Anybody know a book about a red haired mexican orphan living in a border town in Mexico? Kid is super poor and hid a quarter under his tongue to hide it from the other kids. I remember at some point he gets enough money to buy a rotisserie chicken and eats it until only bones were left.

I read this as a teenager in the early 1990s and it has stuck with me ever since. I think it was British, and it may have been a short story in a compilation rather than a full novel.
What I remember:
It's set in the 1980s, during or after a nuclear war.
There's a nuclear bunker that was built for Margaret Thatcher, but she never makes it there and it was explained away as a water reservoir.
The bunker is run by a computer (more a computer than a robot) that acts as its guardian.
Instead of Thatcher, the computer lets in a child, possibly a girl and looks after them, almost nurturing them.
Eventually the computer forces them to leave the bunker and go back out into the world.
Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks.

There was this short story, potentially in an article that I read about 3 years ago about this woman who moves to NYC, it begins with all the ways she enamoured and excited about living in this new, different place but slowly that thrill of newness fades and she grows increasingly lonely and depressed living there, the story ended with her and her partner moving away to a small, quiet town to settle down. She reflected on her years in NYC and I believe it had a really poignant ending in that although the experience made her feel the most acute loneliness she's ever felt, she still looked on it fondly.

Some other details:

- It was an auto-biographical story

- I don't believe it was an excerpt, rather a small story or article, in other words the few-ish pages I read of it was the complete story

- it is NOT "The Lonely City" by Olivia Liang

Any help is appreciated!

I remember reading a children's book (think short chapter books a la Beverly Cleary) about a thin girl who ate a lot of sweets and then fainted in her bathroom, which turned out to be a diabetes coma. And then she had a neighbor friend who was another girl who was plump whose nickname was pudge. And then towards the end of the book they both went on a diabetic diet and the thin girl gained and the plump girl lost.

There's a book...mostly I remember how it smelled. A kids/YA chapter book. I read it when I was in middle school-ish? Maybe elementary? Circa 2000-2005. Summer reading, not part of any curriculum. To the best of my recollection, the protagonist was an age 10-ish kid. There was a scene in a castle? Fortress? The protagonist was being rescued (smuggled?) down a stone stairwell, hidden under the cloak of a large character. They may have been by a river. Possible mention of the light from a lantern. There was definitely thick fog.

Looking for a book for my little sister - she read it a very long time ago. Here are some relevant plot points:

- The FMC belongs to a specific guild, and there are lots of other guilds.

- She tries to stop a prince from being assassinated but he ends up getting shot in the eye anyways.

- She gets blamed for his death because when she notices the assassin, she yells out "to arms" and he stands up and get shot.

- After he gets shot, the powers that be(?) figure out what guild she's in and cut off the thumbs of everyone in that guild except for her.

- Some of the people in the guild somehow get some sort of mechanical thumb replacement?

- There's a princess who is somehow not right in the head and she gets killed by being crushed by rocks.

- That princess is in some kind of arranged betrothal before she's killed.

That's all she can remember, I did try googling but couldn't find this exact book. Thank you for your help y'all!

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I read this when I was in high school. It was my sister’s book she can’t remember the name.

The book was like an orange almost yellow cover. Here is all I remember about the book.

Young lady mid 20s moves out of her hometown. She goes somewhere by the ocean because the apartment she moves into is by the ocean? She meets this guy, they fall in love and one night they go out on date come back to her apartment they head out to the ocean they are messing around then they start kissing will then the ocean takes him and he dies. That’s the ending. I clearly remember the ending because I was shocked!!! Also to add on this book had some spicy moments in there.

Can someone help me find this book? It may even be a series that I don’t know about.

It's been a year, so I'm giving it another shot.

This book was touted as a "Portnoy's Complaint" type novel. I read it back in the late 70s or 80s. The only thing I remember about it is the lead character goes to a European country to visit his father. After arriving he has an encounter with a prostitute. When he meets his father, he repeats a phrase the prostitute used. His father says "You just said, Ow, ow, ow, your large penis is hurting me." Main character is U.S. or Canadian. He works at some sort of office job I think. That's all I remember.

Another poster remembered the cover blurb as well, but couldn't remember the title or author either.

It's not The Celibacy of Felix Greenspan, Hazzard's Head, Barney's Version by or anything else by Mordecai Richler, anything by John Irving, or A Sport and a Pastime, anything by J. P. Donleavy, not The Hand Reared Boy by Brian Aldiss, not Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley, not the Porter Osborne Jr. series by Ferrol Sams.

Just eliminated The Right to an Answer by Anthony Burgess.

About 10-15 years ago I read a novel. The entire story took place in one day. The protagonist worked in theatre (playwright, maybe?) and, for a reason I don't recall, was staying alone in a house/cottage belonging to someone she had worked with. The homeowner may have been an actress (or another theatre professional?) who was away working.

Although I'm not 100% sure, I recall the book having a pale yellow cover, and it may have won or been nominated for some sort of award.

I'd be so happy to be able to rediscover this novel!

edited to add: The novel is set in the UK.

Looking for a children's book I read in Malaysia in 2006. The book was likely for ages 5-8. This is a fictional story, but I think there were also some sections with facts about aquatic life.

Plot: The main character, a primary school-aged girl, goes on an overnight trip to the seaside with her classmates and two or three teachers. The night before they visit the beach, the girl or her friend has a dream where they meet some sea creatures and have whelk sandwiches with them.
At the beach, the children get to observe rock pools with their teachers. The children also search for seabird footprints and/or seashells. The main character gets stranded on a sandbar/at high tide while searching for the footprints and has to be rescued by one of her teachers, a tall/long-legged man.

Physical description:

• Hardcover book. The color of the cover might have been green-and-purple or blue-and-purple.
• About 30-40 pages long.
• More of a chapter book than a picture book, with black-and-white cartoonish illustrations.

Time setting: 1990s-2000s

Language: English, most likely set in the UK as "coach" is used to refer to a long-distance bus.

Extra info: I've searched this subreddit for posts about similar books, this book is NOT:

• Flip-Flops by Nancy Cote
• Sunny Goes to the Beach by Katherine C. Troutman
• Cal's Log by Anthony Masters
• Each Living Thing by Joanne Ryder

I read this short story in college and it's been bothering me for a while now. It's from the pov of three tweens, I think 12ish, describing their elementary/middle school early 2000s playground where jelly bracelets are very popular. If a boy snaps your bracelet you have to go behind the school and do whatever the color signified with him. Some are kisses and hugs and black bracelets mean sex. There is a girl they don't like because she has so many bracelets. There's nothing explicit but the writing is ominous enough it was definitely aimed at an adult audience. I need to find it again so I can make someone else read it and figure out if it's supposed to be as ominous and upsetting as I remember

This is honestly driving me nuts ...

I had a book when young, circa 1987-1996? Very likely early 90s in the UK, about a pair of male rabbits who lived in a town. One was brown, the other "Grey" but his illustration clearly showed his fur as blue, and theit colours were their names. The brown one was more dominant and tended to get them both into trouble, the grey more reserved.

One story had them trying to make up to the town for all the pranks and mischief they got up to, including the brown one sitting on the post office scale to weigh himself and ending up (unsurprisingly) breaking it. They decide to write letters of apology, and the brown one motivates himself late in the night pretending there is a lion behind him who will eat him if he doesn't get it done.

He learns nothing, as once the townsfolk forgive them, he starts back up with his nonsense, much to Grey's exasperation.

The style was cartoony, two books I remember had them side by side smiling, another had the pair running from something, Grey a jovial expression in front and Brown with much more serious one behind but also closest to the viewer.

i THINK they were supposed to be brothers, but the text didnt make it clear to me they were related.

ANY help would be incredible!

1990s kids book about a pigeon who wants to fly cool. This somehow makes him morally superior to the other pigeons, who mostly don't care.

MC practices a lot, then starts a cult of pigeons who also want to fly cool, then ascends to heaven.

Illustrations were black and white.

I read this book so long ago, can't remember any of the characters names or the location it's set in. All I remember are the two characters are either visiting or helping their aging parents. The mother is newer to the area (moved more recently maybe) and the neighbor is male and has a son.

I also distinctly remember two steamy/funny/awkward scenes one in a pool where she ends up sitting on his lap and maybe another of the neighbors ends up walking by while they are in a hard place (iykyk). The other is they were making out or the guy was thinking of her but then gets interrupted because he is supposed to go golfing with his dad and his dad's friend(s) -- leading to a...hard...and funny conversation with his father mid-golf.

I can't remember a single other detail of the book...

I swear I remember reading a book about these kids that got taken away or were sent to a special school because they had mental powers or something like that. And I think one of the main characters was a boy and he like breaks out of the school I think. I’m also remember a green gem, like maybe an emerald. Maybe that was on the cover.

I’m also almost 100% positive that I read this in elementary school but I don’t know anyone else who remembers it.

Anybody have any ideas??

Edit: I live in the US, this was in Texas specifically. And it was somewhere around 1995ish. I don’t believe it was required reading. I read the usual in high school, The Pearl, The Hatchet, Animal Farm and so on. This book was definitely before that.

It was also a chapter book and I do not recall any illustrations. But for some reason in my head I picture a mostly red cover and something green, like the gem I talked about before. I know that doesn’t really mean anything because books can have any number of different covers.

So I read I book like 20 years ago and cannot remember its title/author

Some of the main aspects that I remember are:
The government had an orbital laser nicknamed Godzilla
The protagonist was trying to uncover it
The main villain had an aversion to mess

One of the ending scenes in the book is the villain and his girlfriend sharing a dry kiss.

I had thought it might be a dean koontz book cause it had the vibes of some of his stuff but so far no luck.

I’m trying to find a contemporary romance I read a few years ago, and the scene I remember most clearly is pretty specific. I’ve been trying to track it down through my Kindle history, but I think the book may be missing from my records.

What I remember about the plot:

• The heroine is a younger woman, possibly in her early 20s, who works as an intern or in an entry-level position at a company connected to her father.
• The hero is significantly older than her and works at the same company, or at a company connected to her father. He and her father are friends, business associates, or have some kind of established professional relationship.
• The hero is childless, and I don’t recall any pregnancy in the storyline
• The story is an explicit, contemporary romance.
• The company they all work for may have been involved in commercial real estate or property development, but I’m not completely certain.

The scene I specifically remember:

The hero and heroine are staying at a hotel during a work trip and have loud s*x in one of their rooms. The heroine’s parents are staying at the same hotel, sharing a room together. Somehow, the parents’ room has been moved or switched so that they’re right next door to the couple.

The next morning, the hero ends up in the hallway while the heroine is still in the room and he overhears her father complaining about the noise from the room next door. When her father sees the hero, he makes a comment along the lines of how he wouldn’t have minded the noise so much if he’d known his friend was the one getting laid.

Then the heroine comes out of his room, her parents put two and two together, and everything explodes into an awkward confrontation.

That’s the scene I remember most distinctly, although I may not have every detail exactly right.

Other details:

• The heroine’s parents are together.
• The hotel is incidental to the story, not the main setting, and may have been part of a work-related trip to inspect a property or warehouse.
• It may have been part of an interconnected series of standalone romances, possibly with a scene at a seafood restaurant involving characters from another book in the series.
• I think it was set in California.
• I mostly read steamy indie/KU contemporary romance, including age-gap, workplace, and forbidden-relationship tropes.

I know some of these details are vague, but the next-door hotel scene and the father’s reaction are what I’m hoping someone recognizes. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I’d especially appreciate specific titles or authors to investigate!

Hello all I am looking for a book, I don’t have the plot at all, but it was a purple or pinkish background cover with a woman on the front that if anyone is familiar with control looks a lot like jesse. The woman is wearing black pants and a black jacket and her face is darkened. That’s all I have as I only saw the cover and it was a long time ago but trying to search on google has had no effect. Any help is appreciated!

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 while 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. He then drives it around the fields at night.

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

The manga is about a teen girl who is moving to a new town with her dad. They get lost in a forest and the teen girl goes hiking and comes across a large tree. She climbs it and falls, cutting her hand open. This gave her the power to turn invisible. Days later, she starts her new school and befriends a girl who tells her about the school dynamics. There was a mean girl who hates her because the guy the mean girl likes focuses on the new girl. The teen girl joins a club where all the members have powers. The guy who the mean girl likes tell her that the tree she climbed was the source of all the powers. There was a time where she was given a bathing suit for swim class and it was see-through. The guy gets embarrassed when he sees how see-through it was and covered her with his towel and used his power of phasing through walls to get her to safety.

I only remember parts of the plot, so I'm hoping someone here might recognize it!
At the beginning of the book, the FMC has recently graduated from college and wants to start working for a company. Her father is a wealthy businessman, but she wants to be independent and make a name for herself without relying on her family's money or influence. I think she might even use a fake name when she starts her new job. At the company, she meets the MMC, who is the CEO. They have a fling at first, which eventually develops into a relationship.
I vaguely remember a scene where the FMC goes on a double date with some new friends from work, and the MMC is also there with one of his friends. I'm not entirely sure about the details of this scene, though.
Another major source of conflict is their age gap. The FMC is in her early twenties, while the MMC is in his late twenties or early thirties. The FMC's father strongly disapproves of their relationship and eventually gives her an ultimatum, forcing her to choose between her father and the MMC.
The MMC has a close female friend who is his business partner. They had something going on in the past, and she developed feelings for him, but he used to be a playboy and wasn't interested in settling down, so they never actually got together. At some point, the FMC discovers that the MMC and this woman have met in secret, which causes another huge argument between the FMC and MMC.
I'm not completely sure that I remember every detail correctly, but these are the main things I can recall. Does anyone recognize this book? 🥹

For some reason I’ve been thinking of a few young adult books lately that I read ages ago. I managed to find one book/series on my own, but this one I don’t remember enough key details.

I read at least one of the books, and think it skewed toward young adult although it may have also been for older kids. There was at least a little girl, and may have been a boy as well. For some reason the name Penny is coming to mind, but that may be a complete red herring. They were novels, but of course may have been shorter than I remember.

The story I remember parts of involve the kids (I think) being in some old house. I seem to remember there may have been an inheritance involved, and people related to the deceased showing up. I also seem to remember the kids or at least one of them being held prisoner in a room and then tapping on pipes to get attention/send a message, but that may be me mixing it up with another story. Heck, the other details could be that as well - it’s really hazy.

I do also remember that the book was part of a series that I’d wanted to check out more of, but somehow never did beyond maybe one book. I remember reading about the kid(s) on some train, with some other children they may have met during the first book, and something happening to them. I just don’t remember if this was another book from the series I had, or if it was one of those previews that you get for the next book in the series at the end of the one you’re reading.

Thanks muchly to anyone who can figure this out!

Edit: as I’m thinking more and reading some responses I can add that I’m pretty sure (but not 100%) that it was a pair of siblings/close friends at most, and I seem to remember it being focused more on the girl (though that could just be bias). I also remember it being a real world setting, probably US, probably a bit in the past.

Edit: the series was the Mandie series of books by Lois Gladys Leppard and the two in question were Mandie and the Secret Tunnel and Mandie and the Ghost Bandits. Thanks everyone!

So I’ve lately been thinking about a book series I read as a kid that had pretty detailed drawings of mechanical animals on each cover but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called. I think the first book featured a mechanical gorilla? From what I recall it was about 9 or 10 books long, and the first book starts with a young boy(?) playing in their garden then going through some bushes and being transported into a jungle.

Any help in finding what this series or atleast what the title of the first book was would be greatly appreciated.

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 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!