People Eater.” She moves to (I think) London, opens a bakery/shop for witches, and gets caught in a love triangle (one guy is named Sebastian). Main conflict: she’s a magical heir/important family member and others want to usurp her or her family. Probably part of a series.

From what I remember it was in muted colors possibly black and white. It had envelopes and some other interactive parts. I read it around 2010-2011 in elementary school. It was set in a mansion and it was a mystery book.

I have been searching for this book series for so long and I still can’t find it. I wish I remembered more.

Not had luck other places, does anyone recognize this book? I listened to it on Spotify a handful of times and I thought I had it saved, apparently I do not.

Narrated by Will Wood, connected to Life In The World To Come but I don't recall how, it's like 4-5 chapters that are each very individual. One is a group of kids in a van, there's twins and siblings, they see a mushroom cloud and drive away from it, ending up in the desert. Another chapter is a lizard that's chasing a book and ends up discovering I guess the multiverse theory? Distinctly one chapter is a little kid playing pretend and summons an actual dragon

Those I'm certain are part of it. I believe one chapter was a liminal space Italian restaurant based loosely on an urban legend from some college kids (?).

If there is a better place to ask this please let me know! I've searched my listen history as much as I can, I've searched chats with friends bc I know I recommended it to quite a few people but I cannot for the life of me find the name anywhere

I know the title is so vague it’s insane but it’s the only part of the book I really remember! The main character was a vampire, and then had to return to her life in the 14th century to save her love right at the end. The cover was white and had thorns on it (much like every gothic romance novel in the 2010s!).

I remember the last chapter as he father summons her down to eat, and she responds with modern language and has to correct herself to speak as her original time period would’ve.

Story about a ghost businessman who rebuilds a full-sized steam train in a barn as a hobby.

Looking for a novel I borrowed from the library that was likely written before the 1990s (possibly 70s or 80s).

The Plot:

The protagonist is a businessman on a business trip. He takes a curve on a country road too quickly, crashes his car, and dies—though it takes him a long time to realize and accept that he is a ghost.

He wanders to a nearby house and meets a woman who lives there with multiple cats. They eventually fall in love.

A key rule of the afterlife shown is that she makes him tea, but neither can drink it because they are ghosts and cannot physically swallow it.

The woman's cats are very real and living. A local shopkeeper in the nearby town knows the house is haunted. Because the ghost woman can't buy things, the shopkeeper regularly delivers cat food to the property to keep the animals cared for.

The Train Engine: To give himself something to do with his infinite time, the businessman finds the rusted parts of a full-sized steam locomotive engine inside a massive barn on the property and spends his afterlife painstakingly rebuilding it just as a pastime.

I have been searching for this book for YEARS!!!!

This drives me nuts! This thicker book has multiple stories in it. Two I vividly remember were two cartoon stories about Mr. Pepper and tomato’s and then him painting his house rainbow.

There were other stories in it, but I can’t remember. I think some were even with real pictures. I miss this book! It was blue.

pretty sure the boy's name was charlie, but might be mistaken. i remember that his sister was younger than him, and he was very protective of her. it was sort of a mystery book at first, then kind of lightly horror as we find out that the mom in this alternate universe is stealing/eating their memories? i would have read it around 2012-2019. that's all i can remember of it rn unfortunately :(

ETA: just remembered that the book cover had a kid holding a red balloon on it in a sort of watercolor-y style?

I'm looking for a title and author of a book I read in the early 2000‘s in translation and must've been a couple decades old even then.

The story is set in the mid 20th century (The Famous Five vibe and clothes and technology/gear descriptions) in northern American wilderness, most likely in Canada.

The protagonist is most likely a pre-teen or maybe early-teen child, possibly a sister-brother duo, that embark on a short camping trip with their father. They travel in a canoe, until the accident happens, that renders the canoe unusable and the father incapacitated or possibly even fatally hurt.

The kids take refuge in an empty cabin and take advantage of the provisions stored there. They strive to brave the dropping temperatures and maintain a healthy and adequate diet. The plot thickens when an outlaw (or a couple of them) stumbles on the cabin and attempts to rob them. He takes all of the grease and flour in the cabin and leaves the kids to starve to death. They improvise with potatoes or maybe even chestnuts, I'm not sure, and they hunt small prey, so they survive. The outlaw returns and is startled to see them alive and well and suspects them of hiding some flour. When he learns of potatoes, robs even those. The kids are harassed by a hungry bear, and they decide to shoot him. They melt lead from pellets they use to shoot small prey and they make a big lead slug to hunt the bear. After they kill the bear, they use it for food. Don't remember how the story ends.

I started reading this book back in March but then accidentally deleted it from my phone, and for some reason, I cannot for the life of me remember the title. Here are the things I do remember:

• It's either the fourth or fifth book in a YA series about a boarding school for girls with special abilities

• Each book in the series focuses on a specific girl in a group that attends the school, and the book I'm looking for focuses on a girl called Seraphina, Serafina, Seraphine, or Serafine (it's one of those names, but I can't remember which) whose special ability is something like being able to see other people's emotions as colors/patterns.

• One of the other girls in the group that the series focuses on is called either Georgia or Georgie

• The boarding school trains the girls to be spies, as I remember Seraphina/Serafina/Seraphine/Serafine talking in the first chapter about a​ mission in the previous book where one of the girls either went missing or was captured by an enemy

• The series' name might be "Mrs/Miss (Name)'s School for Gifted Girls/Talented Young Ladies" or something along those lines.

The series that the book I'm looking for is in is NOT:

• Serafina by Robert Beatty

• Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

• Finishing School by Gail Carriger

• The Network by Katie Cross

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

​

It was by a male Canadian author who died. But there was a whole series of short stories. It used to come on the radio and he would read one. He did have physical books well.

it's a series of books about a girl with special powers, like witchy powers. I think 6 or 8 books, every book was really colorful and cute on the outside. the thing I remember most is that inside each book there was an insert, like a thinner little book bound in The end or beginning. it had different, glossier, more colorful pages and it was made to look like an old book with pictures and additional information about witche’s family or other things. it was related to the book but it wasn't part of the story. the first chapter of the first book opens with birds (geese or swans i think) flying in the sky and gossiping about what's new in the witch world.

I read them around 2012–2016 in Russian or Ukrainian, but I'm pretty sure it was translated from another language (maybe German or Swedish?)

can’t remebet any names at all :((. The books are about the life of young witch and she often fights with bad witches over some old book (I think). In the last book there is an ice or snow kingdom that might be on the cover. I read a few of them electronically but others I had hard copies, my mom gave them away and I’m desperately trying to remember other details. I think it’s meant for kids 8-13 by the way in was written. Also she lived with her aunts or female relatives that might’ve been hairdressers, but it’s all really vague in my memory…

I have really vague memories of this book I read. Many of these details may be wrong or possibly jumbled together from other forgotten books, but here's what i think I remember.

The story is about a woman who grew up in the West (US?). There is a recurring story, possibly a dream she has, about a man in a graveyard at midnight and his lover who is a ghost. The lover was killed by 'the party', whatever the ruling oppressive government was. Over the course of the novel we learn the man is her father and that he fled the country and brought them to the west. But the twist is her father was actually a party collaborator/important person and his lover was killed because he turned her in. Possibly because he was already married to protagonists mother and this was a way to hush up an unexpected pregnancy with the lover.

The protagonist also has a childhood friend who she keeps tabs on or somehow reconnects with in the present day. This childhood friend is an old crush who she still has a thing for. She has a dream (?) about going to meet him and it goes very badly and he has a dog who is very dangerous and threatens her. By the end of the book she does eventually make contact and has dinner at his house with him and his wife/girlfriend and it's very underwhelming.

Also i feel like there was something about shoes from when she was a child. And something about climbing over a wall, possibly with the crush, as a child.

Honestly this whole thing feels kinda like a fever dream as I write it out, but I heard something today that unlocked this forgotten memory and now I can't stop thinking about it.

I can't remember a whole lot about this book, just some scattered plot points, so here goes:

-It's a boarding school for girls in a standard, handmaids tale-ish society.

-Every night, mantras are piped into their rooms as they sleep, though I can't remember what they say.

-Theres a throwaway line about the bedrooms being kept uncomfortably warm? I think?

-Every morning, the girls are rated on their attractiveness, and I think the protagonist is either #1 or #2 in her class.

-The girls are being raised with the intention of marrying them off? To wealthy powerful people.

-One of the girls is scouted specially by a Very Powerful Man. The plot revolves around her attempts to not let this happen.

-unscouted girls are aged out, and taken downstairs to have their uteruses removed and become teachers at the same school

-I think there's themes of bulimia? Or at least one paragraph about it.

I think I read it around 2014-2015, but I don't remember it being new at the time.

Thank you for any insights at all!

i can’t rmr the name but rmr the story. it basically went where fmc need to hire protection or something so she and the mmc end up in the cabin in the woods. mmc job is to protect this assassin name aleksei (not our mmc) but aleksei was delayed so he ends up alone with the fmc in this cabin in the woods where they are laying low. mmc family is raised to protect aleksei family because they are like contract deleters or something. fmc is running from someone i think at the end they finally take her back to california when it’s over. i can’t rmr the name of the . i read it this year 2026

We had a book in my house when I was a kid and I don't know how it came to our possession. The story is a Jewish mom and her son go shopping for a new suit for Yom Kippur??. They leave at the crack of dawn collecting other boys from the neighborhood so they could all go buy new suits. She knew they had to be the first customers of the morning according to shopkeepers' superstition. Her son can't take his eyes off an expensive blue mohair suit.

I've tried web searches off and on but most Jewish children's stories on lists are from recent years and this book was old, approx from the 50s or 60s with the setting being maybe even pre WWII.

Thank you for any help.

I’m trying to remember a book from my youth. I think it was called city of brotherhood or badge of brotherhood something like that. Main detail I remember is the main characters romantic interest was a violin player. I think there might have been a protest or riot or something at the climax?

I read this book in school, I'm 22 and I probably read this between 11-15, so it was a book that was around in the 2010s. The protagonist was a teenage girl and she sneaks into this house and finds out something that's going on, then has to escape. The scene that is burnt into my memory is that she had to walk barefoot in the snow, and I think she counts her money at some point.

The main thing I have to go on is the cover was a shiny purple hardback and it was very short, around 100 pages.

I'm also from the UK if that helps, but I can't remember where the book was set, more just in case anyone else remembers it in their schools

Sorry if there isn't enough Information but this is killing me, thank you for everyone's time!

I'm looking for a childrens book about a brother and sister who were two hillbilly children living in the wild west. Their uncle brings home his girlfriend (possibly future wife) that turns out to be a criminal man pretending to be a women (I think a bank robber). They start to notice things like the "woman's" belly is quite large and he has chin hairs ect. I think I also remember them having a dog. I'm not sure but I think time was running out as the uncle was going to marry the man.

The physical details I remember are, it was a picture book, either an A4 or square hardback, short story with possibly a yellowish cover. The art style was quite dirty and fun.

Strange hairy/furry creatures, rooms created from tree roots, teenage humans, trees used as computers?

I loved this book as a teenager and would love to find it again.

Sci-fi, read in the 1970s (possibly published 1950s–70s).
Scientists or explorers on an alien ship solve progressively harder math problems to move deeper into it – starting with addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division, then algebra, then calculus. I believe the equations were printed in the text. The aliens were using the puzzles to gauge how advanced the solving species was. Novel or short story in.

I read this about 10 years ago.

The main characters Dad dies unexpectedly just before she turns 16 (or maybe it was 17).

Years later she owns and runs Dad’s bookstore and sorts through an old box that belonged to Dad and finds a wrapped gift for her 16th birthday for her. Her dad wrote that this was a family heirloom passed to the first child each generation (when they turn 16 or 17) and is a magical book and stuff she writes comes true!
Little things she writes in there actually happen!

She writes about the perfect boyfriend for her and he comes in the bookshop! She ends up marrying him and having a baby!

Her best friend is lonesome since her husband passed a few years before and she has no other family. This friend loves the regency era and is finishing her masters degree at U of Virginia in English literature and history. This friend asks her to write her a Duke from the regency era with all of her requirements, physical, personality traits, etc.

They throw a Regency themed costume party on New Year’s Eve and it is written that the Duke shows up in the storage room and sees the friend and is confused but instantly attracted to her (as it’s written in the magical book), the confusion is from the sounds outside (cars going by) and she grabs his hand and takes him back to the storage room and ends up on his English property 200 years in the past.

The Duke initially introduces her as a distant cousin, whose luggage got lost, and they build a life together. She ends up meeting Jane Austen and advising her Duke husband on what to invest their money in. He was already interested in new inventions. One scene he needs stitches and she makes sure the doctor sterilizes the needle and does not allow bloodletting.

This is all in 1 or 2 books. Then in the next book, the Dukes sister is shamed after kissing a man at a ball and is miserable. The friend (Dukes wife) writes her bookseller friend through her attorney (leaving instructions for her attorney’s grandson to mail the letter in the future) and the sister goes to the same rock she arrived near at a specific time and date and the sister time travels to modern day and experiences electricity and driving and living alone!

I don’t remember the title or author but would love to read it again!

Its certainly many years old but when i last read it online in some Forum where you can upload parts of your Books the Story wasnt finished. The author wanted to officially release the book when it would be finished.

The Story is about a rather advanced race which fights with swords and uses something like Zen in combat. Some of these Warriors get stranded on a not so advanced planet and get dragged into a war against the King of this planet.

Sorry for my bad english…

Maybe someone has an idea?

I'm looking for a fantasy novel I read in Czech around the early 2010s (likely translated from English, but not certain).

It wasn't a typical werewolf novel. It featured an entire race/society of wolf-shifters who lived as humans most of the time but could transform. One of their greatest laws was that cannibalism of another wolf-shifter was absolutely forbidden. Anyone who did it became a permanently corrupted outcast. They remained intelligent and human-looking, but became pale, gaunt, lost the ability to transform, and were looked down upon by the rest of society. They often served other wolf-shifters.

The protagonist already had one of these outcasts as a servant before he himself became one. Later, his wife was manipulated by an evil force (possibly another wolf-shifter) and unknowingly served him soup/stew made from their own child, causing him to unknowingly commit cannibalism and suffer the same fate. Does anyone recognize this book?