80's-90's young adult fiction....do you remember the greats?

[AnnabelleLee]

I loved all the post apocalyptic stuff best: Brother in the Land, Plague 99, Empty World, Children of the Dust etc...but also all the Point Horror, Christopher Pike as well.

What camp were you in?

And does anyone remember one where a teen girl could astrally project herself? It's annoying me.

Thank you Sight, now I've read a brief synopsis it's all come back!

Stranger with my face is definitely the one about astral projection. I re-read it recently.

When I went to the library, I used to look first for:
Jacqueline Wilson (cos before she got rich on Tracy flipping Beaker, she was good, and she wrote lots of slightly odd books about bookish oddball teens)
Jean Ure - same: she didn't used to be so formulaic. I had One Green Leaf about a boy with leukemia, and Play Nimrod For Him, about two sixth formers who have an elaborate fantasy world that gets out of control
Diana Wynne Jones
And always F for Forest, in case she'd written any I somehow didn't know about or the library had just uncovered...

I think you must have all been young adults later than I was although I am a teen of the 80s. I remember the S.E.Hinton ones - The Outsiders, Rumble Fish and so on. I loved all of K.M. Peyton's - I was obsessed with pony stories and Fly-by-Night was one of my favourites. I also remember the Easy Connection one! There was a sequel too - Easy something else.

I also went through a massive Jean Plaidy phase. And who didn't read Lace as a teen in the 80s!

Wow so many memories here. I re-read the first half of the trebizon series last year on a long haul flight. Used to love so many of these. I still own the Forbidden Game trilogy.

Thank you Shadowfall and Ellebelly That's the one. I didn't remember it was a Christopher Pike one, or it would've been easier to work out.

Oh dear, I'm going to have to order so many books from this thread.

There's another I've thought of today and can't remember the title/author... About a girl who runs away from somewhere (children's home?) with a boy. They roll around in nettles to get themselves into the nurses room where they can escape from, then they work at a funfair.
I'd like to add it to my shopping list

Most of the books I read were from the local library. My poor dad used to stagger home under the weight of as many books as me and my sister could get out every fortnight or so. We'd read our own, then recommend ones and swap.

i read avidly, but very few of these, are ringing bells. I remember reading all the James Herbert horror books at 13, though.

Ha floot - Trebizon! That Rebecca really got on my nerves with her perfect boyfriend Robbie and her tennis excellence.

SteamingNit - y to early Jacqueline Wilson. 'Waiting for the sky to fall' was one I remember - I only recently found it was JW recently due to JW-obsessed dd (and was able to point out there was a JW I had read and she hadn't!)

I think the sequel to Easy Connections was Easy Freedom.

LaQ - I Am David by Anne Holm. Turns out it was filmed in 2003 - would love to see that!

laqueen ds1 read 'I am David' - I confiscated screen time till he read it - he loved it as much as I did at his age...

Sightoabloodyscream do you mean slated by Teri Teri? I read it when DS1 confiscated mumsnet till I read it - I loved it as much as him...

We went to a reading and met Teri Teri - think DS1 was the only boy in the room, bless him.

Yes, I remember reading 'Waiting for the Sky to Fall' whilst waiting for GCSE results!

Trebizon Loved it. It provided my only knowledge of boarding schools (until I met DH, who thought I was mad). I remember getting quite flustered because it made me want to be like her and have good wholesome fun at a boarding school, but at the same time I was massively cross at her parents for sending her when she didn't want to go, and determined it wouldn't happen to me because I wasn't as weak and would refuse to get on the train. Thus missing out on the jolly good fun. I was very confused

My mum's Jilly Cooper's got passed around our class at school. And Jackie Collins, but they weren't as popular. Also lots of Stephen King.

Chaos no, it was one I read way, way back. Probably
early 90s, which could have meant the book was a lot older in our library.

Anyone remember a series of 4 books set in America after a nuclear apocalypse? THe girl and boy were on their way to Denver, in the last one I read.

ooh yes the Jilly Coopers. classy eh didn't they all have girls names?

Easy Connections was the most amazing book. the first introduction to raw sexual emotion I lent a copy to the girl next door, the poor lass was never the same again.

terribly unfeminist though if I recall the plot correctly

there is a really great book I read as a teen but I can't find it anywhere.

Basically story from what I can remember what this. Teen boy goes on holiday to France with his parents and on the journey there he sees lots of questions marks on the sides of building etc. The family eventually find their destination which happens to be a remote farmhouse b and b type place which is run by an unpleasant man and his surly teen daughter.

The boy befriends the daughter who appears to have a difficult relationship with her father and the family feels there is something not right with their relationship. At night the boy is visited by the huge snake which at first terrifies him but as the holiday goes on he sees it as a comfort and starts to seek answers to the girls family ie where is her mum and her sister.

The horrifying twist comes when he realises that the snake is in fact the girl and she shapesshifts into a snake every night to avoid her father sex u ally molesting her. The boy then finds out the girls father had killed the mother and the sister after molesting them too and then there is a big finale which I can't remember.

It's stayed with me a long time that book but I don't know who it's by or what it's called but I've been searching for it for 20 years

Melusine is the snae girl one. Can't remember the author. Lois Lowry?

Oh, I love this thread! YY to early Jacqueline Wilson being so much better than what she writes nowadays - This Girl, Amber, etc. I'm amazed those books haven't been re-released.
JanePurdy the NZ swimmer was Alexandra Archer and the books are by Tessa Duder. She did indeed have an opera singer boyfriend, met him at the Rome Olympics no less!
One of my favourite series was Making Out by Katharine Applegate, think it was out in the 90s. It was all about a group of teenagers living on an island in Maine.
Does anyone remember reading a book set in Australia about a girl whose younger brother was possessed by the devil? Think the brother's name was Sam. It bloody terrified me! Would love to know the title if anyone recognises it!

Oh yes, I remember Melusine! Pardonnez moi, mes filles!

Oh, and for any Trebizon fans, you can get the books for Kindle for a few quid each.