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openSomething with "swordsman" in the title Literature
It's a book about swordsmen and zombies (actually quite a serious book) in medieval Eastern Europe during the winter. Read it in English class in secondary school.
openSome horror-genre children's books from the '90s...not Goosebumps, I don't think... Literature
All right, so there's a few different ones. I have a partial name for two of them: 1. "Bites" is one but I don't think that can be the whole name. It was a short collection of stories, most I think if not all involving vampires. I only remember one story though, about a boy who was adopted by a vampire couple. They invited their friends over to help hunt him. It was really odd because if I remember right they said they would have kept him if they could, and they reassured him that all the things he'd need to defend himself were in the garden. I think he defeated all the vampires except one but I don't remember which one. I would like to remember the rest of the stories if only I could...
2. "The Mask" another scary story anthology. The Mask was one of the stories. I don't know the full title, but that story was about a boy who got picked on for going trick or treating without a cool costume. Then he showed them the *human* mask he wore every day and it turned out he was a monster or alien or something. Again I don't remember the other stories or the full title.
3. Okay this one is the hardest for me. Again I think this is an anthology of scary stories and may or may not be a completely different book. (I think yes, because there were no vampires in this one.) I have no idea of the title of the book OR the title of the story. It's about a girl who's discovered literally in a basket on the doorstep of a childless couple. They're white (and American, I think) while she looks Middle Eastern or something like that, and it takes forever to adopt her, but they do. I do not remember what they name her, but I remember the line, "Fondly, her parents called her 'princess'." (yes, I tried Googling it, got nothing.)
The mom dies when the girl's only a few years old, so the dad sends her to boarding school and takes her on trips around the world on her holidays. (He's some kind of scientist. Archaeologist?) During the Main Plot, he takes her to Egypt and the girl (who's now 14-16, somewhere in there, don't remember precisely) goes around Cairo by herself for a bit. She finds a dump but then suddenly *bang* everything changes, and it's like she's transported into the past to when the place was a beautiful ancient city. She takes photos of it and a really weird cab driver takes her back to the hotel. She develops the photos but her dad thinks she's going crazy. The cab driver tells her at some point that she was born in the past, at the Ancient City of (Whatever, it's a name I can't remember) and her real father's the King. She goes back with the cab driver (Who is apparently the King's servant/slave/whatever) and sees her real father's funeral procession, takes photos of that. Returns to present and shows the photos to her dad and the (curator? director?) of the museum, who both still think the whole thing's crazy. She goes back to the cab driver, who takes her to the past again, and this time she doesn't reappear. Her dad and the museum people dig up the old dump and find the tomb she took pictures of, and there, next to the sarcophagus of the King, is...a mummified girl - with a camera hanging around her neck. O_O
So yeah, I remember that story in pretty vivid detail, but not the names of any characters, or the ancient city, or what book it's from. Help would be good if anyone knows anything about it.
Thanks very much in advance.
Kaylee
I think I was in my mid-teens when I read this (so mid-late 2000s)—unfortunately all I can remember is a mess of details that have not so far helped me to track it down (you should see my google searches lol). It was in English and seemed like a fairly recently published book.
From what I remember the plot itself was quite bizarre/unclear and the overall tone of the book was quite surreal, starting out semi-realistic, but with more (possibly?) supernatural/fantasy elements coming in toward the end.
It started with a Western man (I think) arriving in some Asian city in a presumable contemporary time period. I think he had taken on some sort of role in a museum. The city itself is multicultural, with Westerners, Muslims and a rather enigmatic native people group, who (and this is the detail I remember most clearly) have a major cultural thing about 'hanging up the bones of their ancestors', like, they hang them up in the doorways of their houses, and in various parts of the museum, and its a major taboo for an outsider to enter those forbidden areas.
There is a woman belonging to this native group who is some sort of guide/friend (employee?) of the protagonist, though, like the people group as a whole, her character feels somewhat ambivalent and mysterious.
I remember towards the end of the book is when it began to get really strange—various groups began arriving at the city, including some sort of pseudo-Christian jogging cult who wore tracksuits and "plexiglass crosses", and a group of hippie Middle-Earth cosplayers, led by a guy dressed as Gandalf. The protagonist encounters these sort of giant, mobile (sentient?) water-sacks, which are apparently for the native people, who have to begin some sort of epic pilgrimage through the desert.
I wanna say it was called something like Midnight in Kandahar?? or something? But I really don't know. Thanks in advance for your help!