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Original poster

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

182 replies

NotTheDuchessOfCambridge · 26/10/2017 20:37

Hi all, hoping to find a book I read back in the 90s, though the book could be 80s.
It was a condensed book in a readers digest hardback book (4 different books in 1).
It was about a man (investigator??) who had to get all his clues to a treasure from an old painting.
The painting was obscure (think Salvador Dali), it had a chess board on the floor and all the people facing left had tears on their cheek because they were lying (the clues they gave were false).
There was a tree on a hill. A ladder maybe.
I cannot remember the name of the book or the author and it’s driving me crazy as I really want to read it again!
It has the feel of a Dan Brown book, following ancient clues.

OP posts:
PenguinLost · 30/10/2017 23:05

Please can someone help with mine? A book, possibly a series, that I read when I was 8 or 9 back in the 80's about a girl whose parents ran a B&B in a seaside town and had long term residents over the winter season. She was pretty much left to her own devices and either solved mysteries or had adventures in a different world - bit vague I know but I'm pretty certain that the book I've been trying to recall had a pink cover with grey writing on. Any ideas gratefully received!

DesertSky · 30/10/2017 23:06

Aha I just discovered it myself! It’s called Searching for Shona! The reference was Scotland not Ireland!

stitchglitched · 30/10/2017 23:07

DesertSky I think your book is Searching for Shona by Margaret Anderson.

stitchglitched · 30/10/2017 23:08

Xpost!

swinkle · 30/10/2017 23:14

Ooh, I've got one, if anyone can help! It was a collection of short horror stories and one of the stories featured a character who woke up one day to find himself in a cage. The cage was suspended from a ceiling he couldn't see, and he couldn't see the ground beneath. All around him were other people in their own cages, as far as he could see. He was there with no explanation for a while, then one day realised that the door to to the cage had been unlocked the entire time and if he wanted to, he could jump out into whatever was below. Someone in a neighbouring cage said to him, "Now you know who built the cages".

This has been bugging me for years! I used to think it was written by Clive Barker, but I've never been able to find it so I don't think it was him, but I was reading a lot of that kind of stuff at the time, also Stephen King, Dean Koontz etc. I read it in the mid-late 90's, but I'm not sure when it was written. I don't think it was too old at the time.

Anyone? Smile

noodlezoodle · 31/10/2017 01:39

Oh I loved The Fortunate Few as well. I have You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott on my kindle and ready to read, I bought it because it's on a similar theme.

I have a short series I'm trying to remember - probably from the 70s or 80s and it featured a girl who lived on a remote Scottish Island, and had to move to Aberdeen to go to school or maybe even university? There's also an overbearing brother or boyfriend, can't remember which, possibly called Alistair. I think there were two books and that's about all I can remember I'm afraid - no wonder my googling has failed me.

WildImaginings · 31/10/2017 07:20

Swinkle was yours 'The Cages' in the collection of short stories called Personal Demons? Google is telling me it's by Christian Fowler.
It ends with the line ' "now you know who built the cages", said the doctor, smiling sadly.'

swinkle · 31/10/2017 08:26

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

ChessieFL · 31/10/2017 10:23

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.

colleysmill · 31/10/2017 10:31

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!

colleysmill · 31/10/2017 10:32

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.

ChessieFL · 31/10/2017 15:59

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!

ChessieFL · 31/10/2017 16:01

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!

bookworm14 · 31/10/2017 16:11

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

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!

ChessieFL · 31/10/2017 17:48

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

TimbuktuTimbuktu · 31/10/2017 17:48

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?

KeithLeMonde · 31/10/2017 18:23

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.

pollyhemlock · 31/10/2017 18:26

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.

pollyhemlock · 31/10/2017 18:34

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

fluffiphlox · 31/10/2017 18:34

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

noodlezoodle · 31/10/2017 22:04

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

TimbuktuTimbuktu · 31/10/2017 22:22

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

Clawdy · 31/10/2017 22:39

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!

KatherinaMinola · 31/10/2017 22:47

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 Grin

KatherinaMinola · 31/10/2017 22:48

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