What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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Unexpected
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. Juvenile / YA Mystery Anthology from 90s or 2000s: story with dollhouse and Oreos. Spoilers ahead. [s]
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Unexpected: 11 Mysterious Storiesedited by Laura E. Williams? It has a dog on the cover, and I think the contents match. e.g. the story "Little Time" by Gail Carson Levine has the line "Sarah always said that whatever you eat after you cry has no calories", and the hunting story sounds like "Marked for Death" by Will Weaver.
That’s the one - looks like my brain’s mixed up a couple of books, but that’s the one! Thank you Becca :)
SOLVED - thank you to mods for hosting this group!
I read this around 2006-2008. It was a soft cover book.
Published in the 2000s or possibly the 90s, by Scholastic maybe? I feel like I got it from a Scholastic Book Fair or from one of those little catalogs.
English - language book, I believe was American.
The cover is mostly black, an image of an attic maybe? With a dog on it. The dog could be either a black lab or a golden retriever? (Leaning towards black lab)
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
First story I think : There’s a girl with divorced parents who don’t love her and argue over whose turn it is to take her. Girl is crying, she remembers something that the housekeeper Emma tells her - that nothing has calories when you cry. Emma is the only one that loves her (and might have a British accent?). Girl eats oreos. The girl goes to like a barn and sees a dollhouse. The dollhouse and the dolls are extremely detailed. She looks in and sees a little doll man shaving. And then she meets the doll’s eyes in the mirror and realizes he’s alive. I believe she does end up joining the dollhouse herself.
Boy with a younger sister, they have a babysitter who is wearing a tube top “no wider than a band-aid”. (I think the tube top was blue). Their mom’s boyfriend is a Hawaiian guy who says something about “you think that’s a threat? I’ll show you a threat” (I think the boy and his sister and mom were white Americans). There is a rocking horse that the boy’s younger sister is very fond of? And one day it’s fallen / been thrown off the roof and broken.
Little homesteader girl in the 1800s (?) with a kitten named Abe after Abraham Lincoln because she thinks he’s handsome, lol. The winter is really rough and her dad wants to eat the cat. Little girl might call her dad “Papa”
Story wherein an attic has a stain in the shape of a violin. The main character(s) discover that years ago, a boy lived in their house and played the violin. His father locked him in the attic and he died there.
A girl and her mom who move to a new house. In Boston maybe? The girl heads chains rattling. They discover a secret hidden door, and find out that their house was once a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Hunting accident - hunting for deer I think. One teenager is accidentally shot. There is a funeral scene.
I randomly remembered this book sometime in 2023, and have been trying to find it since. Thanks in advance :)