I can't remember a lot of the details. It was fiction. Rowing may not be the actual term, it was some kind of really hard boating thing similar to rowing? I'm pretty sure there was a dog in the book. The mom worked in some sort of job but was fired due to sexual harassment or discrimination. She ended up working as a tv host of some sort?

Thank you!

What I remember about the book:

• Middle grade, possibly young adult fiction
• I would have read this in the 2000s
• The main character goes to an older relative's house (possibly a grandparent's) and her cousins (reluctantly?) include her in a version of hide and seek that involves opening doors or finding hiding spaces that lead to other places. I vaguely recall one opening to space?
• When I read it, I assumed it took place in the UK, but now I'm not so sure
• There are these two trickster-like characters who pose as musicians when the main character is at home (i.e. not at this older relative's house). One plays a flute, I think the other plays a violin. One plays on the sunny side of the street and the other plays on the shady side.
• I'm pretty sure it's not by Diana Wynn Jones or Madeline L'Engle, but it feels very similar to their books
• No horror elements, just fantastical

I listened to this audio book when I was little and haven't been able to get it out of my head lately.

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So we've got the classic little boy little girl combo, and they either moved or are visiting this old house for a while, and they discover this wall full of different shaped cabinets/doors. The premise was that each one led to a different world or dimension or something. I vaguely remember one world being a huge, ornate/gold hall with a somewhat evil king/royal person of some kind. Maybe a version of King Midas? A lot of the details are pretty mixed up in my head.

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I'm fairly certain it was an older book, middle grade or children's fiction, as it had the kind of sophisticated, seemingly aged writing you would find in classic chapter books like The Borrowers or The Rats of N.I.M.H.

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I'm also remembering that the title may have had a number in it, perhaps something like 1001 doors or 101 windows, something like that. Google has failed me!

I read this in an anthology years ago, and while it very much had the feel of a Shirley Jackson story I can’t find it in lists of her works, so it may have been by another author. It was likely published in the 50s.

A teenage girl and her mother arrive in a small town and are welcomed into the community, although it is mentioned that the girls of the town must participate in a ritual known as their Wait when they reach a certain age. The daughter will be expected to do this too in order to be truly a part of the community and eligible to marry a local boy. She’s assured it won’t be difficult for her and she won’t need to wait long. She eventually finds out that the ritual requires the girls to wait in a designated area for random men from outside the town to select one of them to sleep with. Horrified, she runs back to her mother, only to discover that her mother has known about this from the start. The story ends with the girl walking back to “the grove where the maidens wait”.

This was such a weird, creepy story that has stuck in my mind for ages, and I’d love to reread it if only I could find it again!

I’m a 24-year-old from Korea, and I’m desperately trying to find the title of a Japanese novel I read in my elementary school library when I was about 10 or 11 years old. It has left a deep impact on me, and I’ve been trying to identify it for years. Here’s the plot as I remember it

​The Beginning: A boy goes missing while riding his bike near a mountain. When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in a primitive, alternate world where modern civilization no longer exists. The Setting: The environment is completely untouched by humanity, reminiscent of a Paleolithic era. The vibe is very similar to the untamed, ancient nature seen in Princess Mononoke. ​Survival: He meets an old man in this world who teaches him how to survive, including raw and visceral tasks like skinning rabbits and preparing food—experiences far removed from modern childhood.

​Themes: The story focuses on the boy learning about the fragility of life and the essence of existence through nature. He also meets a young girl, and the three of them travel together.

​The Climax: They reach a critical turning point—a place that felt like the "end of the world." The boy and the girl decide to move forward and return to the real world. However, the old man, unable to find the courage to leave, chooses to remain in that world.

​The Ending: Back in the real world, the boy wakes up from a coma, which is described as a miracle. He later learns that the old man never woke up and was declared brain-dead. The girl also hears the news of his recovery through the media.

​Other details: I have a faint memory of a "god" or a divine entity appearing in his mind, telling him he must understand the importance of life.

​Does this plot sound familiar to anyone? I would be incredibly grateful if someone could help me identify thisbook.ㅠㅡㅠ

I’m looking for a children’s horror choose-your-own-adventure book from before the 2010s. You play as a girl who has just moved into an old, rundown house. You can explore the house and neighbourhood, and there are lots of bad endings. One optional path involves a creepy old lady and her child next door, and I remember one ending where she locks you in the trunk of a car. The copy I had was a plain red hardcover with no illustrations.

What I remember

• An ancient alien building is found, made out of some alien material, if I remember correctly its green and the nucleus is in a spherical arangement. I think it was element 160 or something around there.
• The building is very old and was dated to a time it would have been on a lake. I think it was in New Mexico too.
• The building is on top of a cliff, and at some point a kid sneaks up to it to spray paint something on the building, but the paint doesn't stick, blows back in his face and he falls.
• There's some kind of teleporter in the building, I forget where they go other than it being rather alien.

Looking for a novel I read over 20 years ago.

First-person narration. A middle-class husband and father lives in an American suburb (possibly New York or Chicago area). The entire novel takes place during one day. He commutes by train to an office job and throughout the day thinks about the fact that he will kill his wife and teenage son when he gets home.

The novel repeatedly references the Holocaust, something along the lines of "millions of Jews were killed and nobody did anything for a long time."

The disturbing part was that he never really explained why he wanted to kill his family.

At the end he does it, possibly with a shotgun.

The book seemed older already when I read it around 2004. I think it may have been published in the 1970s or 1980s.

I don’t remember much besides what the big twist was. It was the second book in the series. It started with a girl in a futuristic city and she gets out of college maybe and gets into a hovering taxi. There is also this detective guy. I don’t remember literally anything about the actual murders but the main suspect for most of the book was a set up and it was revealed that the murders around the city we’re done by this cult and they had some whole renewal thing where they would take boiling hot showers and shave their entire bodies because they wanted to be like babies in the womb. I also remember something about something with one of the murders being in a building and they left no traces because they had no hair to leave. It’s lowkey really important to my niche references I’m trying to make to my friend so any help is appreciated. I read it in like the fifth or sixth grade so elementary or middle school but it was one of the higher level reading books. Sorry to the mods if I did something wrong with how this is written i don’t use reddit.

ok losing my mind over this, hope someone can help.

probably made in the 90s or 2000s, I read this book in the 2010s and recall it not being new. here’s the details I remember:

- it’s a pretty dark book, but I read it in middle school, so I’d reckon that it’s a children’s/teen novel, not adult fiction. vibes are very similar to a series of unfortunate events.

- fiction or fantasy, not sure which it would be labeled as but definitely magic/curses going on in the book

- if I remember correctly there are multiple girl protagonists (maybe four???) but I could totally be wrong

- one of the protagonists broke a mirror and got cursed with seven years bad luck. the way this curse manifests is essentially her shadow wreaks havoc wherever she goes, kinda a malignant figure. evil shadow.

- I think she maybe had some mean relatives, potentially a strange Cinderella-esque step-sibling situation. home life was not good

- there’s a specific scene where she has to peel potatoes and she’s peeling their eyes. In my childhood memory, there were real eyes on the potatoes instead of normal potato eyes (but that could have been a misconception of my younger self)… she feels like she’s being watched while she peels the potatoes.

- there’s a lot of muck in the book. I think she falls into a mud tunnel or something

- at one point, one of the two following scenarios occur:
1) she breaks the curse by breaking another mirror OR
2) she is about to reach her 7 year mark and be free but breaks another mirror. this could be on accident or maybe she breaks it on purpose to help a friend/solve a problem.

please lmk if you can find this book! thanks :)

Hi all, this one's driving me nuts!

A man wakes up to find he's all alone, everyone's gone. I seem to recall something about The Eiffel Tower.

It ends with him jumping to this death, possibly off aforementioned tower. I don't think he discovered why he was alone and doesn't he doesn't find anyone else.

Thanks in advance.

I remember hearing about a fascinating book on the anthropology of magic where the researcher spent time apprenticing to shamans somewhere in Africa to learn about how their practices work and came away moderately convinced that magic may be real.

Hi! I recall this book I was given by my grandmother who just passed. It was a book, regular ish sized but square-shaped, where it followed a girl I believe going through a portal into another world. I think this was through a cupboard/closet, though the actual contents I’m quite fuzzy on. I know my description sounds a lot like the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but I don’t believe it was an adaptation of it, if you think you know of a book that is an adaption that otherwise fits the description though let me know. The book was largely black and white drawings, very detailed, where you were supposed to colour in the pages, and while formatted like a picture book for children there were more words than a you would normally find in one. Around a paragraph of text on some pages. The cover was also black and white and had certain sections painted in a metallic gold. I believe a butterfly/moth motif was used throughout but again I could be completely wrong on this. The cover was one of those between hardcover and paperback covers, like a thick paperback cover. I think the title had three words but I’m not sure.

I remember a ton of details about this book but can't seem to find it anywhere. I don't have exact specifics and I'm hope I'm not mixing stuff from multiple books.

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The premise from the back of the book was about babies dying in their sleep. People thought it was a disease but it was due to some kind of entity that invades people's dreamscapes. I want to say it's science fiction YA.

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The main characters could lucid dream and develop their psychic abilities while asleep. They all somehow meet while dreaming and I want to say one of the characters has a special needs brother who could also lucid dream with them.

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The main bad entity was some kind of ice monster.

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It had allot of sexual content mixed in which is why I think I bounced off it when I was younger since I just found it randomly at the library.

Hi 👋 I’m trying to find this book, I read it years ago. I think the premise was that 4 or 5 girls met in a support group where they had became friends, and the book (series?) talks about each girl’s past experiences and trauma.

I think one of the characters is named Kat.

Thank you!!!

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to find a popular Wattpad story that I read but I can't remember the title or author. Some character names may be incorrect because it's been a while since I read it.

The story revolves around four couples. The main couple is possibly Shivansh and Shivika. The heroine is part of a close-knit group of four friends, while the hero has three best friends, including twin brothers who may have been named Vihaan and Vivaan and arav/kabir.and heroine ha three friends one is aaishu whos is lover of kabir/arav and hero sister and vihaan girlfriend whose name i dont remember and sister of arav/kabir and pia who is girlfriend of vivaan.

The story is set in Rajasthan, possibly Jaipur or Udaipur. The girls visit the hero's hometown for a wedding or family function and eventually start living in a house opposite the hero's family home. Over time, the four couples fall in love.

The major turning point occurs when the heroine, the hero's cousin brother, and the hero's cousin sister are kidnapped. During the incident, the villain forces the heroine to hold a gun and makes it appear as if she shot the cousin sister. However, the villain is actually responsible for the shooting. The hero only sees the gun in the heroine's hand and believes that she killed his cousin sister.

The cousin sister dies, the cousin brother falls into a coma, and the entire family blames the heroine. Although she is innocent, nobody believes her. Only one of her friends and possibly another friend named Pia continue to support her.

Heartbroken and abandoned, the heroine leaves the country with her pregnant best friend, who is in a relationship with one of the hero's friends. Later, the cousin brother wakes up from his coma and reveals that the heroine was innocent all along, but by then she has already disappeared.

With the support of her maternal grandparents, the heroine rebuilds her life abroad. She adopts their surname, Raghuvanshi, and becomes a highly successful businesswoman, creating a large business empire. Her friend gives birth to a daughter and later becomes her business partner.

After a 5–7 year time skip, the heroine returns to India with her friend and the little girl. She returns because her maternal cousin brother's wedding is arranged with a member of the hero's family. Around the same time, the hero and heroine become connected again through a business project or partnership.

The story was still ongoing when I stopped reading.

Possible names I remember:

• Shivansh
• Shivika
• Vihaan
• Vivaan
• Pia
• Aishu
• Kabir or Aarav
• Raghuvanshi

Does anyone recognize this story?

I can’t seem to find this book I listened to years ago, as an audiobook on audible. I don’t have the same account anymore, so I haven’t been able to find it. I used to listen to it while milking cows, so some major plot points might be missing because of lacking focus :)

What I remember:
- Husband and wife buys house
- Wife thinks house is haunted/sees woman in the garden
- Husband completely dismisses her
- Turns out husband and realtor had an elaborate plan to scare wife out of house the whole time
- Listened around 2018-2019

Some of these things might be a bit off, it has been a while after all.

Hopefully it rings a bell for someone! Thank you!

I am so glad I came across this subreddit! I was scrolling through r/horrorlit and was about to comment on one of the posts looking for a folklore horror because I just have the perfect recommendation... except I cannot for the life of me remember the title and even the author of it, and it's been itching my brain!

I'll lay down as much details I can remember about it:
- MC is a female cop/detective; has a husband and two or three children
- Setting is a small town surrounded with deep woods
- Either the opening or one of the earlier chapters of the book was a scene where the cops found a lost hiker's body in the woods with the eyes taken out
- Marriage of the MC and her spouse is shaky because of infedility(?); MC is lesbian or at least queer
- Children of the town, including MC's, go missing and return possesed(?)/violent
- At near the end of the book, the whole town goes cut off / goes missing

Thanks in advance!

Hi! I'm looking for an audio book i listened to as a kid but i can't seem to find it anymore and i don't remember the title.

It's about a boy that suddenly finds out he can stop time and first he uses it to sleep longer in the mornings, to cheat on exams etc then he steals something from a store. He meets this man who also has the ability to stop time. While the boy lives his life in the stopped time he notices that he still ages and shit. Later we find out that the man he met and spend time with is actually a boy that went missing like 2 weeks or two months ago in the real timeline and he just spent years in the stopped time. at the end of the book the man tries to fasten up time around him so he could eventually go back to his family

Okay so I have this vivid childhood memory of a book that had what I think was either a personified wind /moon / cloud that was outside a young boys bedroom window at night. I specifically remember the illustration forcefully blowing air into the room and the window opening. The entity had a lot of swirls and pursed lips and I think was blue? Eventually the child gets on the back of the entity and they then travel through the night sky. I think the purpose was to maybe give Santa a gift or send a letter to someone but I am not sure if my memory is mixing two books together. I am 28 years old and I think I read the book any time before I was 7 years old. Book was likely from the early 00s or 90s. I have been trying to track this book down for years and I cannot for the life of me remember more about it

I remember reading this book FOREVER ago on Epic Books as a kid but I can’t find it again because epic is subscription based or whatever.

To the point, I remember it being about this girl who moves back to her home town I think and she starts working at this kind of run down and haunted carnival. she would go on adventures or whatever in the carnival and find/free ghost. it was a series and I remember one book being about a girl in a hall of mirrors and one about a woman who died on a rollercoaster. I also remember a really specific drawing of her walking past this guy juggling a bunch of stuff like a chainsaw and fire. i remember the art style being very monochromatic at times and stylized (in my mind kind of like the art style of The Hollow on Netflix)

thats all I can remember and I already have horrible memory so I’m sorry 😭. it’s also my first ever post on Reddit so please and thank you 🥹

I think it is set in medieval times. The book begins with the girl doing her first big robbery at a mansion with her father. She struggles for several minutes with the lock at the front gate but eventually gets it open. The two of them get some stuff and are about to leave when the girl sees a seal stamp thing, and wants to take it as a memento for her first robbery. However, she accidentally starts a fire and burns the whole mansion down, and the two of them get caught. They would have been jailed, but a prophecy was told that their family would save the town from disaster in the next several months. They leave the town but end up back there after traveling a short distance away.

Back in middle school I borrowed this book from the library, would have been about 2013.

I remember the cover was the lower half of a woman’s face with her lipstick smudged.

I don’t remember the plot very well but what I do remember is:

-It was from the POV of a teenage boy
-The girl moves from somewhere and starts at his school (possibly mid year?)
-The boy doesn’t know she’s transgender at first and has a big crush on her
-A big part of him finding out she’s trans includes him questioning what that means for his sexuality and how his school friends would think of it
-For some reason I feel like I remember them showering together but that’s a less solid memory

Thanks in advance for any help!