Bright, colorful illustrations. A stray cat is cared for differently by each person in an apartment building (plays with someone’s yarn, someone else feeds fish). In the end, she has kittens and each person takes one to live with them. One of the illustrations is of the apartment windows/balcony with each of the kittens with their family. Maybe published late 80s/early90s? Not Six Dinner Sid or The Cat with Seven Names.
The story is of a wealthy little boy who seems to be without parents. There is a butler. He receives a gift of an exotic bird (parrot/macaw/toucan?) who injures his beak and the boy fixes it with a bar of soap. A heavy-set woman visits who I believe is an opera singer. The illustrations are pen and ink with some color, but my overwhelming memory of the book is that it is basically in black, white and red. All the characters, as I remember have large ovoid heads and small bodies.
I bought this book for my son in the early 2000s.
The shaman woman told the author was identified as a shaman when a child because she did everything backwards, sleeping all day and staying awake all night. The author visited her in her remote tent in deep forest. Another girl they met was pleased to have won a prize for her poem about pine needles being her pillow and the forest stream being her wine. I think her poem started with “I am a girl of the Tuva”. It may have been about living in the Taiga? I think it was written in the 1990s. I read it in the first decade of the 1990s. I borrowed it from Plymouth Library in England.
My sister and I remember reading a book in the 90s that was word for word the lyrics to silver bells. It had photos that matched the lyrics – I remember the city sidewalks / busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style page was a snowy city street, darker outside, I believe with wreaths and other Christmas decor around town. I believe the whole song was printed out on the last page. It was a larger book, maybe 12” x 6” in size. Darker cover, hardback.
It was a collection of horror stories for children I think and one of them was a lady with a burned or scarred face who possibly came out of a painting. She was called Rhoda or Roda or something like that. It had these simple ink illustrations and I remember that one.
It had another story where a boy (I think) was hiding and heard the ghosts of some body snatchers - it may have been a retelling of Burke and Hare.
I’m English if that helps and I think I would have read this sometime in the 90’s.
Sorry, that’s so vague but those are the two that I think I remember.
British psychological thriller, probably 2019. Small child disappears from yard while young mother carelessly supervises her playtime. Meanwhile, a married woman is in a relationship which begins to reveal itself as rather strange and secretive. Her evasive husband becomes a suspect when coworker points finger in his direction, but his alibi is that his delivery route is far from the kidnapping site. Clues and suspicions build until his wife can no longer avoid suspecting his cagey behavior and question his guilt.
Looking for a book. It's a fiction novel, set in Italy, about a priest, an old tree (olive tree, I think) and a couple.
Published in late 80’s or 90’s. I thought the author’s last name was Smith, but can’t find it. Book purchased at a small indie bookstore.