Request #347 From Benny

 I read back in the late-2000s. I doubt they would have been written before 2000, but I could be wrong.  I don’t remember too much about these books besides the female narrator and some… weird concepts. It surrounded a town where monsters came out after dark (or something like that), and a group of teens would fight them with enchanted weapons. There was a whole premise of certain numbers holding great importance. I think they would enchant their weapons by labeling them with 13-letter words. That might not have been it exactly, but I do remember a huge thing being the 13-letter words. Pretty sure there was a love triangle, too (but who’s surprised!). 

Request #346 From Unfollowed Scorpio

I have one i read a long time ago that ive been dying to remember.  It was a YA i think; and it was about a young troubled lady who got sent off to an all girls college i believe? To help sort her out.  There she meets this preppy rich girl and a girl whose very unemotional, offputting and just very guarded.  They become a best friend trio and soon stuff starts to go awry.  I think the preppy girl buys them all a house to live in?  Main character thinks sad girl is up to no good but it turns out its preppy girl who is absolutely insane and ended up like.. cutting off locks of main characters hair and preforming spells to fuck her life up. 

Request #345 From Jon

There’s a book I’ve been looking for over the course of maybe 20 years at this point. A while ago I came to the conclusion that I dreamed it or otherwise made it up, but maybe it actually does exist! I probably read it around 1993 or so.
The only plot points I remember are that it’s a group of kids and one adult (a teacher?) that escaped a global apocalypse of some sort and are traveling around in an airship. Somewhere in my head the phrase “purple cloud” popped up, which is great because it does seem to be the title of a classic post-apocalyptic sci-fi story. Unfortunately, that book doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what I remember. And since I’ve been searching for so many years it’s also possible that I’ve now conflated all the other things that came up with the book in question.

Request #344 From Summer

book 1: a girl who dresses in all black is often bullied at school and starts dressing as a raven/crow and terrorising the area she lives in at night and the bullies

book 2: a girl befriends a new girl in town who begins dressing like her, gets her hair cut like her and tries to steal her identity, not a good description but i remember the book cover being red 

Request #343 From Emily

 I’m technically looking for a series, but I can describe a few key events within the series. Also, this was available around the time I was in middle school, 07-08ish. 1. The main character, who is a young medium (think maybe 13 or younger), realizes that her new friend is dead and he has to accept that as well. 2. She leads some child ghosts to an Alice in Wonderland statue that winks due to a trick of the light, and it somehow persuaded the children to move on, much to the annoyance of her deceased brother later when they arrive 3. She visits some center that prepares people for the afterlife. One of the ways they do this is by having them rehearse their death. She, as a medium, isn’t even supposed to be there and it’s somehow dangerous for her to be present.

Request #342 From James

I have been looking for this book for a while, came across this email on twitter and thought I would ask! All I remember is it is about a girl and a boy, the book is told from both perspectives, the girl is a poor girl who has a chicken coop/chickens in her backyard, and is from a poorer family. I believe she just moved into the area, and her neighbor is a boy from a more well off family who initially is embarrassed by her and she had a crush on him (I’m not sure if his parents made him be friends with her because she was new to the area). Eventually as the story progresses and they get older the roles essentially switch where she becomes very pretty and popular and eventually moves on from liking him due to him being mean to her and her realizing her worth while he then begins to develop feelings for her. That’s pretty much the gist of what I remember and would love any help in finding the name of the book. I also want to say the cover was pink and blue (or had those colors on it)

Request #341 From Katie

I’m seeking a book—I think it’s YA, think I read it in middle school from the library? But it’s pretty dark but also lighthearted-ish. (Content warning for suicide and gun violence—if this isn’t something you’re ok with reading, please disregard my request) It’s set in—old-timey times, I don’t know, women wearing bonnets, horse-drawn carriages. But the distinctive details are that a woman is married to a guy she thinks is an idiot and lets him know it. She’s awful to him. The thing she complains about the most is that he was painting their house and he painted a dead roach into the fireplace mantel. One day, he decides to kill himself. But he drapes a large tarp in the living room before using the shotgun on himself, because he knows she’d be furious at the mess more than anything. (She’s a horrible woman, this is well established) But still, she finds a way to blame him—he killed himself at the end of winter, and she had a brand new pastel floral dress she wanted to wear, but now she has to be in mourning and wear black for a whole year, ugh (yep she’s awful)

Request #340 From Spiral

One of them was about a girl in foster care who was sitting behind the couch when her mom got murdered and at the end of the book she finds a picture album and hugs it and the book ends. I also remember a mention of her in a therapist/counselor’s office of sorts and she looks at drawings from other kids there and one of them is a guy with a gun arm killing someone. The other book is about a boy with a dad who was in prison. The book cover has a crow/raven and is yellow. It mentions the main character carving a walking stick for his grandma (?)  and he has a pet/friend crow/raven. The main character’s dad gets out of prison and kills the bird and uses the water tower the kid stays in to hold his stolen items and at the end of the book he goes back to jail. And a third book about a boy also in foster care who runs away and finds out details about his parents. The book details the boy getting a pencil shoved up his nose at the beginning too.

Request #339 From Matt

I read part of this book in a bookstore in Fredonia, NY in 2019 and still regret not picking it up and buying it before I had to leave for an event. The cover was white and pink and maybe some black, probably the text. All I remember is that it was about a rich woman meeting a young male singer or record label executive. Music was a theme here. The word “fuck” was thrown around and it had some sexual themes but mostly seemed like a drama. I believe the male & female leads went on a date of some sort and that they might have been together. I remember the premise being based around the female main character. I believe there was a “scene” with her in a bathtub?

Request #328 From Flo

i’ve got one that i’ve desperately been searching for for YEARS! no rush to reply but i thought i’d add myself to your long list of mystery books to find. i read it at least 10 years ago, i as far as i remember it was a fairly short book about a kid experiencing a school shooting/attack and frantically trying to find their twin/sibling, with the twist being that they had no sibling and (if i remember correctly) they were the one that had done the shooting.