Category Archives: Unsolved

357S: NOT “Iron Duke”

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Around 1952–54, I read just about every John R. Tunis baseball book I could find. Then, having exhausted Mr. Tunis’s baseball output, I checked a football book out of the library. All these years, I have thought Tunis wrote it, and that its title was Iron Duke. Now I suspect both memories are wrong because …

A) I see no such book by Tunis.
B) Iron Duke appears to be about track.
So here is what I think I do remember correctly about the book I’d like to find:
Unlike all the baseball books I had read, the one I am seeking was written in first person. The narrator is some sort of recruiter of football talent for a college. He hears about a big, strong player in a backwoods part of the country, such as rural Pennsylvania, and goes to scout him. With questions about whether the player can fit into a collegiate environment, the narrator of the story takes a chance on the kid. (Maybe he doesn’t even have proper shoes.)
Do you see where this is going? The rube blossoms as a player and person and turns out to have a brilliant football mind, often figuring out, for example, based on the way the offensive players line up, what sort of play they are going to run.
I had settled on the football book out of desperation, and wound up loving it. But now I don’t know who wrote the book or if the title was in any way similar to Iron Duke.
Given that my clues are skimpy––and that what I had always thought I’d remembered clearly seems to be incorrect––you have your work cut out for you.

357Q: Sci-fi book including “Men of Harlech”

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Some 60 years ago, I was reading a science-fiction book in which an adult was with two children, ca. 12 years old, on a trip of some sort.  While they are out walking, he sang “Men of Harlech” to them; the words for a verse or two appear in the book:

“Men of Harlech in the hollow, do ye hear like rushing billow …”, &f.
I recalled nothing else of the book until a few days ago when I suddenly recalled that a planet named “Lepton” figured in the book somehow; I thought this additional detail might be enough to find the book.

The reason for such vagueness, beyond the 60-year time lapse, is that I never finished the book. I was perhaps 9 or 10 years old, but this wasn’t a children’s’ book; the librarian jerked the book from my hands, telling me to “stop pretending to read that book” and go pick a book from the children’s’ section instead.  I could read the newspaper before I started 1st grade, so I was by no means pretending, and I wasn’t interested in children’s’ books.

My mother had a somewhat heated talk with the librarian sometime later, and the librarian never bothered me again on subsequent visits.  But I was unable to locate the book again.

357P: Schizophrenic Lady M.D.

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Book written in 1950’s, 60’s I think. But remotely possible published as late as 70’s, 80’s.  Autobiography (?) by woman (maybe named “Diane”, not sure…?) who suffered schizophrenia (I think, or some sort of mental illness) and became an M.D. despite this.

Probably a U.S. book, but not sure.  English language, anyway.

357N: Boy Commits Suicide Because Of Parent’s Abuse After Getting Best Girl Friend Pregnant

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I need help finding a book I read in high-school. The details I remember are:
The lead was female high-school aged. The book was based in Australia, she was good/best friends with a boy and I think they would catch up at a particular spot like a barn. I think he ends up going to private school and is good at sports or swimming. His mother’s meek and his dad is aggressive. They end up having sex and then I think the abuse from his father becomes too much and he kills himself. The girl ends up pregnant and her grandmother tried to help her by giving her an awful drink (think I remember it being described as tasting like Marmite) but it doesn’t work. She has the baby and the boy’s parents find out and the boy’s mother tries to help her somehow. I think they all end up in Sydney. I can’t remember how it ends. For some reason the name Sophie keeps popping in to my head but I don’t remember if that was an author or one of the characters or nothing.
Let me know if you think of anything it could be.

357M: Ordinary Man Caught Up In Biker Gang

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Around 30 years ago I read a book about an ordinary man that gets caught up with a violent biker gang. The leader was beefy and wore a black leather vest over his bare torso; he ends up murdered and is buried with his hog.

It isn’t The Devil Rides Out.
The cover I believe may have been a dark blue representing a night sky and a biker. It may have involved pagan rituals.  There was something about the guy watching the goings on of the gang in some sort of disused warehouse.

357I: A 1960’s book about a lost lamb

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Looking for a fiction YA (perhaps adult) book from the early to mid 60’s that I read in junior high. I was given the book as a present. It’s about a lamb that gets lost in a forest/jungle. I remember that it had a jaguar, panther or puma that befriended the lamb and helped keep it safe. There were no illustrations that I recall; strictly text. It was a fairly long novel, about the length of the Harry Potter novels. The book had a green hardcover with the lamb and trees on it. I want to say that the lamb on the cover was black, but can’t be sure. Does anyone remember this book? I know it sounds vaguely like The Jungle Book, but that really isn’t it.

357H: The Monster Encyclopedia

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I don't know the name of it. It was a book of black and white sketch like drawings of different pretend monsters, but not cryptids. They may have been monsters that looked like household objects, one of them was possibly a coat hanger type thing. Each page had a description of a monster and then a black and white picture/sketch of them. It was definitely published before 2015 and was meant for either children or preteens.