354S: Tripping Across the Desert (Solved!)

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I don’t have much to go on. It was a book I got from the library in the mid-1990s. It was a children’s book. It was fantasy. My mom didn’t care for it because it was too “weird.” It had a girl who I think was crossing a desert for some reason. I know she came to the edge of the desert and it was a cliff or drop-off, and I think she floated down (or up?) somehow. She might have been on a cloud or holding an umbrella? Honestly, it so frustrating because I remember loving it but can’t remember hardly any of the plot. I just know it was very trippy, like Alice in Wonderland level odd things. Like the person who wrote it was hallucinating. Lol. Thanks for any help you can give! 

354R: Fairies in the Forest

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Don’t remember the title but here’s what I recall:

This is a children’s book from the 1960s or even late 1950s with a narrow/slim size. I have attached a photo of a similar book that might even be from the same series.

It has a shiny light blue cover. The content is about signs of fairies in the forest/nature. It’s a series of photos with little text. It shows photos of dew, spider webs, etc. might have an illustration of a fairy on the front of the book.

354Q: Bastard Child, Kidnapping, and a Mysterious Stranger

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All I can remember is that this woman was engaged to a man that her sister wanted. This sister got her drunk one night & walked her into a room with a strange man. The man had a lot of clout in his family. The sister told her fiancé & father what she did & the wedding was called off. The father sent her away when he found out she was pregnant by a stranger.

The woman gets a message from her father to come home for his youngest daughter’s engagement party. (This is the same man that she was engaged to 4 years ago.) The sister & fiancé pick her up at the airport. This man overheard the conversation that the family was saying about her son being a bastard. The man speaks up & introduces himself as the woman’s husband. The family shut up & was surprised she had a man. Well the little boy speaks up & says thank you daddy for helping mommy from these bad people.

It ends there until they run into each other again at a restaurant & from that point on the little boy keeps calling him daddy from here on out. This stranger comes to her rescue time & time again. He really has feelings for her but he never says a thing. Natalie tells the handsome stranger that she is going back home to her own place but her father takes her passport & tells her she isn’t going anywhere till she marries this old man who is a stranger to her.

He runs into Natalie again & he tells her I thought you were going home. She said she was till her father stepped in & changed all that. He invites the woman to his family home & introduces her to his mother. The little boy is very polite and says hi to the woman. The handsome stranger’s mother tell him that the little boy looks just like him when he was younger. She wanted to know who this woman & child were & why were they there.

He invites this woman to live in his home free of charge. He comes up with a contract for them to sign that says they are together but not in a sexual way so there is no drama. The both of them have their own lives & separate bedrooms.

When he moved her into his house he had the house assistant give her anything she wants. The house keeper even enrolls the boy into a prestigious school that the man went to himself when he was younger. The housekeeper tell him the same thing his mother said. How he looks just like him when was younger?
The housekeeper then suggest that the both of them take him & pick him up together so the boy knows he’s loved. This stranger has fallen in love with this woman but again he never says a word.

The lady’s name I believe was Natalie. Well to her family Natalie is nothing to them. Natalie’s father wants her to marry this older man so their family will be in business together. Natalie’s father kidnapped her son to force her into marrying this old man. When this stranger finds out he sends his friend & another man to find him. During this time we find out Natalie had an important job back home. She works with movie stars in her last job so she knows what she is capable of.

This stranger family owns a music business. It’s under one of his other companies. This strangers cousin runs it but he is running it into the ground. His big name actor is being forced to do whatever his representative says & the actor wants out of his contract with the company because of him. Well Natalie gets the job & takes this actor jobs to new heights. This actor has a sister who has some medical problems & if he gets some work he can get her that needed surgery. Natalie pays for his sister’s surgery out of her own pocket.

Well this cousin wants his client back & he will do anything to get him. The cousin is at a party that Natalie attends. His friend helps him get Natalie drunk & take her upstairs to a room in the hotel they are at. The actor is at the party & waits outside the bathroom door for Natalie too return to the party. The cousin & his friend takes Natalie a different direction so she won’t be seen. The handsome stranger is at a party himself that his company throws ever year but this is the first time he has ever attended. He comes downstairs looking for Natalie & he runs into the actor Natalie is representing. The handsome stranger goes in the bathroom & he notices she’s not there. He asks for the manager of the hotel & they go into the communication office where
all the cameras are. He notices what his cousin has done & the handsome stranger sends in his best friend to handle the situation. To get Natalie out of there. The cousin will be handled by him at a later time.

There is a little more to say but I believe I’ve said enough. I hope you can find this. I know it’s not to old maybe just a couple of years if that.

374O: Doll family loses grandfather in garden

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This is a book from the 1990’s because I remember buying it for my son who was born in 1989.  It was about a doll family, or a tiny statue family who lived in the bathroom (?) and a child played with them when they took a bath.  At some point one of the statues/dolls gets lost– grandfather or grandmother and they think it blew into the garden when the window was open. They all decide to go look for the missing statue, and have adventures in the garden.  They find the statue and it ends with the grandma and grandpa dancing together.  Beautiful colored illustrations.d

374N: Popular girl goes missing

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This is a novel that takes place in the small-town south, this is narrated by an adolescent (possibly pre-adolescent — think Scout Finch with more swear words) about a girl (older than the narrator  — teens, maybe 20s) disappears. The missing girl was quite beautiful and alluring, and had talk-of-the-town charisma. 
I am almost 100% sure the missing girl’s name is in the title, but I can’t remember that name. 
More rando detail: someone’s house that the narrator goes to (and, I believe, the missing girl worked at) is messy, like the person who lives there is a hoarder of sorts. 
Also, it’s speculated that the missing girl has just left (no foul play) because her aspirations expanded outside the confines of this backwater town where the novel is set. 

374M: The Rose of Death (Solved!)

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Seeking a murder mystery about drowned boy who was bullied probably published around 2000-2003, maybe up to 2005 this book was for high schooler and young adults and I think the cover was blue with a rose. The main story line of the book was an investigator was trying to find the cause of death of a teenage boy who was found in the river who they initially thought was a drowning but then found stool in his lungs that was his cause of asphyxiation. The river had once had a sewage issue, but that was investigated and found that the problem was fixed. He was accidentally killed by other students who gave him a swirly (dunked head into a toilet) that had stool in it that caused him to suffocate. The reason that he was given the swirly was he had a crush on a girl and had given her a rose he had changed the color of from red to (possibly) blue as a magic trick, the book did describe the chemical trick used to perform this. I do not remember the color of the rose, apologies. The girl’s bf or some other significant male figure.

374K: Hell is hilarious

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Fiction, American, published late 70s or early 80s, set in Boston, about an alcoholic violinist and his inept love life. Very funny book. Many hilarious descriptions of Boston’s weather, generally framing it as the output of God’s ass. Anyone know the book or author I am talking about?