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openFrench book about a guy who comes back from the dead only to find his gf is dating someone else? Literature
The book was in French - most likely by a Canadian author, though it’s possible that it was in Met French or just a Canadian-French of an English book.
Main cover is done in cold colours, like green and purple. If I remember it depicts the protagonist, who was depicted as sort of this skeleton-looking creature who I think was wearing a hoodie, basically emerging from his grave.
I remember the beginning, where he comes back to life (no reason given from what I remember) and the first thing he does is visit his girlfriend, but gets upset when he finds out that she’s already dating someone else even though it’s only been six months. Later in the novel they seem to get back together, though it may have been a different woman the protagonist was involved with. During an exchange between the two they mention The Big Short (unless I was mistaken and it was a different movie they mentioned), so the book must have been released at around the time of the movie’s release or after it.
At a later point the person who the girlfriend had been dating tries to kill himself by jumping off a building, but although the girlfriend talks him down he stumbles and falls to his death.
IIRC, the book ends with the protagonist trying to jump off a building as well, only to find that since he’s already dead, he can’t die again, with the last words of the book being him just saying “merde”.
resolved Kid's book with a girl who sees ghosts Literature
This is a middle-grade book which was published no later than 2012. I remember a lot of things about it but nothing that shows up on web searches.
There is a girl who moves with her mom to a beach town and she sees ghosts. I can't recall if this is a new ability or not. There are several ghosts, and one is a slightly-older girl who is still wearing the costume she died in- fishnets are involved. This ghost also dyed the protagonist's hair (blue?), which the protagonist ends up liking and at the end of the book, she and a living friend dye their hair "Screaming Sally's Punk-Rock Pink." Also the girl's mother is an artist who does some sort of beach-themed souvenirs.
I don't think it's Saranormal.
openZoro/Sanji fanfic Literature
I read this Zoro/Sanji fanfic set in modern era where Sanji gets/bought a doll/bear that’s possessed by Gin and he was jealous of anybody getting close to Sanji. I think I read it on fanfiction.net?
openTheater camp tween book Literature
This is such a long shot, but I'm trying to remember the name of a book I read, probably around 2014 or 15 (and I think it was a new book around that time). It was aimed at tweens and I'm pretty sure the premise was a summer camp for theater kids and they would put on a show at the end of every summer. It was family run/very small, because I feel like all of the kids who attended the camp slept in some sort of farmhouse or something that the owners/runners of the camp also lived in. There was 100% a kid at the camp who had a mohawk and was presented as a bad boy delinquent type that wouldn't fit in with all of the theater kids, but over the course of the book the reader/the other characters learn that the mohawk guy actually has a lot of theater experience and is a lot nicer than he seemed at first. His name was Jason? Jake? Jack? The other characters are an ensemble cast situation, kind of a grab bag of all the classic highschool kid character tropes (there's a jock, a popular girl, a nerd, etc.) It's very Total Drama Island in that way, especially with the mohawk guy! I'm pretty sure there's also some sort of morning yoga class that all the characters have to attend that mohawk guy is very frustrated by. There's a cute dog in the book I think. Guys and Dolls factors in somehow (that might be the show they're putting on) and finally, to conclude this ramble of mostly vague information: I distinctly remember there being a sort of teambuilding exercise between the campers where they have to close their eyes in the dark theater, pretend to be types of ships, and attempt to cross the stage without bumping into each other (as in, someone makes a barge horn sound and another person is like "I'm a sailboat!" I know, very stupid). I think it was a joke about ships passing in the night? Thanks if anyone can remember!
openChinese Monkey Myth Literature
I recall hearing about numerous myths from Chinese novels or stories in which monkeys (gibbons specifically I believe) would transform into women to deceive people. However, I can’t seem to find a source if one exists.
resolved YA book about an eighth grader accused of child porn Literature
This YA book was written in the early 1990s or before. It’s written in first person, about an eighth grader named Sean. One day, while at a friend’s house, Sean and his friend were taking pictures of his friend’s little sister (I think she was wearing a bathing suit), and she was doing silly things, including kissing a balloon. When the pictures get developed, someone at the photo lab suspects child pornography and raises the alarm. As a result, Sean’s and his friend’s parents have to hire a lawyer.
openA children's book series about a kitten adopted by a girl Literature
It's a book for somewhat older kids, part of a series about a kitten who ends up adopted by a girl. The book in question might've been a Christmas special (or not), with the kitten in question somehow getting out of the house during winter, and finding another even smaller kitten in an abandoned house. She takes care of the smaller kitten - I vaguely recall something about finding a ham sandwich and ripping bits of ham out for the smaller kitten, as well as making a nest out of discarded rags and huddling with the smaller kitten for warmth. Her humans end up finding her, and adopt the smaller kitten as well.
Edited by Paradoxicopenindonesian YA romance novel about a housekeeper and 4 brothers Literature
Indonesian tropers might remember this one. or the ones who into local YA romance novels
i remember reading this like years ago. maybe when i was on 5th grade (this could determine the exact year its published. i read it on 2015).
the cover is brown color and has anime-ish outline drawing of a girl opening a mailbox with shocked expression with small drawings of the 4 brothers surrounding her.
The story is about a girl who hired as a housekeeper for a somewhat dysfunctional family and the entire story is her bonding with the brothers, and she (i think) falls in love with the eldest brother iirc?
What i remember about the story is the brothers themselves. the eldest one is the most responsible, and the second oldest (or the third) is typical bad boy. there is also the strict one who has asthma and the youngest is a 4-year-old boy who exposed to not kid friendly contents (in the story it said that he read adult magazine which belongs to one of the brothers) and thanks to his brothers and i remember the protagonist concerned about it
there also plotline where the youngest brother got sick, and its apparently because his unhealthy eating and near the end her parents who doesnt aware that she worked as housekeeper mistaken her to have secret relationship and really mad about it.
resolved Young Spy Girl Goes to Japan??? Literature
I have just been hit with memories of this book i used to read obsessively as a kid. I'm pretty sure it was a series but there's one book in particular i remember and i am scouring the internet but i can't seem to find it anywhere.
ok so it's about a young girl who's a spy/secret agent and she gets a mission where she has to go to Japan and there's one bit i remember where she's on a bullet train and she thinks her blonde hair is making her too conspicuous and she like presses a button on her hat and a black wig pops out under it. she goes to this place where geisha do tea ceremonies for tourists and there's also stuff about traditional japanese beliefs about foxes? the more tails a fox has the more clever it is? or the more sneaky? please help i can't sleep im just thinking about this book
openQuestion about WH40K reference Literature
I have a question. I was trying to do research about Warhammer 40K technology lately. Saw a couple of references to a machine that was able to Purge it's name from databases across the galaxy. Being I was partially referencing non warp based ftl tech I should have made a note. Trying to find what novel this might have been from. Anyone have any ideas?
resolved Book series about American cultures (solved) Literature
It was mostly Indigenous cultures, but there was also a book about European colonists.
I don't know if it extended outside America. The only ones I remember where based there.
Each book followed a similar structure, with a question about the society the book focused on, and paragraph answering it, along with an illustration.
Each book seemed to illustrated by a different person. One book's art style was much more detailed than the others.
Edit: It's the "If You..." series
Edited by datadoggieeinresolved It might be named "Fish Girl" Literature
There's a work I'm looking for because I had gotten an idea for a new trope for the Mer Tropes index. I remember reading a children's book in my high school about a mermaid held captive in an aquarium run by a guy who puts up a God Guise pretending to be Poseidon. The book would've features the girl learning that she actually can gain legs on land, and upon doing so, she discovers that fraud that her owner is, speaks for the first time, and learns to live on her own among humans.
The book may be named "Fish Girl", but I'm not sure. I looked for this piece of literature in Mermaid Media, but didn't find it anywhere.
Edited by DeadlyEspressoopenI don’t even know pt 2 Literature
This might be the same book as my last post, but it’s even more all over the place so I hope not.
Uhhhh…
Girl in village, I remember reading it and imagining lots of sun and green grass. On a hill I think. There was some sort of hunting tax.
For some reason the girl went on this quest?
All I remember about the quest is her absolutely demolishing a smith shop.
I think there were dragons?
And either an axe or daggers were super important. May have belonged to a father.
Again so sorry for the lack of info but I’m really just getting like glimpses of scenes.
resolved I don’t even know Literature
I don’t remember a whole lot. I don’t think I got very far into the book or series. I remember I stopped because a friend who was a few books ahead warned me there was a few too many s3x scenes.
It was a very dystopian like book. A heavily guarded village sorta setting. These two girls, either sisters or twins, were being constantly compared because one was strong and smart while one was gorgeous. I think for some reason the strong one had more suitors tho? I could totally have that backwards. Then there was either some sort of coming of age thing or a sacrifice ceremony thing. The strong one got chosen. Went on a journey with her sister and a couple boys. There were shadow beasts. I think her sister died? Oh and behold she left there was like a lot of marriage proposals. I THINK they might’ve come up to an another big city and done some vigilante shit but it’s been years so I don’t really know.
Found!!! Sea of Shadows by Kelly Armstrong
Edited by Zee-TrayhorneopenYA Sci-fi book Literature
main characters are young twins (boy and girl) with minor genetic mutation to have gills. I think later they get some kind of superpowers. Several other minor mutants including a lion tailed guy named Leo. I think there was an Layered Metropolis setting that was kinda dystopian.
Read when I was a middle school, so over 10 years old at least.
openStory about one of the Apollo missions crashing into one of the spheres of heaven Literature
It's some alternate reality story where an Apollo mission, presumably Apollo 11, crashes into one of the spheres of heaven and now everyone knows that heaven and hell exists. Another detail is that in hell, people who sin less are thrown into worse hells in order to incentivise people to commit worse sins.
resolved Sci-Fi book where soldiers are kept in storage and are essentially immortal Literature
I read this book in the 90s, so it was from that era or earlier. In the future, scientists develop transporters, like Star Trek, but they are able to store the "pattern" of a person and then bring them back multiple times. The main character is a soldier who, after every battle, he and the other soldiers are dematerialized, and then when the next war starts, they're brought back to fight in that one. After a while the MC realizes that hundreds of years have gone by, and the people in charge don't consider the soldiers stored in the computer to be real people any more. The climax of the book is MC finding the main computer where the digital copies of all the soldiers are stored and destroying it so they can't be brought back any more. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
resolved Mid-nineties children's horror anthology Literature
In the mid-nineties, I read many horror story anthologies for children, although the stories often came from adult publications. The one I'm looking for has a sulfur-yellow cover with a pair of glum children peering from a poisonous-looking haze. I remember two titles from the stories within: "Battleground" by Stephen King and "The Ruum" by Arthur Porges. Other stories include a man who appears to be one hundred years old but is just about to reach his first birthday and one where a dodgy man is willing to pay any price for a specific house because a fortune he murdered to get is stashed away somewhere inside. I thought the book was titled Death Comes at Midnight but I can't find it searching for that title.
resolved A book about an orphan, a flooded earth, fedora-shaped spaceships, terrible fashion sense Literature
I read this book back in the '00s when I was living in Scotland, probably mid-to-late, but I can't be exact. The book was written in English, and I got it from my local library. The target audience was Tweens, probably 10-13. It's doubtful it'd be classed as YA for modern audiences; the content wasn't mature enough.
I'm pretty sure the cover was a picture of the main character crossing swords with someone and a big flare of light at the point of impact.
I believe the name of the book was the name of the protagonist, or included their name as a subtitle on the front cover. What that title was is long lost. I was certain it was "Johnny Z" or "Jimmy Z", but having tried everything in that vein (Jimmy, Jonny, Timmy, Tommy, X, Y, and Z), I'm stumped. As far as I remember, the protagonist was named this since he was an orphan, and they didn't know his parent's last name.
The book had a very Douglas Adams feel to it with a wacky futuristic Earth post-ice caps melting, where Earth's cities float, and the culture/fashions have been toyed with by alien races (though they have since stopped messing around, resulting in the current trends). Military uniforms are covered in polkadots and transports are in the shape of starfish. The book is full of fun little asides that explain why things are the way they are, giving contexts for the absurd things which happen.
The setting on Earth is that everything is flooded, with lots of mist and clouds, with everyone living in floating cities. Later, they get a lift to an alien space station, before the MC travels back to earth briefly at the end to save it from destruction.
The book opens with the protagonist being bullied in school. Everyone has these hand-held tractor-beam things that the bully is using to hold something of the main character's out of reach (homework? notebook?). They have silly acronyms for the gadgets, and the MC's one reflects its inferior strength compared to the bully's.
The protagonist is a young boy, or early teen, whose parents are both dead. He doesn't have much going for him and gets bullied a lot.
Every year, the other inhabitants of the galaxy send Earth a message asking them to join their wider community, though Earth refuses. I remember the messages coming down the prime minister/president's chimney. Earth's leader is an important supporting character; they are kind of the MC. Their second in command/deputy is a minor antagonist who tries to seize control of Earth while the leader is away.
The aliens send a message to Earth saying they want to have a tryout for a team of youngsters to save the universe. What is threatening the universe was never revealed, only that they needed to assemble a team. 4 or 5 human children are selected, with the MC being one and his Bully being another. They take off in a space rocket, reach and orbit the moon, before being met by a fedora-shaped ship which transports them to the space station where the selection process (try-outs) will take place.
While in transit, I remember them being kept in big glass bubbles, possibly with a view out into space. At this point, MC is visited by a multicoloured furry alien who ends up being on MC's team during the trials. There is a bit about burgers and how in the future, science has achieved delicious food that tastes like fast food but is nutritious and healthy.
The alien in charge of the trials looked a bit like a kangaroo.
The human children are split up into individual groups. The team the MC ends up on includes the multicoloured furry alien from before, a big three-armed alien, and maybe two others, one of which was a (non-human) girl I think he had a bit of a crush on.
At one point, it's revealed that the space station has some kind of normalisation field which makes everyone the same size, but in fact, the furry alien is actually really big, whilst the three-armed alien is very small. I also remember a rather novel aside where, when it's revealed that basically everywhere on the station is under constant monitoring, the three armed alien gets embarrassed and asks if they were monitoring when it did a number 12 (or some such number), and the book takes time to explain that humans are rare/unique/lucky that they only have to deal with number 1s and number 2s, but doesn't elaborate on what the other 10 possible types are. Witty kiddy toilet humour, for sure. There's no way I, as a pre-teen myself could have been so imaginative to come up with that.
They navigate the station via a series of wormhole-like discs on the walls, which you have to jump/fling/catapult yourself through. Personal size is irrelevant; anything can fit through one of these. These discs come back later as the method through which the MC saves the Earth by placing a pair on either side of the planet for their spaceship to fly through to avoid destroying it.
The selection process takes the form of a series of challenges that they have to train for. I remember one being a relay race in spaceships through an asteroid. Another was a sword fight involving special swords that take 800 years to forge and are passed through the heart of a star. Each sword is the maker's life's work.
In the room where they duel and practice with the swords, there is a diving board "thing" that protrudes over a gap around the edge of the duelling ring. The further along it you walk the more your worst fear feels real. The M Cs greatest fear is the Earth being destroyed. He is told only people with great "inner laft" can make it to the end. MC sneaks in one night and walks the entire length, falling off the end, where he meets his mum and dad in some kind of vision. They talk before he returns to bed. There was some form of repercussion for this since no one is supposed to go into the training room without permission/supervision.
Eventually, after all the challenges are completed and the Bully's team are disqualified for cheating, the MC's team wins. There follows a party, something causes the world leader to have a heart attack, he "dies", but the aliens revive him with a "microwave". There's also something which causes the Kangaroo alien in charge of the whole thing to need to take a rest, and so uses some kind of time-dilation device to take a very long nap without anyone else being affected. If I recall, he then forgets to turn it off, racking up a very expensive electricity bill?
After the party, they return to earth, where the world leader confronts his deputy/stand-in who has tried to seize control and replace him as leader. The world leader ends up getting stabbed. MC then duels the bad guy using those newly acquired sword-fighting skills and beats him, but the world leader actually dies this time. Pretty sure the world leader was a widower and also took his death well.
MC places two of the wormhole discs in space to try and save the Earth from destruction, since the spaceship he and his team have to take to save the universe has to reach super speeds to reach wherever it is they are going, and to reach these speeds it requires a runway that happens to pass through the Earth.
On his return, he chats with the Kangaroo alien (I think this might be where the aside about the time-dilation bit comes up), who offhandedly mentions "laft falls" which are trust falls without anyone behind you but you trust that someone out there truly loves you and their love will catch you. MC suspects "laft" is actually "love" just mispronounced beyond recognition.
They depart, the ship doesn't destroy the earth because of the wormhole discs, and the book ends with the girl on MC's team listening to two others doing "laft falls" with pillows to cushion them (which doesn't work since they aren't trusting). She then does a laft fall whilst thinking about the MC, but it's not revealed if she hits the ground.
Other curious notes:
- There was telepathy and telekinesis. - Terrible fashion sense (polkadot camouflage uniforms was just the beginning) - Doors which required the password "shaushages" - The protagonist's parents were revealed to have been friendly with the aliens but died in some (spaceship?) crash. - I recall there was a sequel in the works/about to be released (pretty sure I found it on Amazon) I don't know if it was to be a duology or a full series
Honestly, at this point, I'm tempted to try writing this book myself and trying to get it published. At least then, even if it's plagiarism I'll have found what I'm plagiarising.
Would love to find this book again, it's driving me crazy that I can remember a story so vividly but can't name it or find it. I've probed Chat GPT and Bing Copilot but neither were any use. Amazon and Abebooks don't show anything useful for the variants of Johnny/Jimmy/Timmy/Tommy X/Y/Z.

I only read about it here but can't remember the page, it might have been a novel or short story: A sci-fi story where humans discover immortality and it becomes accessible to all. One woman is dicovered to have used the process on her own baby (making it unable to grow older) so she could take care of it forever and the baby would never outgrow her.