Request #91

a collection of short stories of the mystery/suspense genre. In one story a teenage boy gets involved with a crime he’s trying to solve and in the end I’m almost sure he gets shot in the shoulder but lives. I can clearly remember his description of the girl that helps him solve the mystery. I think her name is Sybil. “Nose a little too small, mouth a little too large, lots of freckles. Lots of guys fall for that type.”

Request #90

 Woke up thinking about a book I read in the late 1970s I think where the protagonist was a ? Teenager boy who had been a bully and was trying to turn it around. I remember him trying to lose weight. He had parents who were trying to be supportive o think. That’s all I  got:)  The Bully of Barkham Street by Mary Stoltz, solved by Lost Classics Readers Sandra and Tracy. 

Request #89

There is a book that I read in Middle School(97-2000) that has been driving me nut to find. I believe it was published in the 70s but can’t be sure. It was mystery/ghost story. I can remember the plot but not the title or author.

The plot centers around a young girl who lives with her father in this big house with bogs nearby. She finds this really old locket which had belong to a young girl who died many years before and whose spirit uses that locket to lure other young girls into the bogs. What happened to the spirits in her life was that she fell in love with a boy who gave her the locket but her father forbade her from being with the boy and she eventually tried to run away or something but got caught in a bog and died. And so her spirit lingers. I believe the protagonist almost dies in a bog but her father saves her. Of course it has my memory of the plot. Perhaps you can help me locate this book. Suggestion: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downinh Hahn

Request #88

I am looking for the title of a book, I would have read it probably in the mid-to-late 70s, about a girl who was a budding tennis star and she was on the tennis competition circuit, but also coming of age and starting to have regrets or wishes she could be a normal kid. I distinctly remember a part in the book of the girl prepping for a tournament and having steak and eggs for breakfast, because it was high protein to fuel her.  She wore her hair in long pigtails (as I did during that time).  I don’t remember much more. The girl may have been blonde, but I don’t remember that either. Suggestion: When No One Was Looking by Rosemary Wells

Request #87

I read the first few chapters of this sci-fi book in 1985, when I was 11 or so. I feel like it’s a slightly older book, maybe from the 70s. Maybe older, but I don’t think so. A scientist is building a doorway to another reality in his laboratory. This is in his house and his neighbor is a nurse, a little pushy, crushing on him and always coming over. Well, he gets the doorway working one day when she comes over with a casserole (I remember this specifically) and when they go through the door into this new reality, they eat the casserole on the banks of like, a creek or something, with their hands because they have no utensils. That’s as far as I got before I lost the stupid book and it’s been driving me crazy for years! What was it called!

Request #86

.Unpopular girl in high school befriends a beautiful popular girl who sews her own clothes & wears red-stiched cowboy boots. I think the unpopular girl plays the flute and gets a makeover by the beautiful girl. I remember remember them going to the mall to splurge on an orange julius.    The Best of Friends By Jill Ross Kelvin (Wildfire) solved by Lost Classics reader Sheesh

Request #85

 A friend is looking for a book she read in the late 70s/early 80s. Here is what she remembers:

I’m trying to remember the name of a book that I read when I was growing up so it hadn’t been written in like the 70s or early 80s. It was about a girl that grew up in a family they didn’t have a lot of money but they weren’t super poor I think she babysat for somebody and she sometimes pretended that that family was hers and somebody had a miscarriage but I can’t remember if it was a family she babysat for her her own family. And she may not have babysat.  Sugesstion: Claudia By Barabara Wallace 

Request #84

 The plot was of a teenage couple who fell in love but their story was complicated by the fact that the boy’s mother had killed the girl’s sister in an automobile accident. I don’t remember everything but I think the mother had maybe been driving after a work holiday party, and it was raining, and the girl was riding her bike and was hit by the car. The young teens who fall in love don’t know about this connection at first, then when they find out it pulls them apart.

That’s all I remember; I don’t remember how the story is resolved. From the early-mid 1980s Solved by the original requestor When We First Met by Norma Fox Mazer.