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openHorror stories about a school. Literature
Okay, this is probably not going to get many replies because I seriously doubt it exists outside of Argentina. I'm looking for a book of short stories, all of which take place in a high school where... strange things happen.
In one of the stories, a tall guy is expected to be great at basketball, but he sucks. He doesn't want to disappoint anyone, so he comes up with a plan. He says, quite mysteriously, to his friend that "they're going to give me a standing ovation". The friend is understandably confused because our protagonist is terrible at sports, and asks if he's going to steal the chairs. In the end, he bursts a ketchup packet onto his face and pretends he was hit by an enemy player, and gets a standing ovation for his apparent martyrdom.
In another one, a young student has (I think) a little toy car signed by one of the actors from Back to the Future (?). It gets confiscated. He and his friends sneak into the school at night and break into the room where all confiscated toys and cellphones are kept. In there, they find the principal's nephew, but then it turns out that he's the principal himself and he becomes young when he steps into the room.
In another story, a student finds his dead (ex?) girlfriend in the lab or something.
In the final story, all of the characters (that survived, anyway) join forces to discover, once and for all, the mysteries of the school.
Again, these stories were in Spanish and weren't very popular. I'm just desperate, because I can remember a lot of things about the book and yet no titles. Please, if you have any idea what the book could be, help me.
openKids Book, probably 00s [Solved] Literature
I read this novel somewhere between 2007 and 2012 (most likely between 08 and 10). It was shelved in he library's junior section but could possibly be at the shallow end of YA. I got it from a UK library, but I don't remember if it was set in Britain or somewhere else (definitely English speaking though.)
It was split into two parallel stories, one in the present day and another in a kind of historical fantasy world. The main character in both was a girl. She and her younger brother both had spirals tattooed on their ankles (they did this themselves). Near the end of the present day plot, they were trapped in basement and I think there was a flood.
The girl's name in the fantasy part was Argent and there might have been shapeshifting somewhere. It may have been the present day girl making up a story, but I think there was more to it, like Argent was an ancestor or past life or something.
Edited by HummingbirdHawkmothopenA kids sci-fi picture book with John Berkley-esqe Art Literature
I don’t remember much about the specific details, but it was essentially describing stuff in the future, like how humans would interact with aliens in the future, with descriptions of translators being drilled into our bodies (in a non-horrific way) futuristic credit cards (riveting stuff, I know), and how space travel would work. The artwork was beautiful, and felt a lot like John Berkley art. The designs of the ships, cities and technology were definitely reminiscent of stuff like 2001 A Space Odyssey, Cowboy Bebop and Blade Runner. The book probably would’ve been published around 2006 to 2008, as that’s the time period I got the book as a gift from my grandmother, and it was brand new. If it helps, the dimensions of the book would probably around 11.5 by 5 inches, and I’m 90% sure the cover involved these two kids wearing space suits.
Edited by Risdio51openA Long Novel about the Communist Army fighting Cartoon Aliens Literature
I gave up reading this a few times because it was so long, but I remember a book about a Communist army combatting alien invaders from another dimension. The Communists were the good guys, and consisted of characters from Halo and Call of Duty, so it was kind of a cross-over, and the alien horses were from a certain cartoon show of some infamy a few years back. The thing is, I want to try and finish reading it again, but I've forgotten where to find it.
openFiction book with southwestern recipes and a skull Literature
In the late 90's or early 2000's, I read a fiction book about a young woman finding her way in life away from her parents. The parents were American but of French and Spanish descent and had some story about how they were brought together by fate to open a restaurant with a skull as the logo or something? Anyway, she goes off to work in a restaurant in the Southwest along with glass skull that she thinks is sending her messages from her brother who has passed away. He even gives her recipes. Finally, she has found her place and doesn't need his help through the skull anymore. Seriously. That's what I remember about the book. There may have also been a mystery involved. Please help!
openChildren’s “how to draw animals” book Literature
It’s been bugging me for a long time, I’ve been trying to find this children’s book that’s one of those “how to draw animals” books. But all the animals are cartoony and not even real animals. A lot of them were combinations of things or mythical creatures.
For instance, one that I’m fairly certain was on the cover of the book, was a fuzzy orange frog that I think had a raccoon tail.
I can’t recall a lot of the animals but I also remember there was a Chinese dragon with the head of a parrot. The designs were cute.
I think the book might have come out somewhere between 2005 - 2012.
Please help!
Edited by PoshDemonopenHarry Potter Fanfic Literature
Pretty simple one, I guess. One Harry/Nymphadora that Nymphadora's parents use Reverse Psychology to make her date Harry instead of Remus. Pretty sure it was featured in a trope somewhere.
openBook About Knight School Literature
I read this book back around maybe 2009, 2010... it was a middle grade/YA novel, I think, in a England-with-another-name setting, about a lower-class boy who secretly takes a qualifying test for some kind of knight school and does really well, so he gets admitted as like some sort of special case student. The main things I remember are that his friends (and the other special cases) were a Jewish boy and an Indian boy, there was a good deal of class warfare stuff going into the story, there was a rival school from, like a sort of Soviet Scottish-esque country, and the one nice teacher turned out to be the villain. Wow this is rambly, I hope I can find the name of this book because it's driving me crazy.
openUncanny Valley Antagonist, genetically engineered perfection, can shoot from the hip from holster. Literature
I'm looking for an entry on this wiki that I read some months ago, which I've forgotten the name of but remember some details about.
It was literature, naturally. A novel series I believe. It featured a genetically enhanced/modified upper class, who are described as 'too perfect'. One in particular, who I believe is called a duke, or something like that, is specifically noted as having a voice too smooth, and a face too attractive, in an Uncanny Valley sense, where it was unnerving because it was too perfect to be fully recognized as human.
The one thing I do remember specifically is that the entry mentions him performing a feat of Improbable Aiming Skills by firing his gun from the hip while still in its holster, which he owes to his genetic enhancements.
I wish I could recall more details, but I'm afraid it's been a while since I read it. Hopefully this will be enough for a particularly keen Troper to identify what I'm searching for? I've been looking for a while now.
Edited by BossLeaderopenA boy, a dragon, and seventeen tangerines [SOLVED] Literature
I remember reading some children's fantasy story (perhaps around 2000? 2005? I do not recall exactly). The only things I remember about it are:
-The main character was a boy who went on adventures with a pet/friend dragon.
-A surprising percentage of the story's detail was spent on the main character eating the supply of tangerines he had brought along. The boy would begin the story by bringing seventeen tangerines, and then the book would stop and he would eat three of them. Then he would fly to another island or something and eat four more tangerines there.
I don't know if the tangerines were actually as large a portion of the book as I remember them being. I'm confident they were in it though. If anyone has any ideas I would appreciate it.
Thank you!
Edited by aphyeropenurban fantasy FBI type series Literature
So years back I read one book i a literature series where an FBI (BAU more specifically I think) team led by some female character whose name I cant remember investigated supernatural mythological monsters. One of the cases involved a thunderbird monster which was killing young women under the orders of a high schooler getting back at her classmates.
openChildren's Book About Elderly Black Man Literature
I'm looking for a book about a little black girl, and her relationship with an older man who was a grandfather figure and family friend.
It was a children's picture book in beautiful painted detail (vaguely reminiscent of the 'Amazing Grace' series) and covered the relationship between the man and the little girl's family from her childhood to young adulthood. The old man is mentioned to smoke cigars.
The book ends with the man's death and the recollection of the girl, now an adult with dreads. I think in the end of the book she was an artist, or painting a portrait. I think there was a rainbow motif or theme through the book.
openSpacefaring dragon overlords (Found it!) Literature
Humans live in fear. Earth is placed under the control/jurisdiction of a dragon who is the equivalent of a spoiled rich kid noble. Meanwhile, there are dragons who bop around in massive space ships and brutally enforce their monopoly/dominion. I remember distinctly one scene where an ancient black dragon military commander returned to a part of space where she had one of her greatest victories and was gazing out the window to look upon the wreckage of ships she defeated. I believe she had spend ages towing the... corpses(?) of the biggest/strongest ships of her adversaries. Every dragon has their hoard, and that was hers
I found it. It's titled Magik Online. The author dropped it back in September, leaving an outline of how the rest of the series was supposed to go.
Edited by Epicsakura101openShort sci-fi stories (1 UNSOLVED) Literature
As a kid with no internet in the 2000s, I was a frequent library visitor. I especially liked sci-fi anthologies, some of them probably relatively old. Some stories I remember to this day and they bug me to no end.
1 story: The protagonist lands on another planet. There are human-like aliens there who implant some kind of gemstones into their foreheads which gives them telepathy/mind control powers. They do the same to the protagonist. They use those stones to control animals (I remember somebody controlling a bird and looking through its eyes) but turns out there is another species of aliens that can do the same to humans. I think this was actually their planet originally, and the human-like ones are descendants of those who crash-landed there like the protagonist. The other aliens are giants with very long lifespan, but as they grow older, they start turning to stone. Almost all of them are dead now, only one is still alive, but he's mostly stone, so he can't even move. In the end, the protagonist escapes the planet. While he's on a spaceship that's about to destroy the alien, the protagonist telepathically contacts him, half-expecting the alien to try to mind-control him to stop the countdown. But the alien is almost glad because he's been so lonely, he'd rather die than remain the last of his species.
2 story (SOLVED): There is a city that's surrounded by a huge wall and no one knows what's behind it. Eventually, people manage to climb to the top. The wall continues to the horizon and an expedition sets out to see where it ends. They walk for a very long time. As they walk, the sun doesn't set, but it looks like it's dimming and everything is getting darker. Then the sun starts to brighten again and they see the end of the wall. But when they reach it, they see their own city. It's stated that the wall is like a Mobius strip: it doesn't have other side. (But for some reason I thought that the expedition didn't end up in their city, but in some parallel reality version of it.)
3 story (SOLVED):
The protagonist gets a job as an assistant for a Houdini-type escape artist stage magician. He falls in love with a woman who is another assistant and in relationship with the magician. Except the magician is a jerkass who treats her badly, and the protagonist wants to get rid of him. There is a big show being planned where the magician is going to get inside a Klein bottle
, but getting out of it is supposed to be impossible. The magician knows he can't do it for real, so he is planning to surreptitiously replace the Klein bottle with a replica while on the stage, but when the show starts, the protagonist doesn't switch bottles. The magician realizes this only when he's already half-way inside the bottle. He can't get out and breaking the bottle would kill him, so he is stuck there forever.
openTwo teenagers and piggy bank Literature
In eighth grade, my class read a book about two teenagers who befriended a man after they prank call him. The man has a room in his house full of piggy banks, I think. The teenagers throw a party at his home and that results in the man having a heart attack.
openUnknow Book Literature
So bit of an odd one thats been driving me nuts, the book from what i remember was in a city that was in a kingdom that was slowly failing to invaders. The main characters were a pair of inventors who were trying to invent a cannon, with a friend in the city guard. They were broke and almost arrested when their patron died owing a lot of money. Without any other option they threw themselves at an old wealth house to get a new patron, which turned out to be the patriarchs grand-daughter (maybe daughter) holding the family together since the patriarch was money/noble oriented. They traded a toy steam ball on the promise they could make one that would power a ship against the wind. While siphoning as much money as the could to the cannon project
The two eventually hit on the idea of using a bellfounder to cast the cannon. And equipped a ship with a proto steam engine. One of thier helpers turned out to be a relative to a pirate family/clan and escaped the cities sacking with the ship while they escaped with the bronze case cannon/thier notes and the patrons daughter
They went on to found a secret science community while pretending to be priests.
For the life of me i cant recall the title or author of the series
openScifi story on longevity aboard space stations Literature
I think this was a YA book: A scifi story on a space station where the twist is that the protagonist's friend (possibly named Maria) was working for a coalition of evil South American governments. There was something about discovering immortality/longevity treatments aboard the space station (discovered via a long-lived hamster, less gravity meaning less work for the heart), and the protagonist had a limp.
openSeries of books about magic stones Literature
Trying to find the name of a series of books I read back in Primary School (Elementary school for the americans) but I don't remember much more then scant details about it.
I believe the main McGuffin of the series were called milkstones, or something akin to that. I don't remember why they were being sought or what they did unfortunately.
The plot of the first book involved a wizard who was protecting one of the stones by shapeshifting into the form of a pool of water. In the interest of going and doing something else they grant the protagonist the ability to shapeshift to take his place temporarily. It works for a little, but the protagonist gets angry, beliving the wizard into having duped him into taking his place as the guardian and starting to boil, leading to... something. The protagonist also gains the ability to talk to birds at some point.
Second book involves a gladitorial area where the fights between the contestants are compared to dancing. Or are actually dancing. The protagonist of that book gets into a fight with what I think was the emperor for the right to control the place or the right to leave. They win and kill them but come to the sobering realisation that by killing them in such an intimate manner they've become a little more like him. They leave and take some people with them and I can't remember what happens afterward.
Third book involves a witch tricking a girl into thinking she's a cat to actually shapeshift her into one so she can sneak into somewhere for some reason, returning to human form like nothing had happened once inside in a way that confuses them.
Sorry for the minimal details, I read these things over a decade ago so my recollection of them is hazy at best. If anyone could assist I would appreciate it.
openVaguely recalled book read in elementary school Literature
It was a book about a boy in school. All I remember is that the kid on the cover looked kind of like a younger version of Alfred E. Neuman from MAD (though without the smile), and that he entered the girl's bathroom at one point and was embarrassed afterwards.

I remember reading a science fiction short story about a main character creating a clone out of boredom on a spaceship. It ends with the clone shoving the main character out of the spaceship's airlock.
What was that short story based on the description?