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

[NotTheDuchessOfCambridge]

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.

Possibly Ellie! I don’t remember much more than I put in my post above, but that sort of storyline does sound plausible. I’ve ordered The Secret Brownies that a pp suggested and will let you know!

Desertsky - is the book you want Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer? It's a time slip novel, set in a boarding school. The central character keeps sliding back to the First World War.

Hello thanks for the suggestions - I think appasionata came out many years after it was mentioned - I'll check the dates though. My teacher mentioned it in the early 90s (unless he was friends with Jilly cooper????)

Appassionata came out in 1996 so could fit your dates.

Can anyone help with this children’s picture book?

The story is about a boy (or possibly a man) in a village who paints houses. The paint he uses is brown but after a while it turns colourful.
The king of the village sees these colourful houses and wants the boy to paint his castle this way, so he does, but the king thinks he’s painted the castle brown and orders him to be hanged (or decapitated maybe).
Just in time the castle changes to pretty colours and the boy is saved. The paint was magic.

This book was in my school library in the 70’s and I loved it, and would love to find it to see how much I remembered correctly! I hope someone knows it!

Secret Brownies has arrived and unfortunately it’s not the book I’m looking for so my quest goes on!!

Oh no sorry about that :(