PLEASE HELP!!! me find this book. Someone must know what it is.

ah someone please help me!

anthology of ghost storied aimed for teenage. probs mid nineties (i'm 33). of the stories i can remember one was definitive called 'The red miller' about a boy who moves into a mill and is terrified by the disfigured ghost there.
another story is a girl i think who moves into a house that has cat wallpaper, the room is haunted, not sure what happens!
another one is a haunted blacksmiths and a killer horse
one about a painting and a jumper that suffocates the child.
and last, a magic show being put on. the mysterious magician sends two unruly children 'somewhere' and when they come back they ad wonderfully good, if a little subdued.

if anyone can remember this i will be eternally grateful!!

Timbuktu I remembered No More School reading your description and also the grass pie! There was lots of elaborate description of how they were going to use their meagre supplies to make school dinner for everyone.

Hopefully someone remembers this book. It’s about a young woman who is really overweight. She runs away to London and gets a job as a typist. I think she loses the weight and gets involved with an abusive tv producer. Then eventually she finds a nice man. Can’t remember more than that but I loved that book in my teens and would love to read it again. Any ideas? Thanks

I've got two mystery books!

The first was a teen fiction book. There was a young girl who lived with her Mum in a rundown / neglected house due to the mum's depression/mental health problems. The Mum has a breakdown and is taken into hospital and the girl makes friends with the owner of a local antique/brick a brace shop. She ends up cleaning, decorating and renovating the house as a surprise for her Mum when she returns from hospital. The Mum is possibly hippyish.

The second was an adult romance paperback (I think). I remember the main character was a male war photographer/photo journalist who has some sort of romance (I think) with another female war reporter. It is set around the time of the Vietnam war and (I think!) talks about Tiananmen Square...I vaguely remember it focusing on the tension in their relationship and the not knowing if they will see each other again...

Any ideas?!

I don't have much to go on with mine. I read it in the 90's and it was the story of a homeless man in London told in the first person. I was struck by him saying he always had a bit of money on him, even if it was just a few pence, as it made him feel he had at least something.

Gemma Alone by Noel Streatfeild has a production of Romeo and Juliet - but it's produced by the schoolteachers rather than the teenagers themselves.

Great thread. KeithLeMonde, your book sounds like Antonia Forest's 'Autumn Term'. The characters (in Kingscote school) put on a production of 'The Prince and the Pauper' and the first-night nerves are incredibly vividly described - including being sick.

But it's not a Shakespeare play and the book was written ages before so if you read it in the 80's/90's, that may not be right.

Keith, would your book be something as obvious as The Swish of the Curtain?

The thread about the NOVEL set in TONGA made me howl. I wonder if she ever found it.

This has been bugging me for years - a children's or YA-type book I read in the early 80s. All I have to go on is that a main character was a girl called Fane, and that she was some kind of loner, possibly a foster child or foundling. I think it was set somewhere remote - seem to remember them sitting on a stone wall. That's it

Anyone remember a children's picture book from the 1960s or earlier, it was about a little boy's love for an old horse on his farm. He thought the horse could fly. At the end, the horse dies, and the boy sees the horse up in the sky, flying away. It's not the Mary Stewart book. I've been looking for it for years!

Thanks Polly that’s it! I remember the cover.

Polly! That's exactly right, thank you very much! This thread is completely brilliant.

I was SO hoping that this was going to be the TONGA! TONGA! woman. Ah well.

timbuktu- could be No More School by William Mayne. Don’t remember the grass pie though!

noodlezoodle-I think your Scottish island girl is Emma from a series of three books by Honor Arundel , The High House, Emma’s Island and Emma in Love. Her boyfriend is indeed called Alastair and she has a rather bossy brother called Richard. It’s Edinburgh, though, not Aberdeen.

Yay Mumontherun, I absolutely loved that book as a child, and re-read it fairly recently (can't remember where I found it - library book maybe) and still loved it.

Colleys has now got me thinking about a book I wish I could find, but I remember so little about it. It was a teenage book (read by me in the late 80s or early 90s) about a group of schoolchildren putting on a play. The play may have been Romeo and Juliet but I might have mixed that up with something else. I just remember it had such a vivid description of the feeling backstage waiting to go on for the first night...... Not much to go on, I know.

Ohh that reminds me of a book that was set in a village school some time probably between 1900 and ww2 (generic olden days!)

The teacher was ill and the students decided to run their own school rather than go to the big school in town. The main thing I remember is one day they had grass pie for dinner because the school dinners were cancelled.

And the big boys were naughty I think.

Any ideas?

Oh yes, it was Eldred. I was thinking it was Old Cyril, but you’re right.

Dammit, @ChessieFL - I was about to suggest that! Should have known you’d get in first, with your username!

The character who kills himself in Appassionata (Eldred?) is either an oboeist or a clarinetist - I can check my copy when I get home. I also don’t remember any practising in the loo, though!

Colleys, yours isn’t Appassionata by Jilly Cooper is it? That’s about an orchestra and someone does commit suicide when they’re sacked, but it wasn’t an oboe player and I don’t remember anything about practising in the toilet!

It might be colleys, the brown owl leaving doesn’t ring a bell though. I’ve googled and can’t find anything else about the story - might get it though as it’s only a couple of quid on Amazon!

I have a book I've been trying to find for years - a music teacher told me about it but I can't remember the name of it. It was about an orchestra on tour and the oboe player practised his difficult passages in the toilet and sadly one day couldn't take the pressure and committed suicide.

Chessie was it the Secret Brownies? By Dorothy Richardson?

The brown owl left and they had to carry on meeting in secret until a new leader was appointed!

There’s a book (or possibly a series of books) I’ve been trying to find for a while. I would have read it/them in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It was about a girl who I think was called Laura, who moved to Tewkesbury and joined a Brownie pack. The pack had three ‘sixes’ which each had their own areas of the hall. One was called the Imps, and one part of the hall was favoured in winter because it had the log burner in it.

It’s not the series by Pamela Sykes or Verily Anderson.

Ooh Wildimaginings, thank you! I've just ordered it, can't imagine that that's not it!