Books you thought no one else has read

Madeline Brent - read all her* books as a teenager but no one else seems to have heard of her.

(*author was a man with a pseudonym).

I have read the Brothers Lionheart, but only as an adult- recommended by a Swedish colleague.

The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter are same series as Charlotte Sometimes.

Actually it’s The Summer Birds. Penelope Farmer is still alive I’m happy to say.

Yes I have read both Castle of Bone and William and Mary. Particularly fond of W and M. Also The Summer of the Birds which is a sort of prequel to Charlotte Sometimes.

Yes, I was similarly devastated by the Brothers Lionheart

Did anyone read The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren as a child? I'm sure some have. An absolutely devastating, heartbreaking book in places.

The Brothers Lionheart, The Silver Chair and Charlotte Sometimes really affected me at the time. Quite emotionally gruelling.

Talking of CS has anyone read A Castle of Bone or William and Mary also by Penelope Farmer? Another one where I'd go to the library as a child and ask at the desk "have you got any Penelope Farmer?" And they'd go "Penelope Lively we have! But not Penelope Farmer."

I wonder why she felt the need to change her name?

To avoid comparison with her brother, I suppose, and any suggestion that she was trading on his name.

we had this on audio book together with the follow up The Witches Revenge. It remains one of the things my brother and I still quote and the witch terrified both of us! We’re now 47 and 44.

Oh I loved this book and have never revisited as an adult because I’m scared it won’t be as good. It’s the first book I remember crying when I finished because I was just so sad there wasn’t anymore to read. I instantly started it again. You’ve made me tempted to read it.

@MissRoseDurward not until much later. I haven’t read any John Buchan, but DH has. I wonder why she felt the need to change her name?

Brat Farrar was thr Classic Serial on R4 a couple of weeks ago.

@marthasmumI loved those! Across the Barricades and Into Exile - Kevin and Sadie.

For some reason that reminded me of Brat Farrar. Also Fair Stood the Wind for France - both unrelated but I read them around the same age.

Yes I read O. Douglas a long time ago. Similar to D.E. Stevenson. I did find all the Scottish dialect rendered phonetically a bit wearing after a while. Not the dialect itself, but the way it was written.

Did you know O Douglas was John Buchan's sister?

Has anyone come across Penny Plain by O Douglas? It was published in the 1920s, and I only read it because a scruffy old hardback copy was on my Auntie’s bookshelf when I was young.
The heroine is Jean Jardine, a very sensible lass living in a lowlands Border town with her younger siblings. Glamour and romance enter her life when a Lady comes to stay in the town and brings her friends and connections. It’s very sweet about small town characters and romantic without being saccharine. She’s sort of a Mrs Miniver predecessor..
I’ve just seen from Wiki that it’s a trilogy..

That was Joan Lingard - Kevin & Sadie quarter and the Maggie ones (a trilogy?). Also loved The Gooseberry by her & lots of others!

Oo this thread is the gift that keeps on giving!
Hostages to Fortune- I was thinking of another one that I think was called Hostage (singular) to Fortune? Was it Joan Lingard?? It was one of a trilogy about Sadie and Kevin who were a teenage couple in Northern Ireland. I think Kevin was Catholic and Sadie Protestant? They eloped to England and it followed their story.

Also, the trilogy about Maggie who was a teenager in Glasgow and her boyfriend James who was quite posh - they met in a Scottish glen somewhere? It was on tv in the 80s. Was that Joan Lingard too?

@Seeline and @Fernticket - I still have all of the Sue Barton books - I might ask dh to retrieve them from the top shelf of the book case so I can reread them!

My mother was very fond of the Somerville and Ross books. I have never got round to reading them yet, but it's only a couple of months since I first read RF Delderfield, whose work I'm aware for similar maternal reasons.

The Irish RM stories of Somerville & Ross. People watched the TV series with Peter Bowles but no one I know read them.

And him from under the patio in Brookside.... I can't remember if I read the book before or after seeing the tv series, but I think the book was much funnier.

@Springtimefordaffs
i love the Irish R.M. stories.
As you probably know, Edith Somerville (Somerville) and her cousin Violet Martin (Ross) co-authored their books and after Violet Martin died in 1915, Edith Somerville continued to write the books under both authors names as she claimed to get through to Violet on the Other Side.
In my opinion, the quality of the books decline after Violet died, though The Big House at Inver is very enjoyable.
The Real Charlotte is my favourite of their books - it’s brilliant.

It’s not her financial dependence, it’s that her anonymous benefactor abuses his position by courting a very young and incredibly vulnerable orphan without telling her who he is, while, casting him as her family (never having met him or getting a reply) she writes naive letters describing how much she likes the man she knows as her aristocratic roommate’s uncle — up to the point where said uncle proposes to her!

It’s impossible to read this as anything other than an unpleasant abuse of power. Even if we leave aside the things he does to make it impossible for her to meet other suitors (he forbids Judy to accept her friend’s invitation to spend the summer with them because her eligible Princeton brother likes her, and has his secretary tell her she has to go to her usual farm, where he can visit her for weeks at a time because it’s owned by his old nurse), you’d still have to ask yourself why a rich, 40something bachelor chooses a penniless, naive teenage orphan who has no one in the world but him as a wife.

I mean, the novel doesn’t tell us this. It’s like reading Jane Eyre past the age of fifteen, and thinking similarly about a rich employer proposing to his penniless, orphan employee because she has no one in the world to discover his existing marriage, or come after him with the law once Jane has been ‘ruined” on her honeymoon.

@InigoJollifant & @MissRoseDurward, very true about GH's splendid secondary characters. The Foundling is full of them, the crook who plots the kidnapping is a gem.

The Irish RM stories of Somerville & Ross. People watched the TV series with Peter Bowles but no one I know read them. Have seen reference to The Real Charlotte on MN.

Exactly!

And the film of Daddy Long-Legs starred Leslie Caron (aged 24) opposite Fred Astaire (aged 56)….