There’s a book I love that no one else knows about. It caught my eye in the middle school library, magically shelved right in the spot of the fiction section where I liked to read, curled up safely in the corner. The cover was eerily appealing, with dandelions framing a three-faced figure. Her pointy faces looked angry. But the fox on the spine looked nice.
Some years later, I found a new copy of this book, Pat O’Shea’s The Hounds of the Morrigan, with a new cover: a gorgeous Kinuko Craft painting that I loved even though it didn’t look right to my young self’s memory of the book. The book isn’t lush and rich but spry and scrappy, a story about Pidge and his sister Brigit, about Cooroo the fox and magic candies and a lot more details that I remember disjointedly. A spider named Napoleon. Wanting the hounds to be nice. The cover wasn’t my cover, but I was still thrilled to see the book available again: Maybe someone else would read it!
I still only know one person who knows this story. I know there are other readers out there, but it feels like I love this one alone. Don’t you have a book like that? And isn’t it a weird feeling?
What I’m not sure about is why this feeling now seems so weird. I’ve said before that I didn’t know, for most of my life, that being a reader could be a thing, a hobby, a kind of fandom. Reading was just what I did in between climbing trees and riding my bike. As I got older, I had one friend who read what I read, fantasy novels passing between us while our classmates read true crime and thrillers. It wasn’t until my first job in children’s publishing that I was regularly around people who had read at least some of the same books as me—books we loved as kids, books we read for work, classics like The Book of Three and Over Sea, Under Stone and new loves like Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series and M.T. Anderson’s Feed.
Reading is a solitary activity, but at some point it became more than that. I sought out like-minded people on LiveJournal, on Twitter, on websites and platforms long dead and gone; I made more bookish friends, worked in a bookstore, worked in publishing again. I recommended books to customers and colleagues and took their recommendations in turn, and somewhere along the line discovered the absolute glee that happens when two (or more) people who just really, really love a book start talking about it. That glee is contagious in the best possible way. It feels like it multiplies exponentially. It feels like it needs to be shared.
There are a lot of good (and many terrible) things about being online, but bookish community—any community that lets you have those moments of delight (and sometimes rage) with other people—is one of the good things. Sure, reading is solitary, but the full experience of a book doesn’t have to be. There are so many ways to find bookish connections now—with other readers, with the authors themselves, with essays and articles and blogs and even just a single tweet that gives you a new perspective on a long-loved book.
And so, the lost books, the ones no one seems to remember or never read, the authors that never reached the peak of commonality, at least in one’s own corner of the world—those feel ever more lonesome. It’s like they occupy space differently or vibrate at a different frequency in my mind. I know there are people out there who also adore The Hounds of the Morrigan, who would also give up a lot to be able to peek at O’Shea’s unfinished sequel. There are other Jo Clayton fans, readers who fell hard for a green girl named Serroi and the woman with the diadem on her head and all the many books that came after. I have still never met anyone else who’s even heard of Kathleen Sky’s Witchdame, but I know they’re out there too. Stormwarden? The Keeper of the Isis Light? I almost thought I dreamed that one until it got reissued a while back.
Buy the Book
Face
These are the books I buy whenever I find them on used shelves, ready with an extra copy to shove into a friend’s hand if she shows even the slightest bit of curiosity. I’ve done this enough times with Franny Billingsley’s Chime that I no longer feel alone in my love for it.
That is one of the more practical and proactive ways to find more readers of your most beloved, underappreciated books: find copies and give them to people. (Assuming you can find copies. Assuming they aren’t rare and haven’t been out of print for decades.) But don’t you want serendipity sometimes? That feeling of stumbling onto a copy of a book you forgot you’d been looking for—but instead, stumbling onto a person who also loves that book? There’s something fairy-tale-like about these books, overlooked, hidden right out in the open, our own copies coffee-stained and coverworn. Like they have secrets that you can’t discuss with someone else unless they say certain things first. Like just saying the title to the right other person is a kind of spell.
Online, there are some books around which huge communities have sprung up, massive, passionate fandoms trading fanart and the greatest Tumblr posts and quotes and fic and jokes and memes and dreamcasts. There are TV adaptations that turn years-old novels into bestsellers, until you can’t go anywhere without seeing somebody reading one of them, or spot a paperback abandoned on a subway seat. It’s exhilarating to see these things happen, to watch books fly into the pop culture stratosphere, brightly lit and reflected in a million shining eyes.
But some books—not unlike some readers—are wallflowers. The spotlight might still be nice. A little more glow, a few more pairs of eyes. A minor renaissance. But it’s comfortable over here in the corner, with a wall to lean on while we read. Don’t we all love some wallflowers? What are yours?
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
Although it made a splash when it appeared over forty years ago, I feel people have forgotten about a book I love: Russell Hoban’s ‘Riddley Walker’. Like Huckleberry Finn, it has a 12-year-old first person narrator who launches us directly into the book with the first sentence in his peculiar vernacular.
“On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kylt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agin.”
The wordplay is incredible. I feel nobody reads this book anymore. And that’s a shame.
Now I have to see if I can find a copy of The Hounds of the Morrigan!
For me, this book is Robert Silverberg’s To Open The Sky. Long out of print now. I discovered it in 5th or 6th grade; it’s the first SF novel I remember reading that wasn’t a “juvenile” book. I’ve re-read it more times than I can count. It’s a “mosaic” or “fix-up” novel: five connected novellas Silverberg published first in Galaxy magazine, all about the rise of a pair of religions based on science and the effect their rise has on society and Earth’s travel to other planets. It’s compelling, and I think what it says about religion vs. science vs. politics is still valid today. It’s not a perfect book by any means (for instance, there are no female lead characters, and the few females that do exist are clearly just there to move the plot along), but it’s intriguing in its worldbuilding and characters.
Interestingly, it was published in a number of different paperback editions. I still own the original copy I bought in the late 70s, and have slowly gathered the other editions plus the original 5 issues of Galaxy the novellas appeared in. But all of those editions are long out of print. And I’ve yet to meet anyone (even people I know who are avowed Silverberg fans) who have also read To Open The Sky.
@1/Dan. I feel like I’ve heard of “Riddley Walker” — now I have to seek it out! That is quite the opening line.
Lots of people know about Glen Cook, but somehow no one ever seems to mention The Dragon Never Sleeps, which is really impressive.
When I was a very small child, my dad read me a book about a boy and his pony who ride through a land where the embodiments of the Greek Zodiac come alive and interact with them. He stopped at the moment when the incarnate Scorpion is chasing the boy and his horse over the desert (probably because I was too scared at the moment!), and then we had to return the book to the library, and I never read it again. For years I thought I’d dreamed it. One of those fairytale books, as you describe: did this actually exist? Has anyone else ever read it?
Then, thirty years later, I was retelling this story to my wife… and she went and researched, and asked her friends, and hunted over the internet, and found it. And bought me a copy.
It’s Ludo and the Star Horse, by Mary Stewart — an author I’d grown to love in my teenage years for her Merlin books, and had discovered again as an adult with her Gothic novels, and never known she wrote this one book for children! What serendipity. And what a wonderful, nostalgic, brain-sparking reread!
The internet, particularly book blogs, has also been wonderful for building a community of people who love reading (and reading the same slightly obscure books I also treasured as a child). I’ll shout out author Rachel Neumeier’s blog, in particular, for fostering a really excellent group of readers & recommenders.
I think this sort of fits, because although a very well-known author, it’s mentioned far less often than some of her others: Ursula K le Guin’s Malafrena. Maybe it’s a bit of an outlier because it’s not SF or fantasy, but it does exactly what both those genres do; takes you to a world where things are different. Malafrena is a historical novel, although the country where it’s set (Orsinia) is imaginary. And imagination is the key word here: like SFF, historical novels require an extra stretch of the imagination from both writer and reader. And in the revolutionary politics of the time there are definitely echoes of themes tackled in works like The Dispossessed and Four Ways to Forgiveness. But then I guess you could say that all of Le Guin’s work is concerned in some way with the meaning of freedom.
Yes, there are quite many books I loved which seem to be totally forotten these days. I would name Tom de Haven’s trilogy Chronicles of the King’s Tramp and M. A. Foster’s novel The Gameplayers of Zan as the examples which I regret the most.. Cecelia Holland’s Floating Worlds also is worth mentioning.
I am such a huge fan of THE HOUNDS OF THE MORRIGAN. I think I reread it about every year, or thereabouts. Thanks for showing it some love!
First time commenting, just to say that I have the EXACT same relationship with the Hounds of the Morrigan! (And I think I had the same copy growing up — the book jacket was in terrible condition by the time I got it, but now that rattiness is part of what I picture when I picture “my” cover.) I love that book to bits and I’ve never met anyone else who’s read it.
The Exordium series by David Trowbridge & Sherwood Smith. Good lord, I’d like to find copies again 20-odd years after the ones I had went away through no fault of my own.
That’s all I’m going to say.
Here is a book I’ve always treasured – Katie Waitman’s The Merro Tree. I don’t know what happened to this author after publishing one work that hit me like a thunderclap, but I thought I’d add it. It’s about art, love, and longing, and the price you pay to follow your dreams.
Joy Chant’s “Red Moon and Black Mountain” would be on my list. A portal fantasy of epic scale and (I think) beautifully written.
Lucy M. Boston’s “Green Knowe” books for me.
I read Riddly Walker when it came out, and recall little about it, except that my father thought it was brilliant.
My Jo Clayton is on one of the shelves I can see from where I sit.
Russell H
I loved the Green Knowe books!
Riddley Walker was written about right here on Tor last November: https://www.tor.com/2021/11/30/the-construction-of-language-in-riddley-walker/
My family loves Hounds of the Morrigan. Bits of it are a constant part of our family vocabulary, most especially “This is the safest road in all [wherever we happen to be].” We also have O’Shea’s version of Finn MacCool, though it really doesn’t live up to the wonder that is Hounds.
If I have a wallflower book, it’s probably Prince Ombra, which very few people seem to have ever heard of. It’s sort of Arthur-adjacent in that the main protagonist is Arthur reborn in the modern world, but is still only a boy when he must confront the title character. I think I need to find the box it’s in and dig it out for a reread.
A book about a mystery (it’s NOT Nancy Drew) at a camp–where one of the camp counsellors was named Helen and described as a “dishwater blonde”–published in the ’40s or ’50s, is a book I read at my grandparents and it got lost along the way & I forgot to ask about it & didn’t see it when my dad & his sisters were clearing out the house after my grandmother’s passing. If anybody recognizes it, please let me know.
(I do have some Nancy Drew books plus the cookbook, which is good too).
There’s also a book of stories from various cultures but it’s probably in the attic & I just need to look!!!
I’ve got the My Book House series & the only place I’ve seen it referred to is McMurtry’s Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. My Book House needs to be redone w/ stories and poems from authors in each country translated by people in the countries.
My Book House & that other book that’s probably in the attic are probably why I’m more interested in the characters and what happens to them than anything else.
Russell H and Jazzlet
Green Knowe books, for sure!
When I was in elementary school, I remember loving this series of books I found in our library called My Teacher is an Alien. I get tempted from time to time to try to track down copies, but I don’t because I read that series with a child’s mind and a child’s imagination and I know that it wouldn’t be the same as a middle-aged adult.
Author Cheryl J Franklin, which I never hear mention of, anywhere, ever. The Inquisitor has some particularly fascinating alien species, but I’m fond of their other books as well.
I think of Lolah Burford’s The Vision of Stephen, an Anglo-Saxon to Victorian Britain time travel novel. I suppose it would be YA now, although I believe there’s an account of torture on the rack in it. It’s beautifully written, but I think it’s been out of print for quite a while and I never see it mentioned.
Drcox, kind of embarrassing that I might know, but it’s possible you’re remembering Donna Parker: Mystery at Arawak. I was a Trixie Belden kid myself, but I remember the cover of this one. The counselor was called Helene, but I don’t know about her hair color…
Nicholas Stuart Gray’s Down in the Cellar. Beautiful, haunting book, really needs to be reissued.
My Twitter friend Joachim Boaz, whose blog is about reading the SF that I grew up with but is, to him, antique and quaint, does this delightful friendship duty for me regularly. Most recently, John Shirley’s City Come A-Walkin’.
It is a joy to find someone younger than my kid who loves some of the books that I do, but no one else seems to know exist.
Prince Ombra! i loved that one but haven’t thought about that book in forever….
@@.-@: I have read The Dragon Never Sleeps and it remains to this day one of my top books.
My wife – who has never been a fantasy reader – adored Hounds of the Morrigan as a kid. Her old copy held together with layers of scotch tape is still on the shelf. I finally had the chance to read it last year and it’s held up very well as a YA fantasy book.
Glad to see there are other people that enjoy this. Shame it’s harder now to find on shelves.
@22 Joisette Thank you! I’ll google the info. The copy my grandparents had was hardback and the pages were brown with age . . . so it might have been earlier than the ’40s . . . I was reading it in the ’70s . . . .
@17/Demetrios: Oh my god! I had completely forgotten about Prince Ombra, until I saw your comment. I need to find a copy. I remember really enjoying the book, however old I was when I read it.
I’ve read The Hounds of the Morrigan, but I found it when I was already a jaded adult reader… still a good book, mind.
My own favourite neglected charmer is Rude Tales and Glorious, by Nicholas Seare (a pen name for Rodney William Whitaker, who also wrote much better known thrillers like The Eiger Sanction under the name Trevanian). Rude Tales and Glorious is not a thriller – it is an absolutely scurrilous and thoroughly subversive take on Arthurian legend, full of sex jokes and fart jokes and knights acting in a very unchivalrous manner indeed, and I found it hilariously funny. I don’t know anyone else who’s read it.
Another My Book House and The Junior Classics fan.
I still have Witchdame . Some of the magical elements wouldn’t read well today, but it was a very imaginative, fun read.
My favorite was a portal fantasy, The Unicorn Window. Two English siblings sent to Armorie (15thC castle life + heraldry) to recapture an escaped unicorn.
You know what I miss? I miss used-book sales. The kind where the local historical society or chapter of university alumnae or some group like that would collect used books all year, and then put them out on long tables in a long room for one weekend, and you could spend a lovely afternoon browsing, never knowing what you’d find. But that’s where you could seredipitously come across a battered copy of that book you loved and hadn’t seen in years.
That kind of sale doesn’t seem to happen any more. They were on their way out anyway, too labor-intensive and there was always the internet if you were looking for something in particular, and then COVID shut down everything fun and that was that.
I remember The Hounds of the Morrigan, although I haven’t read it in years. A good book.
The Exordium books are wonderful stuff, like Doc Smith space opera written by Jane Austen, and I’m glad to say that e-book versions are available from Bookview Cafe (and Amazon).
I seem to recall that when Sharyn November look the reins of Firebird about 20 years ago, she wrote a note to readers expressing interest in taking suggestions for YA-ish SFF long out of print that might be worth a revival under the Firebird label. I was sorry that they let her go a few years ago and have always wondered if any of the suggestions went anywhere.
@5: Oh my, I really enjoyed The Floating Islands but hadn’t noticed Neumeier’s blog! Off to have a look.
Monica Hughes is a little better-known up here in Canada, if that’s any consolation! But I have an analogous case: I dearly loved three books by Australian writer Emily Rodda when I was a child. These were the lightly sci-fi Finders Keepers and its sequel, The Timekeeper, plus unrelated stand-alone lightly urban-fantasy The Pigs Are Flying. Rodda’s greatest successes came with the Deltora Quest books and all the spin-offs later, but I felt too old for those by the time they showed up so didn’t pay them much attention. I eventually found copies of Finders Keepers and The Pigs Are Flying and still treasure those and reread them fairly often!
I also cherish my copy of The Beginning of Unbelief by Robin D. Jones, a 1993 work of YA realism about a 15-year-old boy whose arguments with himself (in the guise of his childhood imaginary friend Zach) are getting carried away, until it turns into sci-fi metafiction of a sort. I have a copy, which I bought online in 2001, but really, it’s as if this novel was in print for about three weeks or something. About 10 people on the Internet seem to have heard of it.
Mine is Knee Deep in Thunder by Sheila Moon. It was an early book I bought in hardback when I was in high school, I think. I must have read it in the library first – I can’t imagine spending that level of money for a totally unknown book and author at that time in my life. I still have it on the shelf downstairs, though I haven’t reread it in decades. I learned a few years ago that there was a sequel, and I tried it but I didn’t get far. It’s a portal book, one of the first I read, with a group making a quest for reasons I no longer remember, though I remember the mostly non-human characters well.
I loved this piece, and I’m going to have a lot of books to look for after reading all the comments, but I’m going to catch hell for what I’m about to say. I cannot get into Riddley Walker. I’ve tried and tried, and every time I try it I just get bogged down by the…something. I don’t think it’s the language it’s written in. Sometimes a book just doesn’t work for me, even if I’ve been looking forward to reading it. I had the same thing happen with Gideon the Ninth, which will make even more people angry with me. Sometimes I have to go back to the book years later.
And for @32, there may still be a few used-book stores where you can find that long-lost book, I hope! Some of the libraries in my area still have book sales, but you’re right. No one seems to do the big sales any more. I hope they’ll come back one day.
Frogmorton. Nobody else ever seems to have heard of it. And Nicholas Stuart Grey’s Mainly By Moonlight.
@32 Amaryllis – agreed – I miss that sort of book sale as well. There used to be several a year at my university, when the students’ societies for various faculties (History, Religion, English etc.) were trying to raise some money and I came across some great finds at these. The pandemic has put a stop to this sort of thing now, though.
#10: The Exordium cycle – and a great deal of other excellent work by Sherwood Smith that’s not available elsewhere – can be found at the Bookview Cafe webspace.
Now then, more generally:
I’m not quite an early adopter, and it’s been a long time since I looked at it, but I definitely recall The Hounds of the Morrigan with pleasure – and said so in print, very early in my reviewing career with Dragon. (I do not think I knew before now that there was in fact an unfinished sequel, however; you may count me among those who would pay good money for a look at that material.) I can also confirm the existence of Witchdame – its mention here forced me to walk out to the main bookshelves in my living room, where a copy of that book yet resides.
As to wallflower books of my own, let me give you a small handful:
The Lastborn of Elvinwood – Linda Haldeman
English country fantasy – nominally modern setting, but in the “all English villages are timeless” sense. Chock full of literary influences (Shakespeare, White, Barrie, G&S) but very much possessed of its own voice. Long OP; somewhat findable used.
Terror Wears A Feathered Cloak – Thelmar Wyche Crawford
What we’d now call a young-adult thriller – the teen heroine is in a tour group hijacked into the Yucatan jungle on an adventure involving modern smugglers and a straight-up lost Mayan city. Written in the 1960s, but I remember the treatment of the Mayan isolates as remarkably even-handed at least for that time and place. Comparable in many respects to Elizabeth Peters’ early stand-alone books.
The AmazIng Vacation – Dan Wickenden
Disastrously rare portal fantasy – think Edward Eager as if written by Pratchett.
“Entry kentry cutry corn, apple seed and apple thorn.
Wire, briar, limber lock, a witch and griffins in a flock.
We fly o’er hill and over plain;
We fly through sun and wind and rain.
We even fly when it’s sleeting or snowing,
so Open Sesame — let’s get going!”
The Sleepers and The Ice Ghosts Mystery – Jane Louise Curry
My two keystone picks from Curry’s long and genuinely distinguished 40-year literary career – the first is a modern Arthurian whose climax gets right what Susan Cooper gets disastrously wrong in Silver on the Tree; the latter is a light teen thriller with a combo of family protagonists and a lightly SFnal plot that echoes Madeleine L’Engle’s forays into thriller mode. I’ve said it elsewhere and will repeat here: Curry is the most underrated, most versatile, yet least-remembered children’s fantasist of the 20th century. (Luckily, a sizeable though incomplete portion of her work is available in ebook form.)
Hounds of the Morrigan and Knee Deep in Thunder would both be on my list of wallflower books that I love. Also, Freedom and Necessity by Steven Brust and Emma Bull and Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly. I always blamed the title for the latter book’s lack of popularity although it’s the perfect title for the book.
I was a school librarian for 28 years, and I purchased “My Teacher Is an Alien” for the library collection. It was great, I am glad to see it on the list. “Tom’s Midnight Garden” was my favorite. As a child, I liked the Judy Bolton mysteries the best. And I bought the Ruth Chew fantasies from the Scholastic book club. Good memories.
I was delighted to find an extra copy of Molly Lefebure’s children’s book The Hunting of Wilberforce Pike a couple of years ago, showed it to a friend I expected to already know and love it as much as I do, and found out she’d never heard of it. It’s the adventures of a young cat called Oliver, who’s stolen by the cat thief Wilberforce Pike and rescued by the Power Station Gang (also cats), who swear to bring Pike to a speedy and horrible end for his crimes against catkind. Which they do, in between raiding the Mayor’s banquet, fighting the Power Station Rats, rescuing a kidnapped Siamese Princess and fending off a sleazy reporter for the Cat Courier.
On the more adult side, no-one I know has ever heard of Tim Etchells’ The Broken World. It’s written from the POV of a young gamer writing a walkthrough of the strange and glitchy online game The Broken World, with digressions into his own life.
Maurice Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht is a book that seems to get mentioned in this context too often to be a “proper” wallflower book but eh, I’ll throw it in anyway. The Surrealist Sportsmans’ Club is a delight even to those of us who aren’t usually interested in sports…
Another Witchdame reader here! (Also my sister, since she read it first and then handed off her copy to me.) Now I’m curious to re-read it and see how it holds up.
My parents lived in the UK before I was born, so my childhood bookshelves were full of Puffin editions of things that none of my friends had heard of. I almost never run into other people who have read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen or The Moon of Gomrath. Also kid-level historical novels, like The Great House and The Load of Unicorn.
I’ll add Byron Preiss and Michael Reaves’s Dragonworld to that list. Lavishly illustrated by Joseph Zucker, it’s an epic fantasy that reads like Lord Of The Rings set in a US frontier town (the serial numbers have been very lovingly and gently filed off, like in a lot of 70s fantasy). It’s my comfort book but I don’t know any other person who appears to have read it, although there must be because I’ve had two copies of it.
I second Foster’s game players of zan and Katie waitman’s merro tree.
for obscure and much re-read juveniles… did anyone else have Taash and the jesters overdue from the library and much re-read?
or for adult books, what about Cheryl Franklin, Inquisitor and some of the others in the Taormina universe?
and my comfort reading shelf still includes ‘wind witch’ by Susan dexter and unwillingly to earth by pauline ashwell.
@John C. Bunnell: I remember Jane Louise Curry very well. I loved The Sleepers, and I was totally fascinated by the Welsh Fair Folk hiding out in the hills of Appalachia in the series that began with Beneath the Hill.
@arcadienne: I have read The Moon of Gomrath and The Weirdstone of Brinengamen. Frequently, during one period of my youth.I think Elidor was my favorite, though, with its four magical cities crashing through into the mundane world.
Does anybody remember Joan North’s The Whirling Shapes? A very 60s sort-of-portal fantasy: a trippy trip through an alternate world, but everything works out okay due to the power of love and non-conformity.
Also, The Hidden Treasure of Glaston, by Eleanor Jewett: Catholic myth and Arthurian legend and a treasure hunt, I loved it. And The Forgotten Daughter, by Caroline Dale Snedeker, ca Cinderella-type story set in ancient Rome.
@22. Joisette
OMG!!!!! The Vision of Stephen!!!!! This is the book I was going to post. I never met ANYONE who ever heard of this book. I first read in the 70’s, still have the book.
@@@@@31 remise: One of my top five favorite books in childhood (well, counting the Chronicles of Narnia as one) was Lynette Muir’s The Unicorn Window. I took it out repeatedly from our local library, but we never owned a copy. For years in adulthood I looked in every used bookstore for it to no avail…and then, the internet. The first time I ever looked for a book online, I looked for this one on Abebooks (then ABE), in the mid-90’s, I believe. There was only one copy, for sale for $11 in a bookstore in Texas, with its phone number listed. I called them up and ordered it. I felt like I had found a magic wand! I haven’t checked monthly or anything since then, but I have done so occasionally, and I’ve never found another copy for sale in the US. Years later I found online a better-condition copy, complete with dust jacket, for sale in the UK, and bought that, too, for a not unreasonable sum. It came in a regular package which itself was inside a sack labeled “Her Majesty’s Mail.”
I am sure that it helped me fall in love with this book that the medieval-fantasy illustrations are by Pauline Baynes! It also was a fantasy where the girl got to do the most important thing, capture the unicorn, while her twin brother was off hunting a boar. Furthermore, the twins were redheads, and I was a redhead, and while now there are a gazillion redhaired characters thanks to their visibility in comics and onscreen, in my childhood in the 1960’s the girl characters all seemed to be blond or raven-haired, unless they were supposed to be ordinary for purposes of identification, in which case their hair was brown. In any case, the book got me deeply into heraldry as a young’un, and I learned the rules and the nomenclature and designed coats of arms for myself and everyone I knew.
@@@@@ 42 & 45: I also read the Alan Garner books in childhood (the library had them!), and my favorite was also Elidor.
@@@@@44 Vic– Kate B @@@@@21 already mentioned Cheryl Franklin’s Inquisitor !
@@@@@32 My town library still has the big booksales, big tables under a tent on the green–missed only one year for the pandemic. The sales raise well over $10K for the Friends of the Library.
@17 I know I read Prince Ombra, and I have the strongest memory that it had some kind of iridescent effect on the cover?
@43 I definitely owned a book called Dragonworld from that time, and googling the cover it’s the same book. But strangely I don’t recall the illustrations at all. Maybe if I saw them I’d remember.
My own ‘lost book’ was a picture book that I must’ve checked out fifty times. Then I got older and read other things. I really only remembered it because my parents teased me about how much I loved it. Then, when I was grown and had a kid of my own, I wanted to find it again. The Three Robbers, by Tomi Ungerer. I believe it’s back in print (in English anyway), but for a long time it wasn’t so I had to order an old library copy off the net.
One that stands out for me, but no one else I’ve ever talked with, is “David and the Phoenix” by Edward Ormondroyd, about a boy who encounters a phoenix, who flies him off to adventures. It was published in the late ’50s, and I came across a copy around 1972, when I was in third grade. I noticed it because the main character had my first name. I read it multiple times, then lost track of it. Much later I found a copy, which I still have.
Another other favorite book, found at a similar age, is “The Enormous Egg” by Oliver Butterworth, about the Triceratops that hatches out a chicken egg. It’s a bit better known, and the illustrations by Louis Darling are absolutely wonderful.
I’m the only one I know who ever heard of Richard Purtill’s The Golden Gryphon Feather, the first of the Kaphtui novels, set in mythical Crete. From the point of view of some of the pantheon’s sidebar figures, they blended mythology with (possible) grounding in history. I loved that book – I bought it as a kid and only later realized there might be more in the series!
The Warhound and the World’s Pain by Michael Moorcock. Sublime.
@49 – The Enormous Egg came up in one of Alan Brown’s retrospectives recently. Nice to see that it had another fan. I still remember how glad I was that I’d picked it off the bookmobile shelf.
Mine was Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff. I checked it out of the local library sooo many times. I thought it was fantasy, but it was actually historical fiction. It takes place in Bronze Age Wales and is a coming of age story about a boy who is born with a withered arm. While I come across mentions of the author reasonably often on the internet, nobody seems to know about this book. I was able to find a copy eventually, and the story stood up well to an adult re-read.
I have to confess that I’ve never heard of Hounds of the Morrigan, but I see Powells.com has some copies…..
most of the other books mentioned here I’ve never heard of either, I feel like I’m missing some real gems.
So happy to know I’m not the only one who loved The Vision of Stephen, and all of Alan Garner’s books, but especially The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath, and The Owl Service.* As for Nicholas Stuart Gray, I’ve been looking for Mainly in Moonlight for ages, and I read all of Jane Louise Curry’s books long ago but I don’t have copies now. I’ve been longing to re-read Rosemary Harris’ Noah’s Ark trilogy, The Moon in the Cloud, The Shadow on the Sun, and The Bright and Morning Star.
* I was lucky enough to meet Alan Garner in the bookstore in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, back in the 1980s; he was literally standing behind me in line for the cashier. One of the greatest thrills of my whole life.
There are a handful of books I read as a kid, that I remember vividly but no-one else seems to have heard of.
An Alien Music by Annabel Johnson (near future climate apocalypse)
But We Are Not of Earth by Jean Karl (I later found two other books in the same universe – Strange Tomorrow and The Turning Place)
Winter of Magic’s Return by Pamela F. Service (post-apocalyptic return of King Arthur)
Princes of Earth by Michael Kurland (notable in part because it feels like it’s part of a series but isn’t)
Various Monica Hughes (the Isis Light Trilogy, Devil on My Back)
I enjoyed The House of Arden, by E Nesbit. In fact, any of her books, really, although some are better known, and more widely remembered than others.
And I enjoyed The Midnight Folk more than its better known sequel.
@55—ooooooo, I remember Winter of Magic’s Return! Every once in a while It pops into my mind, but I had totally forgotten the title until I read your post. The most striking thing I remember about it was the description of the nulear winter.
One of my favorite long reads is Evangeline Walton’s ‘Mabinogion’ tetralogy, which was collected into a single omnibus volume a few years ago. Her language was gorgeous, and the novels were a nice expansion on the more bare-bones ‘Mabinogion’ translation I had read earlier for a class.
I have fond memories of both <i>The Hunting of Wilberforce Pyke</i> and <i>The Hounds of the Morrigan</i>. Also of Eric Linklater’s books – <i>The Mist on the Moon</i> and <i>The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea</i>. I reread the latter a few years back and it stood up pretty well. The fact that it was very much of its time (ie, 1949) actually worked in its favour. Linklater would have been a popular enough author back in his day, so it’s interesting/sobering to see he’s now largely forgotten.
I found The Hounds if the Morrigan on holiday in Wales as a child and loved it!
This has prompted me to go in search of a book I read when I was 9 years old – my school library were giving away old books, and my choice was Sir Christopher Cat, a cat who loved birds, and was asked to go to a scary castle to rescue the Bird Man’s daughter. A quick google shows that it was truly obscure – it seems to have been published only once, in 1952, by Grant Educational Company, and was written by T Payten Gunton.
So that’ll be my birthday present to myself this year!
I also agree with anyone who mentioned Nicholas Stuart Gray – any of his books are brilliant. My favourite, I think, is The Seventh Swan, about the youngest son in the fairy tale who became human again except for one arm, which remained a swan’s wing.
Also Joy Chant is awesome, and she wrote a couple of sequels to Red Moon and Black Mountain, about the nomadic unicorn riding people.
@5 I read and loved Ludo and the Star Horse as a child, and still have a copy of it! So at least there are two of us :-)
My own favourite book that no one’s ever heard of is a book called Albion’s Dream. It’s about a board game that affects the real world when played, or perhaps predicts what’s going to happen. It’s strange and fascinating and I’ve read it many, many times.
I read this book as a child. The bit with the fingernail moons and the fingerprint maze freaked me out, and the end infuriated me, but I’m certain it was formative. Thank you for reminding me of it.
@6 Jon Sparks: Le Guin’s Orsinian stories in general are underappreciated compared to her other work. You can get them all in a Library of America edition of “Orsinian Tales’ published in 2016, including the novel ‘Malafrena’. Read together, they form a comprehensive mosaic through time and place of this alternative vision of an Eastern European country in the 19th century.
Fellow Winter of Magic’s Return fans – Service published two more novels in this series in the early 2000s after a re-relase of Winter of Magic’s Return and Tomorrow’s Magic as an omnibus edition. They are lovely (though nothing hits the same way as it does when you’re 10 and Heather McKenna is the first girl you read about who loves books as much as you do).
I’m pleased to see Monica Hughes get some love, too. I want to add HM Hoover to the list — This Time of Darkness and Away Is A Strange Place To Be have stuck with me for many years.
My rereads as an adult are a bit more well known – Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series (I think [hope!] she is still writing them) and Diana Wynne Jones’s Chrestomanci series (another that had some early 2000s additions to the series).
I try not to post too many times after I’ve already commented…but I got so busy talking about books I had trouble with that I forgot to mention some that I loved.@40–someone else remembers Ruth Chew? This is wonderful. Some of my overlooked favorites are Seaward by Susan Cooper and Lucy and the Merman (does anyone else know this book? No one ever seems to) by Audrey Brixner. I also remember The Sea Egg by Lucy M. Boston. Also, anything by the great Daniel Pinkwater. And, of course, Diana Wynne Jones. Like some of you, I too still have a few books from the Scholastic Book Club. Good memories!
More votes for Prince Ombra and Riddley Walker. Also The Rose, by Charles L. Harness.
The Daniel Pinkwater Snarkout books were what came to mind when I saw this article. (I read them as an adult.) Also, Bridge of Birds by Hughart, although I bet a lot of people loved that.
@40 What the Witch Left by Ruth Chew is one of my all-time favorite books. Also loved Tom’s Midnight Garden, but read it as an adult.
Anyone looking for used book sales (in the US) can go to BookSaleFinder.com and search by area or have emails sent each week for a geographic area.
A lot of charities in the United Kingdom fundraise through second-hand shops, mainly for clothes but there’s usually one or more book cases. On the right street, you can spend hours browsing. I don’t know how many readers today collect from there in quantity, but if I see a beloved text there… I leave it to be some other unknown shopper’s beautiful surprise. There are proper bookshops, as well.
@5
Mary Beth, I had a similar experience although I remembered the name of the book (and I read to the end the first time as well :). I tracked a copy down via Abe books over Covid and it matched my memory of the book from when I read it first in the 80s. It’s such a lovely story.
THRILLED to find multiple people here who read and loved The Hounds of the Morrigan! My cherished copy is still on my shelves, and I’ve revisited it multiple times over the years.
Around the same time I read Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel/Court Duel (my copy had both), another tween or early teen favorite. It readers are out there, but my cousin and I are the only people I know of.
One I thought I dreamed up for a long time was The Contest Kid and the Big Prize by Barbara Brooks Wallace, which I think I picked up at a library book sale as a kid.
@66
RobareOwl, yes, H, M, Hoover! My middle school library had ten or twelve of her science fiction novels, and I read all of them at least once. This Time of Darkness was my favorite. I shrieked out loud in the bookstore when I found it had been reissued under the Starscape imprint (along with two other Hoovers, Orvis and Another Heaven, Another Earth) and the copy I picked up that day over fifteen years ago is still on my shelves.
I found Nick O’Donohoe’s Crossroads trilogy one at a time in used bookstores, and I’m so glad I did. Veterinary students crossing over to a magical world to treat unicorns and griffins and centaurs? Count me in!
The KIng of Ireland’s Son by Padraic Colum. Haven’t reread it in many years, but I still remember parts of it vividly.
I too read _Witchdame_ long ago, but remember it more for the amazing Don Maitz cover art.
I was a huge Jo Clayton fan, preferring the Souldrinker and Ahzurdan books.
Joining the train for the H.M. Hoover love. Tamora Pierce is a huge fan of hers as well.
For historical novels, you couldn’t do better than Caroline Dale Snedeker, Elisabeth Hamilton Friermood, or Gladys Malvern. For story collections, I’ll throw in enthusiastic recommendations for Barbara Leonie Picard and Ruth Manning-Sanders.
However, the one I absolutely always buy on sight is Robert M. Arthur. Although more known for the first several Three Investigators books, I know him more for humorous short stories in Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. I bonded with a German filker at a con, because we were both enthusiastic fans. She’d never read his short stories, but I was able to get her copies of two collections. We’re still con-friends to this day.
Anyone remember bookmobiles in the 60’s? They would come to our grade school and carried about 8 tiny print science fiction titles from Airmont Books. The 4 that I l loved were Invaders From Rigel (set in NYC where a flesh-to-metal transformation is a side-effect of the aliens’ arrival; the few humans who survived the metamorphosis set up camp in the Museum of Natural History) by Fletcher Pratt, The Memory Bank (space barbarians are destabilizing civilization) by Wallace West, Lords of Atlantis (the Martian colony in the Mediterranean perished when the basin flooded, possibly as a result of the sundering of the 10th planet; this also destroyed the civilization on Mars and created the asteroid belt) also by West, and Day of the Giants (Ragnarok has arrived) by Lester del Rey. They also carried The Tower of Zanid by de Camp and Conquest of Earth by Manly Banister, but those two did not really grab me.
@76: oh boy, Three Investigators! Man, I devoured those when I was a kid. So did everyone else at my school. But anyone else my age I get blank looks when I mention them.
Remembered a few other books that seem forgotten. Does anyone remember a book called Castle of Yew? Two boys are shrunk down to borrower-size and try to figure out how to escape from a topiary chess set. One of them has one of the knights horses, and because it was topiary, it was green. The image of the tiny green horse standing in the rook’s doorway is seared into my brain.
I also remember 2 Lloyd Alexander books that were in my school library and seemed to exist nowhere else: Time Cat and The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha.
#66: The Young Wizards series is alive and well – and if you haven’t done so, you should look up Duane’s online bookstore here – there are several interstitial works that have been released directly rather than through her traditional publisher, and a good deal of additional material from outside the Wizardry universe. (Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses is a personal favorite of mine.) Also, the ebook editions of earlier works in the the YW series have been updated, sometimes lightly and sometimes rather more extensively, into a “New Millennium” timeline that places the series firmly in the cell-phone era from the outset.
#76/78: The German edition of the “Three Investigators” series seems to have been especially popular, to the extent that even over here in the US, I think I’ve seen more used German editions for sale online than used English copies. There is also, as you’re both likely aware, a marked preference among many fans for Arthur’s books over those of any of his later successors – for myself, I thought William Arden the best of the later authors. There’s an extensive Web site devoted to the series here.
#77: I remember bookmobiles in the ’60s, in which we did indeed have one that stopped regularly at my grade school. That said, my strongest memory in that line is not of the actual real-world bookmobile, but rather a scrap of verse I found in it. As it happened, the bookmobile carried issues of a little digest-sized magazine called Plays, which featured short plays meant for grade-school actors, including a decent sprinkling of fantasy and sometimes SF. The following was spoken by the librarian character in one of these plays:
And indeed, at that point in the script, the bookmobile in question did just that. I think the scripts must have been meant more for in-class reading than for full production, since one would clearly need a fair bit of work to execute that transformation.
(As should be clear from this and my original comment upstream, I imprinted pretty strongly on rhymed verse at a young age – my father in particular included Kipling and Robert Service in our regular rotation of bedtime literature.)
I loved The Keeper of the Isis Light! And the two that followed. And my lost book until someone recognised my description of the story was Ring-rise Ring-set also by Monica Hughes, though I had no idea until just now that it was the same author, it was the 80s and I just devoured any sci-fi I could find.
Loved the Three Investigators! I introduced both my kids to them and now they are the only Gen Z-ers ever that probably know of them.
Oh, another one – Two-Thumb Thomas by Barbara Freeman, about an abandoned boy raised by cats who moves into an empty house, which starts trouble with the rats who already live there.
For me, Good Times/Bad Times, by the late James Kirkwood, knocked me out. And I’ve re-read it several times.
Also, I sincerely believe a current offering, Leaving Phoenix, by indie author Jafe Danbury, deserves its moment in the spotlight. Definitely recommended! #LeavingPhoenix
My two cents.
Mine would be Survey Ship by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Heroes of Zara Keep by Guy Gregory. With the first, most people know the author. I just get blank looks on the second.
Shout-out to all the fans of Prince Ombra! I have loved that book since it was first published! Same with the Three Investigators! Judy Bolton was one of my favorite series, but they haven’t held up so well.
Several people have mentioned books they thought they dreamed. Mine is: a girl is walking down a staircase, following her male relative (probably a cousin). At the bottom of the steps is a painting of an ocean. She is transported into the painting with her relative, they have many adventures which I can’t remember, and at the end she is transported back to the stairs and they continue down. The reader is left not knowing if the adventures were real. It is absolutely for sure not Narnia. If anyone knows of them, please let me know! I have been looking for more than 30 years for it.
Anybody else remember Mollie Hunter’s Scottish fantasies? I know I read the Thirteenth Member and I’m pretty sure I remember the Kelpie’s Pearl. And maybe the Walking Stones.
I read at least one book of the Three Investigators, that is if they had a connection with Hitchcock, I definitely remembering the boys visiting Alfred Hitchcock, maybe a different series? Was there also a story involving a retired cryptologist helping them read a cipher?
I love this thread. Keep posting, please. A few I haven’t seen yet are the Seven Citadels series by Geraldine Harris. I read it in college and it comforted me endlessly. No one has brought up Penelope Farmer or Penelope LIvely yet–the latter much better known as an adult author. Both of them wrote some English children’s stories that would fall into a folk horror category now (e.g. The Whispering Knights.) Another book I was so obsessed by was Talargain by Joyce Gard. Yet another is The Doubling Rod, though I don’t remember the author now. I hope somebody else has read at least one or two of these.
The Whispering Knights sounds familiar. Were they a circle of standing stones?
@@@@@49. DavidK44,
I read “David and the Phoenix” by Edward Ormondroyd to my now adult daughter when she was about ten or so. It was a fun read. Curiously, my daughter went on to major in Latin in college.
@86 Yes – the first two thirds of the series featured a connection with Alfred Hitchcock. I believe that later the Hitchcock estate withdrew the permission and the first 40-odd books were republished without the Hitchcock frame.
In a box of books an older cousin gave me when I was about 10 years old, there was a book called The Snowstorm, by Beryl Netherclift. It was about British siblings staying with their wonderful Aunt Amethyst. There was an old snow globe that could take the children back in time. I loved the kids’ aunt, the spooky old house, the time travel (seems like they always traveled back to the Georgian period)… I’ve never known anyone else who has read that book.
Yes! The whispering knights are standing stones! Which are the coolest! David and the Phoenix was a book I adored. It had that great textured cloth cover, and I think I have two copies of it. There’s another book which might be my favorite of all, and that is The Three Brothers of Ur. It isn’t overtly a fantasy but it had gods (dingirs) that the characters believe in, and I was convinced to believe in them as well.
@1 Dan in Seattle: there’s a wonderful episode of the Backlisted Podcast about Riddley Walker here:
https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/9-russell-hoban-riddley-walker
All the episodes are about forgotten or less well-known books that are nevertheless worthy of reappraisal; among the more sff-adjacent I fondly remember those on The Inheritors by William Golding, Red Shift by Alan Garner and Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones.
The only people I’ve ever met who’ve read Norman Partridge’s Halloween novel Dark Harvest are two friends I more or less strong-armed into reading it, specifically so I would have somebody – anybody – to talk about it with. Which I should probably chalk up to bad luck, given that the book won the Bram Stoker Award and was very highly reviewed when it came out! Surely plenty of other people have read and loved it, and I’ve simply never managed to cross their paths… With luck the movie adaptation later this year will finally change that, although if the book is rereleased for a new audience, I’ll be sorry to lose Jon Foster’s beautiful cover art to the inevitable movie poster edition.
@86 princessroxana –yes on Mollie Hunter’s The Kelpie’s Pearls ! As a woman who is in her 60’s, I still appreciate it as a kids’ fantasy starring an !old woman! Wonder if it could get published today, without a kid protagonist. The book is on my shelf along with all the selkie and lake monster fantasy novels (adult and juvenile).
I would have preferred a movie or six based on The Shores of Kansas than anything Jurassic. Took me years to find a copy after reading it from a lending library.
@86 oh yes, Mollie Hunter! I still have my copies of The Haunted Mountain and A Stranger Came Ashore.
@75, Saavik, then the Kelpie’s Pearl is the book I remember than because the older woman protagonist struck me too. It also taught me what a Kelpie is.
This thread is the best, and has reminded me of a bunch of books I loved as a kid: David and the Phoenix, Princes of Earth, Time Cat. I loved Crown Duel and Court Duel too but I wasn’t a kid any more when I got hold of those!
The book I loved that no one else seems to know is The Treasure is the Rose, by Julia Cunningham: historical fiction about a widowed countess in 1100, beset by bandits who believe a castle must hold a treasure. I picked that up randomly at a Scholastic Book Fair and have never seen it anywhere else.
The Weekly Reader Book Club was another good source for this kind of thing; that’s where I got The Kelpie’s Pearls, Ruth Chew’s Witch’s Broom, E. W. Hildick’s McGurk mysteries, and Alvin’s Secret Code, by Clifford B. Hicks–all books that I still own, 40 years later.
This thread just keeps getting better and better. @78, Time Cat and The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha do exist, I swear! I have a hardcover copy of the latter, but no idea where I found it. And, @84, most of James Kirkwood’s books are terrific, but too heartbreaking for me to go back to. The exception is P.S. Your Cat is Dead, a crazy but fun book. He also worked on the musical A Chorus Line, I believe (but you probably already knew that). And the Three Investigators! Does anybody know who wrote those? This whole thread is what I call a blast from the past.
The Ruth Chew posts made me smile. What the Witch Left, The Witch’s Buttons…such great fun reading those growing up. Here are some of my favorite childhood books that seem to have vanished….
THE CHANGELING by Zilpha Keatley Snyder – just magical; my favorite ever.
NO FLYING IN THE HOUSE by Betty Brock – can you kiss your elbow?
IS THAT YOU, MISS BLUE? by M.E. Kerr – just sad. But sweet.
I WILL GO BAREFOOT ALL SUMMER FOR YOU by Katie Letcher Lyle. Who among us hasn’t fallen in love with the wrong person?
Now I have to look a bunch of these posted books up – should be fun. Thanks!
My first dad was a school librarian, and brought home discards – books no one was reading. From this pile I found such wonderful books as The Golden Pine Cone, by Catherine Anthony Clark, and The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong.
NO FLYING IN THE HOUSE!
@DemetriosX – #17 – I’ve read Prince Ombra! When I read your comment, it tickled my brain, so I had to go Google it. I recognized the cover. Now I’m going to have to track down a copy and re-read it.
One of mine would be The Owl Service by Alan Garner. It’s fantasy, not sci-fi, but it’s a marvelous concept. Owl patterns come to life, and children find themselves cast in a local legend that has replayed itself there for generations. It was published in 1967, set in Wales, and I found it utterly fascinating.
Hounds of Morrigan sounds absolutely awesome!
And thank you so much for this article. You have basically described my life- the little girl who haunted the shelves of her small town’s public library and old downtown bookstore, loving beautiful old covers and illustrations, whose older sister told her mother “to make me stop reading all those books that gave me weird ideas” and who, until the internet and my own children were old enough, NEVER had anyone to talk to about all the books I loved.
Mariam Petrosyan’s The Gray House has swallowed me whole. Not only has nobody else read it, but I couldn’t even explain it to you if I tried, expect to assure you that it is excellent.
I read so much and so quickly when I was younger that some of the books I went through feel like a fever dream. I loved the Named series from Clare Bell, and don’t think I’ve ever come across someone else who knows what I’m talking about when I try to describe it.
Other faves include the Dark Horse series by Mary H. Herbert, and while I know T.A. Barron is a fave, I don’t think I’ve come across another fan of The Ancient One. The Forestwife by Teresa Tomlinson also had a profound effect on me, especially as a lover of all things Robin Hood as a youth.
@22 @46 @54
I am THRILLED to hear from others who love The Vision of Stephen. It’s one of my favourite books ever and I’ve never met anyone else who’d read it before!
And @56 also love The House of Arden, easily my favourite Nesbit.
My other favourite lost books would be the Carey family series by Ronald Welch which were kid’s historical fiction about the involvement of a Welsh family in various wars through history. My favourite of these is Captain of Dragoons but I love them all!
@@@@@Dan in Seattle : YES to RIDDLEY WALKER, a book I devoured with delight when I was in graduate school back in, oh never mind. Hoban was a remarkable writer and this book is a stunning achievement. His son was dating my roommate at the time, but the father was in England and we were all in Texas. So strange. Anyway, GREAT book and worth everyone’s time, especially as a precursor title in the new genre of future historical dystopian literature. However, the book by Russell Hoban that will always hold a very special place in my heart is TURTLE DIARY. I’ll never forget how touched I was by the plight of the turtles and the empathy and imagination of the humans in that story. So, add that one to the list.
I have two books that no one ever seems to have read, Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander and Half-Magic by Edward Eager. They are both written for mid-grade school age, (I think I was in fourth grade when I read both of them) and they have always stuck with me. Time Cat has a magic cat and a young boy who travel through history together, and Half- magic is the story of four siblings who find a magic coin that grants all their wishes.
I still have my mother’s beat-up copy of half- magic from when she was a kid, and it’s so well read that I’m afraid it may fall apart of if I try to read it now..
Time Cat was a book that my 4th grade teacher suggested I read, and I think I finished it that same day. I found a used copy when my boys were little so I could share it with them.
In reply to #1 Dan In Seattle: I actually have a copy of Russell Hoban’s ‘Ridley Walker’ on my shelves! I got it from QPBC, the Quality Paperback Book Company, probably back in the early ’80s. There was no internet then and QPBC introduced me to a world of books that I just wasn’t finding in my local Barnes & Nobles or Walden’s or whatever it was then. I’m going to make sure I do a re-read of it–the plot is very vague in my mind but I remember it was a new reading experience. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Also acquired from QPBC was Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Husband and wife breed their own children for their family circus side show. Pregnancies involving drugs and radioactivity were how they did it. Sounds horrible, but it was very well done, with several other bizarre plot lines, as I remember. I’ve never met anyone who has read it or even heard of it.
A book that I remember captivating me as a child was Harmony by Rita Murphy. I don’t remember any of the plot, but I do remember being caught up in the magic and atmosphere of the novel enough that I decorated my clay pot in art class with stars and wrote “Harmony” on the bottom of it. I’ve never seen it come up in anyone’s circles before!
Another trilogy I read when I was a little older started with The Singer of All Songs by Kate Constable. As a musical kid, I loved the idea of the “chantment” magic generated by different types of songs. I distinctly remember getting to the end of the second book, in which something earth-shattering happens, and just being absolutely shocked and bewildered about how the series could go on, because that was the first time I had really significantly encountered that narrative staple of trilogy writing! I haven’t seen this trilogy pop up later either but I remember loving it.
I have one “white whale” book that I have not been able to find again because I don’t remember the title – but I DO remember that I put the cassette tapes backwards in my boom box at one point and so was confused by the plot jump. It was about a girl who could magically sense the precise passage of time, I think? And I remember when she goes out on the ocean and experiences the tide changing, it rocks her world. There’s a romance that I remember bits of, mostly that the romantic interest does some fortune-telling thing with peat bricks that reveals your true love’s hair color, and he gets silver, which is weird to show up but is her hair color. If anyone knows this book I will be eternally grateful!
@106DameinCamelot: Yes, there is one other person who has waded through that tome! I’ve read it twice and loved it both times, but still don’t quite understand it. Several times while reading it I felt like I was crossing some line into an alternate reality. I know that sounds odd, but maybe you experienced it too?
I’m pretty sure Tor did one of those things where someone dissects it chapter by chapter. They have a name for it but it’s escaped me at the moment. I got through a few chapters with Tor and was somewhat enlightened. I can’t remember why I didn’t follow through with it. Probably b/c I’d already spent so much time with it and just moved on to other things.
Colors in the Dreamweaver’s Loom and Feast of the Trickster by Beth Hilgartner are two of these for me. I read them so many times as a middle schooler that I had parts of them memorized. Never met another soul who’s heard of them.
Oh dear. Now I have a whole slew of new titles to go hunting for! Hounds of the Morrigan sounds excellent.
Glad you mentioned Over Sea, Under Stone. Most Americans aren’t aware that there are more books in The Dark Is Rising sequence other than TDIR and The Grey King. I was able to find OSUS and Greenwitch only in the children’s literature section of my college library. (I have an omnibus printing of the sequence I got in Oxford on a trip years ago. A friend who got to meet Susan Cooper had her autograph the book for me :) )
And I totally agree with the poster who mentioned Silver on the Tree was letdown. I’d love to read a book that does that scenario right.
I read Keeper of the Isis Light in the lobby of our Y. There was a bookshelf of donated books there, free for the taking. This was recently, past 3-4 years, because I was stuck at the Y for hours while my daughter had swim team practice.
@1 Riddley Walker was the bane of my Fantasy in Lit class in college. As a purely sight-reader, the phonetic spellings messed with my mind something fierce. I think I was better off than many of my classmates though, because I a least had a clue what Punch and Judy shows were.
I grew up on Trixie Belden stories, and while there used to be an active online community devoted to the series, almost no one I talk to has heard of her. I found her so much more relatable than Nancy Drew.
Not only have I read Witchdame, I still have a copy of it!
My ‘no one else seems to know’ book is The Interior Life by Katherine Blake. Very dated, but one where the heroine pulls herself – and her fantasy counterpart – out of disaster inch by inch. Maybe it just hit me at the right time, but it was teh advice I needed, and it still works today (the whole incredibly dated part aside).
Several mentions above of David and the Phoenix. I don’t remember much of the story but I do remember the ending – inevitable, heartrending, perfect.
Joan North’s excellent 3 books (wish she had written more): The Light Maze, The Whirling Shapes, and the Cloud Forest. Ruth Nichols’ A Walk out of the World. All so wonderful and memorable, and found by sleuthing library sales and used book stores after first encountering them in the library…
Wow, you really struck a chord with this post! One of my earliest “favorite SF novels” was Mission to Mercury by Hugh Walters. Because it had a GIRL in it. Actually a woman, but this was 1965, after all. Yeah, misogyny and sexism abounded in it, but still… a female was a main character! And she was competent! And did cool stuff! (This is the memory of a pre teen SF fan, of course, and fair, warning, the novel does not hold up well over time.)
Another, later favorite was The Swordswoman by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Can’t find that anymore, and also Bedlam’s Bard” by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon, and Elvenbane by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey.
I have to totally second “Game Players of Zan,” too.
I was obsessed with Joy Chant’s “Red Moon and Black Mountain” as a child. It’s a classic portal fantasy, and I desperately wanted to find that portal. I found and re-read it 40 years later and it holds up well.
Mine was “Call it Courage” by Armstrong Sperry. I will be searching for many of the stories mentioned here! Thanks for this posting!
When I was young, I came across a couple vintage illustrated books that captured my imagination: The Princess and the Goblins and The Princess and Curdie, both by George MacDonald. I loved that the children were fighting the bad guys and I loved the grandmother in the secret room and the burning pile of roses that allowed Curdie to see the true nature of people and creatures. I never knew anyone else who read these stories.
I love all your replies and am so delighted to have drawn all the Hounds of the Morrigan fans out of the internet’s woodwork!
I also loved Ruth Chew, and all the Dark is Rising books, and forgot to mention one of my other little-known favorites: Nancy Bond’s A String in the Harp! Welsh mythology plus time travel… I think? I adored it.
As a kid I loved, and read and reread, the Narnia and Oz books, but the one few people seem to have heard of is Diamond in the Window by Jane Langston, which had American history (new to me as a Canadian) cool dream sequences, lost children and a fabulous treasure hunt.
As an adult I tracked down a copy of my own and was blown over to discover that the author had also written sequels!
Mine was The Riddle and the Rune that I found in my library when I was around nine. The main character spoke to animals which was always a plus but wasn’t the first book in the series. With no internet no way to find any of the rest of books. Might start looking now.
I too will need to find the Hounds of the Morrigan. The book I fell in love with and haven’t found anyone else that knows of it is “Half Magic” by Edward Eager. It sparked my love of fantasy at an early age — everything the 3 children wished for they got, buy only half!
@126, You never found anybody else who knows Half Magic? I have the boxed set with Magic by the Lake, Knight’s Castle and Time Garden. They’re great!
@118, I have a Walk Out of the World too, is there a sequel? It seems like there should be a sequel! I’ve got the Dark is Rising series too. Still don’t like the Magic goes away ending. And The Princess and the Goblin too, somewhere. Didn’t like that as much.
Anybody else have The Gamage Cup and the Whisper of Glocken, by Carol Kendrick?
@115 I grew up on Trixie Belden stories, and while there used to be an active online community devoted to the series, almost no one I talk to has heard of her. I found her so much more relatable than Nancy Drew.
Trixie Belden was my gateway into reading and mysteries. I still have a soft spot for the series.
RE: Silver on the Tree – I disagree, but to each their own.
As for books which really need some love:
Blossom Culp series by Richard Peck. Blossom is a young girl who happens to be a medium, an ability which gets her caught up in a number of shenanigans with her friend, Alexander.
The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key (best known for his book Escape to Witch Mountain). Another gateway story for me, introducing the idea of alternate worlds and magic/scientific gateways …
I must have read The Keeper of the Isis Light half a dozen times as a kid! My library never had the third volume of the trilogy, which drove me crazy.
Good news for anybody who wants to order a copy of No Flying in the House–it’s in print! The isbn-13 is 9780064401302. It’s only available in paperback. This is in the US–I’m not sure about anywhere else.
@126 Momgreat55 & @127 princessroxana
Don’t forget about Seven Day Magic
@101, I read all Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Egypt Game is my favorite but The Velvet Room comes in second. I can’t kiss my elbow but I loved No Flying in the House, who could resist that title?
Ma’am, I think I missed Seven Days Magic.
How about the Ace Double books? That’s where I got my first start with science fiction and fantasy. I still have a handful of them that I saved from childhood. Here’s a few I could remember off the top of my head.
Robert Lory: A Harvest of Hoodwinks / Masters of the Lamp.
Ross Rocklynne: The Sun Destroyers / Edmond Hamilton: A Yank at Valhalla.
Nick Kamin: Earthrim / Walter & Leigh Richmond: Phoenix Ship.
I googled Ace Double books. I had no idea that there were so many of them!
I actually have a funny story that this phenomenon reminded me of.. in middle school I read an amazing, mysterious, crazy book that I randomly picked up in a library. The main character had a cloak, he was in a mysterious tower. Strange things happened to him constantly. Most things I did not understand at all but I still loved it and I was utterly transported to this new world. The thing is I was also reading a bunch of other novels and I forgot the name of the book after finishing! A decade later in my 20s I suddenly remembered the book and tried to figure out what it was. I asked people in person and tried to describe this book and no one I knew had any idea what I was talking about. I yahoo searched and asked in online chat rooms (this was yahoo days, before the era of google) and no one knew. I began to think I was mistaken or had gotten something significantly wrong with my memory. Finally, I asked on Yahoo Answers andI had one answer.. they said that sounds like The Shadow of the Torturer.
That was it of course, the fuligin cloak! The re-read was amazing and made a lot more sense, there actually was a massive Wolfe community out there and I wasn’t crazy after all.
NO FLYING IN THE HOUSE (thanks for giving me back the title for the ‘elbow kissing’ book I remembered!) is available to borrow as an ebook from the Open Library: https://archive.org/details/noflyinginhouseh00bett/
My nobody-remembers-but-me title is The Wump World by Bill Peet, which indoctrinated me into my lifelong interest in environmental SF at age 7. When I remembered it/went looking in the mid-1990s, it was still in print. And it’s also available from the Open Library. https://archive.org/details/wumpworld00peet
A BOY COULD CYCLE ON IT WITH HIS EYES SHUT. TRY IT TODAY!
@127 So glad to find someone else who knows The Gamage Cup. Retrieved my childhood copy when my parents’ house was sold. I read Whisper of Glocken many years later but don’t own a copy.
My childhood wallflower book is a lightly fictionalized historical account of a young Romanian Jewish girl at the start of WWII called Lydia, Queen of Palestine. I think I got it from a Scholastic book fair when I was eight? I’ve read it so many times I have long passages still memorized. I still have my childhood copy, I haven’t read it in years but now I’ll have to revisit it.
A more recent one is Talion: Revenant by Michael J Stackpole (of Star Wars X-Wing series fame). It’s the first novel he ever wrote which wasn’t published until he’d made a name for himself in the SFF book community and I’ve never met another person who has even heard of it. It’s a pseudo medieval fantasy about a boy named Nolan who joins the magical police force that oversees a massive empire after his family was killed by a rival kingdom. It goes back and forth between his childhood growing up and studying at the magical academy and a mystery he is trying to solve as an adult. Some of the dialogue is pretty cheesy (you can tell it was a early effort) but it’s brilliantly plotted and I have to reread it every few years.
@107: there are those out there who have read the Named series from Clare Bell. I was able to get the whole set as a “cheap deal” about a year ago, but I’ve known about it for at least 10 years. Isn’t it a British series?
HM Hoover’s The Rains of Eridan, Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Green Sky trilogy, Alexander Key’s The Forbidden Door . . . .
No idea how these books came to be in my school’s library, but I’m grateful to whoever made the purchase.
I felt the same way about Knee Deep in Thunder! It had a sequel, too, which was also good. And then much later the author wrote a third book which was not, sadly.
My two “forgotten books” are The Gods in Winter by Patricia Miles and To the Chapel Perilous by the amazing Naomi Mitchison (the second one I tracked down after reading about it in a book by Baird Searles and a couple of coauthors called something like A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy, which had a lot of great information about books predating its early ’80s publication). They are both, now that I think of it, old myths in modern dress (Greek and Arthurian), although somewhat different in tone.
And Suzanne Martel’s The City Under Ground!
@137, me too. I first read the Gamage Cup in college, for some mysterious reason it was in the education department’s resource center with a lot of other kids books. Not sure where and how I finally found Whisper of Glocken. But now I’ve got both in paperback thanks to Amazon.
Anybody else remember Scholastic Books? I used to pour over their catalogs, first I’d check everything that looked appealing then I’d spend hours whittling my order down to whatever number of books my parents would allow. Usually four as I recall. No Flying in the House was a scholastic book.
Someone else mentioned My Book House, wow! My father was given a set around 1935 and still had them in our bookcase when I was young. They eventually got lost, I’m not sure what happened to them. A few years ago I decided I wanted a set just like my dad’s, the one with RED covers. It took a while but I finally located a set in good condition. I love the stories, they take me back to childhood.
@143 Loved Scholastic books. It was like going to the bookstore or library, all those possibilities. Many happy reading hours from those books as a kid.
Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park – Australian time travel novel. Anyone else know it?
Thanks for the Monica Hughes reminder. I’d completely forgotten the Isis Light books!
@30 Steve Wright
*Waves*
Another Rude Tales fan here. I have two copies – the paperback I got back in 1985 and a hardback I was given a few years ago since I loved it so much, someone tracked down a copy for me. Never seen any other copies anywhere. I’m pretty sure it’s closer to how the tales would have been told originally than most versions. “The Feat of Sir Bohort” is one of my party pieces, quite often requested (usually by people who know there are people present who haven’t heard it)
Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh – I remember my mum reading it to me, as although my reading was very advanced I still wasn’t old enough to read it myself (such frustration! I hated being read to). The joy when I could read it on my own! it was the first book I read where magic intertwined seamlessly with the normal, mundane world, and it left me with a lasting longing to enter that world. It’s also one of the few books I’ve dared to re-read as an adult, and although dated I was delighted to find that it still holds that magic for me.
Also Silver Chief by Jack O’Brien, a 1930’s book which sparked my lifelong love of wolves. Fortunately no-one told me at the time that I couldn’t own a pet wolf in England very easily, so I gently realised the impracticility of my childhood dreams rather than having them shattered! Many years later I have settled for having huskies instead.
A picture book that I adored and have never heard of, even from people who talk about picture books is Sarh’s Lion/Margaret Greaves. The illustrations are amazing.
Other books and series that fall into the category are 44 Old Cemetery Road/Kate Klise and Sarah M. Klise, Insu-Pu/Mira Lobe, The Carp in the Bathtub/Barbara Cohen, The Princess in the Pigpen/Jane Resh Thomas, Fifty-Four Things Wrong with Gwendolyn Rogers/Caela Carter
@138 Oh my goodness! I didn’t even know any of Uri Orlev’s books were translated.
So many good lost books. As a kid, I was entranced by a truly magical book called A City in Winter by Mark Helprin (yes, the guy who wrote A Winter’s Tale), with beautiful Chris Van Allsburg illustrations.
Turns out it won the World Fantasy Award for best novella in 1997, and young me never knew it was the middle book of a trilogy as the library didn’t have the others! I think I’m going to go buy them all used now. (There is, apparently, a reprint collecting them all, though.)
My book that no one else seems to have read is by Nylund: A Game of Universe, about an antihero named Germain who goes through a Grail Quest in a magical high tech gamish that is mildly jarring and very pleasing. Turns out the Grail Quest has more than just Good and Evil vying for the Cup of Christ.
I will have to try Hounds For the Morrighan. I find the book communities go through phases of popular books, always big publisher stuff and don’t seem to wander far into lesser known titles or indies, where I’ve found some real treasures.
The one I really love is the goblin world in Dance of the Goblins by Jaq D. Hawkins, but mention it in a book group and they glaze over and go on about the next Sarah Maas or something similar. I’d love to find a group that’s more experimental.
For me, it’s The Long Afternoon of Earth by Brian Aldiss. I loved it as a teenager, but could never find it again. Then last year I discovered that there was a version with a different name, Hothouse, and it was on Kindle! I just reread it and it brought me right back. It is a bit dated, but I love the concept — a future earth which is tidally-locked to the sun, where plants are dominant and the descendants of humans have devolved. It would make a great computer game if there are any developers reading this
@74 – I was going through the comments in hopes that someone would mention Nick O’Donohoe’s Crossroads trilogy!!!! An author friend recommended it years ago and I adored it, and then could never find anyone else who had even heard of it!
Pamela Dean’s _Jupiter, Gentian, and Rosemary_ is one of mine – I reread it at least yearly and no one else seems to know it exists, despite Pamela Dean not being exactly obscure!
On book sales, our local Friends of the Library has one of those book sales twice a year, one going on as I write! It is amazing that our little town will receive THOUSANDS of used books for every sale, some old, some very new. We have a large event room with at least 25 tables covered with books, with just as many stored beneath them still in boxes to be brought out as the sale goes on…
My main series like this is The Claidi Journals by Tanith Lee (also, WHAT A COOL NAME that author has)–I’ve never found anyone else who’s read them but I really really need to because these books are genius and not really like anything else I’ve ever read. They’re so delightfully weird and fantastical, reading them truly feels like being transported to an alternate universe. And they’re so wonderfully feminist in such a unique way! I love them so hard (and now I want to go reread them, ha…).
Jo Clayton is a treasure! Her Skeen trilogy is brilliant! And her Diadam series is groundbreaking. So nice to see someone else who appreciates her writing!
Alexander Key’s The Forgotten Door and Roderick Macleish’s Prince Ombra, already mentioned.
William Browning Spencer’s Zod Wallop.
I was just telling a friend the other day how I feel about this! There’s a joy in reading a book that’s popular and being able to share in a collective experience of how you and so many others understand the characters, the world, and the writing. But it’s also really special to read books that no one else knows and to be able to hold onto my own thoughts and feelings about the world, uninfluenced by my peers’ opinions about the story. And when I can analyze a book on my own and pick up on the complex themes and ideas, without having heard about it from a friend or an article in The Atlantic, that’s even more special to me. Reading a story and sharing a story are almost two completely different hobbies for me, and when I read a well-known book, it’s difficult to do one without the other.
Taash and the Jesters by Ellen Kindt McKenzie.
I also read all of the Edward Eager books and as many Trixie Beldens as I could lay my hands on. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Trixie Belden!!!
Chiming with the Lucy Boston (she also wrote Castle of Yew, mentioned above), Nicholas Stuart Gray, Jane Louise Curry, Edward Eager, Catherine Anthony Clark love. And The Interior Life, and …
I have two that Only I Remember: Mice on Horseback, by Susan Tweedsmuir (John Buchan’s wife) set on Vancouver Island, where a necklace of blue stones brings the carved mice on its box to magical life, along with a ceramic horse that takes the mice and the boy hero on flights by night. The other is Land of the Lord High Tiger by Roger Lancelyn Green, which reads like a mash-up of Narnia and Winnie the Pooh – the plush toys take their boy to their country (where they are all notable figures) and must foil an invastion. I should note it was published a few years before the Narnia books.
Has anyone else read Little Houses Far Away by Pamela Bianco? A little girl on a train trip imagines the distant houses as being doll-size and finds herself doll-size in the doll village with live dolls.
Everyone knows Andre Norton’s Witchworld Series, but no one mentions Lavender- Green Magic. It is the book that I always felt like I was the only one who ever read it.
I’m not sure this one counts, as it is probably the best known of Ruth M. Arthur’s books – A Candle in Her Room. Evil doll and three generations of a family affected by it.
Witchdame has a lovely cover, but I honestly hated it. Not the magical incest, but the politics. That witchy people are more important and better, and just deserve to be in charge, and non-magical people are serfs and better not try to change anything. As far as I could tell, the narrative was totally on board with this system. I had to go away and re-read a lot of Jo Clayton. Apologies to anyone who loved it.
The writings of Grace Chetwin fascinated me as a child, especially the Tales of Gom series. Grace’s books can still be purchased digitally from her own web page and she has also done live readings of most or all of them which can be enjoyed online for free. The series follows a young boy whose mysterious mother leaves while he is a small child and his quest to find out why she left after finding some very strange clues about her true nature. I highly recommend this even as a light read for adults, but especially to be shared with children who are ready for adventure stories with danger and some violence, but not too dark or scary.
What a great post, also delighted to read every one of the thus-far 166 comments and recommendations. I have two books that no one has mentioned.
SHADOW CASTLE by Marian Cockerell (originally published 1946, my Scholastic edition was @1966; seconding all the love for Scholastic book fairs). Lucy (a girl! has an adventure! with fairies!) follows a small dog beyond her usual path and discovers a hidden world of magic. I lost my original copy, found a used one and then Cockerell’s daughter arranged for a PB and digital re-issue. Absolute bliss for me to read a girl-focused fantasy in those days and still a favorite.
THE SHIP THAT FLEW by Hilda Lewis (originally published 1939), checked out from the library too often to count. Peter sees a small Viking ship in a store window and decides to buy it. The ship grows in order to sail Peter and his friends wherever/whenever they want: ancient Egypt; the Norman invasion. I can’t remember many details, but I absolutely remember the feeling of wonder and awe. I have both a reprint and a digital copy, which I strangely have not re-read yet. It’s time to trust that younger me knew what she liked and why.
Huge Jo Clayton fan! I loved the Diadem series and its spinoffs, but my favorites were the Skeen trilogy and the Drinker of Souls books. Spent a lot of time in used bookstores hunting down copies, back in the pre-internet days.
Two of Iain M. Banks non-Culture books that not many people seem to have read: Against a Dark Background and Feersum Endjin. Both have stayed with me in a very deep way over the years.
The Corson & Nyctasia books by J.F. Rivkin. Badass, non-monogamous bisexual women characters were a revelation to me way back in the ’80s when I first read these.
@168 – I almost mentioned Feersum Endjinn, which was my first Banks and one that sticks in my head a LOT (that and The Bridge).
Now I need to reread Drinker of Souls … it’s been way too long.
A Candle in Her Room! I remember that one! Very scary. I kept telling the characters to just burn the darn doll already. No idea where I learned that fire cleanses black magic. Probably in one of the many fantasies I read as a kid. Running water is good too.
I’ve also got a copy of Shadow Castle, I adored the illustrations.
Anybody else read ‘Perilous Gard’? A young maid of honor falls afoul Queen Mary I and is put under house arrest in the care of a knight and royal official. She discovers Sir Geoffrey has a younger brother and a fairly fraught family situation. She also discovers there are Faerie in the woods and the castle is called Perilous Gard for a reason.
@170. princessroxana
The Perilous Gard!!! I forgot about that book, and I do remember liking it alot.
And thanks to everyone else for mentioning books I forgot that I had read (god I’m old
).
And Molly, think about making this a monthly column, it’d be great
I love this post so much. You have all added so many titles to my own TBR! And so many of you are not alone:
@ John C. Bunnell – I LOVE The Lastborn of Elvinwood. It is one of my all-time favorites, have re-read it four or five times since childhood and probably will many more again.
@ DavidK44 – I remember well The Enormous Egg. I found and bought a copy to gift to my nephew a few years ago!
@ Riamon – My public library had Time Cat, and I read that many times over as a child. Great book.
@ Rusty- I loved the Changeling. Read many other books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder from my elemtary school library, but this one was always the best. Also The Egypt Game! My kid has a copy of No Flying in the House that I found used, had no idea if it was good or not, now going to snag it off her shelf to read myself!
@ bunkie68- I read the Owl Service a while back. I found it very strange, honestly. I think if I’d been the least bit familiar with some Welsh mythology it might have helped.
@ JEB- I LOVE the Named series. I first found Ratha’s Creature and Clan Ground when I was a teen, and was delighted to discover more sequels decades later. Did you know she wrote a fifth one in 2008? The first two are by far the best, though, IMHO.
@ DCass- Yes to Time Cat AND Half-Magic and all the other books by Edward Eager I could find!
@ Cuz- OMG yes I read Geek Love but honestly I found it way too disturbing. Sorry, did not like that one personally.
@ Nessili- American myself, here. Have read (and still own) all the Dark is Rising series and yeah, Silver on the Tree was my least favorite of them. I still remember how I got the first one as a gift on a birthday when I was maybe ten, and eagerly sought out the others.
@ Sandy Kay- You’re not alone! I read The Princess and Curdie, the Princess and the Goblins and I think a few others by George MacDonald. My public library had quite a collection of his books. My favorite of his though, was At the Back of the North Wind. Have you read that one?
@ princessroxana– I have a copy of The Perilous Gard! Need to get around to reading it finally.
My own additions to the list: Tomorrow’s Sphynx by Clare Bell- set in the future where humans have left earth but a child gets stranded by a crashed starship, taken in and raised by an intelligent cheetah (against the wishes of her companions) who then finds she has a telepathic connection to ancient Egypt. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it fixated in my mind. People of the Sky by Clare Bell- read this one very recently but wish I could find someone else who also has. Fantastic, strange and unforgettable book. Also Amy’s Eyes by Richard Kennedy. Dolls and stuffed animal toys come to life on a sailing ship seeking treasure, with a lonely orphan girl on board. It was amazing, strange and tender. Anyone else ever read these?
Drowntide by Sydney J. Van Scyoc (very different mermaid story where the word mermaid is never encountered in the text);
Sable, Shadow and Ice by Cheryl J. Franklin;
The Tower of Beowulf by Parke Godwin;
Ogre Castle; and In the Sea Nymph’s Lair by F.J. Hale (after the spell wars apocalypse fantasy);
The Whims of Creation by Simon Hawke (science fiction with mythology bits);
The Delgroth Trilogy by Thomas K. Martin (portal fantasy / urban fantasy);
The Shining Falcon by Josepha Sherman (Russian mythology);
Flute Song Magic by Andrea Shettle (middle grade fantasy);
Alpha Centauri by Robert Siegel (YA portal fantasy with centaurs);
The Keys to Paradise by Robert E. Vardeman (fantasy quest);
The Curse of the Witch-Queen by Paula Volsky (comedic fantasy);
Giants of the Frost by Kim Wilkins (has some Norse gods)
Loving seeing Orsinian Tales, The Rose, and Alan Garner getting so much appreciation. His Elidor has one of the best closing lines of any fantasy book.
Is anyone else a E.R. Eddison fan? His prose is literally the richest I’ve ever read. Mistress of Mistresses is my favourite. Though his politics are pretty much the obverse of hers, there’s a great essay by Le Guin where she holds him up as a model for how to approach prose in fantasy to try to distance it formally from realism (roughly). It’s in The Language of the Night.
Maybe all the readers out there can help me with this one. There were a few books I read as a kid that were good ones, I think, but they were dark ones for a young kid. I can remember two of them: The Human Apes” by Dale Carlson and “Anna to the Infinite Power” by Mildred Ames. But the third one is something I can barely remember. It had a striking cover–a drawing of a man with compound eyes, like an insect’s. The story is about a boy who was cryogenically frozen (I think he had an incurable disease) and was awakened far in the future. The man with the compound eyes explains that he’s the ruler of the world, and someone threw acid in his eyes, so he had them replaced with metal eyes. He plans to use the boy as part of some evil plan. I can’t remember anything else, but I would love to find the book, just so I can see that it exists. Can anyone help me, please? (There’s a book listed on Amazon about a man with compound eyes. Unfortunately, that’s not the one I’m looking for.) Thank you!!!
@ Marla J.- I don’t know it, but you should ask on LibraryThing. There’s a forum group there called Name That Book.
@148: I remember Carbonel, indeed – and did you know that there are actually three Carbonel books?
@155: Ah, yes, Nick O’Donohoe. I quite liked the Crossroads books, but I think his best work is the even more obscure Too, Too Solid Flesh, possibly the most improbable book ever to come out of TSR’s publishing program: an Asimovian murder mystery focused on a production of Hamlet put on almost (but not entirely) by androids.
@170: Your mention of The Perilous Gard reminded me of Elizabeth Marie Pope’s *other* novel, which is one of my particular favorites: The Sherwood Ring, a gentle and entirely amiable American Revolutionary romance with ghosts, spies, wonderfully amusing one-upsmanship, and the improbably named Peaceable Drummond Sherwood as primary catalyst for it all. A particular highlight: the women in the book are every bit as clever as the men – and the men are okay with that.
@172: If you haven’t already done so, try to track down Haldeman’s other novels, Star of the Sea and Esbae. Both are quite good, although Lastborn strikes me as the strongest of the three. The short story I referenced upstream, “The Marley Case”, is going to be more challenging, although a quick Google indicates that it was in fact reprinted in a handful of anthologies which might still be findable either in a sufficiently large library or via used-book dealers online. It’s totally worth the hunt, though, not least for the literary snark: “You can do anything in fiction as long as you’re consistent.” [ETA: whoops, that was evidently in a different comment-stream entirely; as the title may suggest, this is a “Christmas Carol” riff, but one that I found both distinctive and brilliantly executed, mixing a modern-day narrator with both Dickens and bonus GIlbert & Sullivan…more than that I ought not say.]
@152 Wine Guy – I really enjoyed Game of Universe. Eric S. Nylund has a number of books which are well worth reading. My personal favorite is Dry Water.
@174, Ross, I’m a fan of Worm of Ourboros. Edison wrote in perfect 16th century English but isn’t at all hard to understand and occasionally hilarious, Brandoch Braha telling Lord Juss to get out of his room when woken at an ungodly hour; and valiant efforts at misdirection by the court of Carce trying to prevent a drunken lord for giving away a state secret.
@109 leahkrevit — Yes of course to Riddley Walker but, indeed, Russell Hoban’s masterpiece is Turtle Diary! It was also made into a gorgeous film in 1985, starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley. Also, my obscure adult read is Mitch Berman’s 1987 Time Capsule, a Huck Finn-like trek across post-nuclear America by a jazz saxophonist and a civil engineer.
Soulstring by Midori Snyder. I loved it when I was growing up, and then I misplaced my copy (which I’d gotten at a used bookstore or library sale one time), and found it again years later: I was moving out and cleaning my childhood bedroom of piles of books and papers and homework on the floor (don’t judge). One pile of books and papers was in front of a floor-to-ceiling window and the last few things at the bottom on the floor were destroyed by water damage. Soulstring was there.
Used copies are available online, but for exorbitant prices.
“Dragon of the Lost Sea” by Laurence Yep and its sequels are children’s fantasy based on Chinese mythology, and they’re where as a child I first met mythological figures such as the Monkey King. Yep’s Dragon series is not obscure or unloved, but the later books are out of print, and none of them are available as ebooks. As we’ve become increasingly aware in recent years of the importance of diverse voices in children’s literature, it males me sad that this great fantasy series by a legendary Chinese American author isn’t more widely available for discovery by new generations of young readers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(fantasy_series)
What a great thread. So here for the Green Knowe love, Tom’s Midnight Garden, Alan Garner and HM Hoover.
My Hoover faves were the Eridan and Children of Morrow books. Still some of the best post-apocalyptic fiction, I feel.
Speaking of, I wish the whole cover art thing wasn’t quite so vexed for newer editions sometimes. The most recent reissue of the CoM books has the most awful stock art photography ever, like some shonky vanity pub. OK, sometimes we like certain covers out of nostalgia (the only justification for most Franzetta art, I’m sorry), but the CoM 70’s covers were objectively great art that really seemed to represent the characters.
Then again, some reissues have much better art than the “huge, massively detailed but impractical generic spaceship” type, thank goodness.
For Alan Garner, apparently The Owl Service was made into a TV show in the early 70s. I hope it’s out there somewhere!
Count me in too as someone who nearly bounced off Gideon the Ninth. Queer fantasy with swords, great! Alas, I’m not really into horror, the most gothic novel I can put up with is Northanger Abbey, and the middle section was pretty much everyone running around in circles in dimly-lit dungeons, which is tedious. I did like the actual plot reveals, it all hung together nicely, eventually. And the romance part. The last 100 pages basically saved it. However, I got two chapters into the Harrow book and just felt instantly tired of even more gothic body horror stuff. I’m even kinky, so I get the fascination with blood and bone and grossness etc, but it’s not my jam.
Esp not combined with annoying plot that alludes to a lot of lore, but takes another 200 pages to explain it. Reminded me of how Connie Willis’s books finally became wallbangers – no-one gives anyone else important info, and I am not a reader who needs spoon-feeding or has trouble with complex timelines!
Please excuse digressions. My most obscure fave is The Flame Takers by Lilith Norman, an Australian author. The “boring” member of a creative family goes on a quest to save them when their creative “flames” are stolen by a sinister being. Big old libraries and chess feature significantly (but not heavy-handedly)
@@@@@ 122: I loved the Princess and the Goblin, which forever fixed my idea of Goblins and made me automatically like anyone called Irene.
@@@@@ 146: Playing Beatie Bow always made me so sad, but in that way I keep coming back to. Ruth Park also wrote My Sister Sif which I loved.
The one I’ve never seen anywhere is The Blind Knight by Gail Van Asten – its a quasi Arthurian fantasy enemies-to-lovers romance and the hero was kind and patient and compassionate. My mother picked it up from the remainder shelf and I’m sure it has all sorts of problematic representations but I utterly loved it.
@176, thank you! I’m sorry it took me so long to thank you for your suggestion. I love these pieces, where people tell about the books they loved. I hope Tor will continue doing them.
Excalibur by Sanders Anne Laubenthal. Arthurian legend in the US. I’m glad to see it’s still available in PB
Thanking you again, and also everyone who commented, for this post. I haven’t been this excited about my TBR pile in a looong time. Currently reading The Vision of Stephen and loving it! I love the old words that one never sees these days even in fantasy books such as fillet instead of just a gold circlet. Children had a larger vocabulary, or were more willing to use dictionaries, back when these books were published