Fantasy book. Published in the 1980's or earlier. I want to say Piers Anthony, but I've looked through his books and that doesn't seem right.

Male protagonist is on a quest of some sort. His mother, I believe, weaves a piece of tapestry over/around his hands so she can somehow keep track of him. Some magic involved. And he has these spiders that are pets or something that ride on his shoulder. He can communicate with them.

I know very very vague. I wish I could think of something else to narrow it down. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

 I can't quite recall it, but I do remember the cover being a more violet color, with a picture of a forest I think?

The story was about a girl, joining some sort of group or something during the summer.. and there was a boy who was trying to kill her, and shove her into the swamp that she always went to. It's a more younger book, but I can't quite put my finger one what it's called.

Any idea?

Okay I can't seem to remember a certain book. It's a teen book. It's about this young girl who has magical powers and ends up going to live with her aunt in another town, so the aunt can train her in midwiving and herbs and the various pagan rites and such. Something happens, I don't remember what, but she ends up being kidnapped by a local townman, who ended up transporting her to a location the kidnappers where staying at. The girl had asked how much 'energy' he had used and she frowned out that the guy ended up slaughtering her horse or his horse to get her there, becuase of the amount of energy needed to be used.

I also remember them asking her when she started bleeding (getting her period), and it was referred to as moon cycle throughout the book. She ends up escaping and living off the land. The kidnappers are looking for her, but she manages to keep away from them for a month.

Her aunt or some of her friends end up rescuing her. They bathe her, and she takes her hair out of the braid she's had since escaping and starts crying since she's loosing so much hair she thinks she's going bald. Her friend tells her that becuase she's had her hair in the braid for so long that it's natural to think that but that actually everybody looses a certain amount of hair each day..so it only looks like she's loosing hair but really isn't.

Can anybody help me? Thanks. I know it's vague.

Oops! Edited out a couple chapters that were dead weight and lost one important fact that I now need to shoehorn in to a previous chapter.

Where would someone (in this case a 4 year old) who is in either a general burn ward either read (not preferred-he's only 4) or hear (if possible) the name of the hospital he's a patient of, assuming he had only been in the bed of his own room, moving through the halls on a gurney for treatment, and in treatment rooms? I need to convey that he's not where expected, even though it's not something he'll be thinking about.

Thanks!

Time: 1990s
Place: Manchester, England
Googled: None - couldn't think of an appropriate search

ETA: Answered!

http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1665/07/19/

Up and to the office, and thence presently to the Exchequer, and there with much trouble got my tallys, and afterwards took Mr. Falconer, Spicer, and another or two to the Leg and there give them a dinner, and so with my tallys and about 30 dozen of bags, --[?? D.W.]-- which it seems are my due, having paid the fees as if I had received the money I away home, and after a little stay down by water to Deptford, where I find all full of joy, and preparing to go to Dagenhams to-morrow. To supper, and after supper to talk without end. Very late I went away, it raining, but I had a design 'pour aller a la femme de Bagwell' and did so ... So away about 12, and it raining hard I back to Sir G. Carteret and there called up the page, and to bed there, being all in a most violent sweat.

Typical fantasy feudal setting.
I'm working on creating a brutal multi event athletic competition that also tests the military combat skills of squire candidates but I need an equestrian event that is not a joust as this fictional world's culture does not do that. The focus should be on the rider's skills not the animal's training; it really shouldn't be a case of the horse does all the work. Just to increase the difficulty they are given random horses to use rather than their own.
I could medievalize a modern sport but I only know them as a living room spectator(pretty horsies!) and have no clue how to judge what ones would work for this. Could be either solo or team event maybe both. Straight racing is out as is chariots.
Suggestions?

There was a group of books (3 or 4 I think...) that had female main characters and told about their teenage lives. The part that makes this different from other books is that each girl has a different life-threatening illness. I remember most vividly the one where a girl had cystic fibrosis and she met a boy who she liked. They worked at getting together (I think she didn't want to at first because of her condition) and I think she dies at the end of the story.
Sorry if you wanted to read it and I gave away the possible ending. 
I must have read these books in the late 90's. Does anyone know what they could be?
Thanks for your help!! =D

Ok i've done searches for "Medieval wedding ceremonies" "Medieval wedding ceremonies nobility" "Medieval wedding ceremonies  aristocracy" "Medieval wedding ceremonies king" "Medieval wedding nights" (And again with the various  suffixes used on the above searches)  and  "privacy kings middle ages"

I came up with two pretty good sites.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080308055034AA4NSi5
and
http://www.newandusedbooks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=features2&feature_elementID=33

Suggesting that for  the medieval nobility privacy was pretty much a no no. I'd assume that's pretty much the same  during the renaissance, but I'd love it if anyone could confirm . Basically I want to know if  a renaissance king is likely to have bodyguards and servants in the room with him on his wedding night.

I will likely be taking some artistic licence. (For instance at least some of my countries will not be sending their children away to manage their own households) but I'd like to know what i'm discarding.

Thanks in advance people.

I'm hoping someone can help me find this set of books we used to have.  I loved them as a child, but I have no clue what happened to them. 

It's a set of two, maybe three, fairy tale and nursery rhyme books, published in the '60s, maybe late '50s or early '70s.  I remember a few fairy tales and nursery rhymes that were definitely in them.  I know for a fact that "The Lion and the Unicorn" was in one of them, as was the riddle "As I was coming from St. Ives," and the fairy tale "Snow White and Rose Red."  The books themselves were hardcover, about 8 inches tall and 5 inches wide.  I'm almost positive the covers were cloth-covered and had details done in red on the cover.  The book also had a limited number of black and white illustrations.  

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1665/07/18/

Up and to the office, where all the morning, and so to my house and eat a bit of victuals, and so to the 'Change, where a little business and a very thin Exchange; and so walked through London to the Temple, where I took water for Westminster to the Duke of Albemarle, to wait on him, and so to Westminster Hall, and there paid for my newes-books, and did give Mrs. Michell, who is going out of towne because of the sicknesse, and her husband, a pint of wine, and so Sir W. Warren coming to me by appointment we away by water home, by the way discoursing about the project I have of getting some money and doing the King good service too about the mast docke at Woolwich, which I fear will never be done if I do not go about it. After dispatching letters at the office, I by water down to Deptford, where I staid a little while, and by water to my wife, whom I have not seen 6 or 5 days, and there supped with her, and mighty pleasant, and saw with content her drawings, and so to bed mighty merry. I was much troubled this day to hear at Westminster how the officers do bury the dead in the open Tuttle-fields, pretending want of room elsewhere; whereas the New Chappell churchyard was walled-in at the publick charge in the last plague time, merely for want of room and now none, but such as are able to pay dear for it, can be buried there.

All I remember about this book, is the fact that it was filled with short scary stories.

One of them is about a trio of girls that are walking home one day and see an old woman washing some blood stained clothes in a creek. This is apparently, some kind of death omen, and one by one, the girls die.

I don't remember how the first girl dies, but the second one chokes on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The third one accidentally drinks hair dye or something, mistaking it to be cough medicine.

Does anyone have any clue what I'm talking about? I know the scary story books were in a series, and that it definitely wasn't Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

ETA: FOUND IT! :D It's Scary Stories for Sleepovers.

Both of these are "bodice rippers" from the 80's set during the civil war era.

Book one :

The heroine's name was Jacintha (Howard) and she lived in NYC I believe.  She had a mad crush on the male protaganist most of her life I think his name began with a G.  He was married to a woman named Laurette.  At one point, Jacintha married a wealthy albeit abusive man.

Book two:

I have even less information about this one - it was set in the civil war in the south and the only key point I can remember is one sister locking the other sister in the family mosoleum and practically starving her to death.  Oh and I think the sisters were twins and they were blond.  Yeah..that was a big help, wasn't it lol. 

Hello, all.

I'm trying to remember the title of a scifi story; it could have been a short story. The plot was: some astronauts crash land on a barren planet and go out exploring. The thing is, on this planet, it rains constantly. Wandering around in the rain wears on their nerves and they go a bit mad and start attacking each other. At the end I think there's one guy left alive.

_{The reason I am suddenly curious about this book is because I live in Florida and it's rained all day every day since last Sunday and I'm going nuts}


Found The Long Rain by Ray Bradbury

I'm looking for a middle-grade children's novel that I read in about 1997 in Canada. At the time I enjoyed it and I'd like to find it again.

The protagonist's name is Max, and I think he's eleven or twelve. One summer he and some other kids from his neighbourhood construct a giant fort out of cardboard boxes in Max's backyard. I'm pretty sure they refer to it as a 'castle' throughout. Somehow magic enters the picture, and the kidsends up time-travelling back to the time of King Arthur; as I recall, Merlin is particularly involved. I think Max finds him living in a cave or something, and Merlin helps him out.

The book itself was a recent-ish paperback with a red border and a colour picture of at least two of the kids (from behind) looking up at the cardboard castle. I want to say the author was female, but I'm really not certain. Google has suggested a 1968 novel called Knights of the Cardboard Castle, but that really doesn't sound like the one I'm looking for.

Any ideas? Thanks!

(For a while I thought it was by Jackie French Koller, but I've gone through lists of her books and nothing has seemed to match. I think I simply must have read the unidentified book at the same time as her If I Had One Wish.)

"ANGEL aka The Real Life of Anel Deverell" (2007) Photo Gallery

Here is a LINK to a gallery of photos from the 2007 movie, "ANGEL", which is based upon the 1957 novel by Elizabeth Taylor and the life of real life Victorian novelist - Marie Corelli.

Where: Tokyo, Japan
When: Modern day
Setting: I have a character, K, who is hit by a car and killed. The driver was drunk and going over the speed limit. K had a dangerous 'job' and it is quite likely that one of his friends would have pressured him into making a will, just in case.

( Cut for rambling questions )

Time: Contemporary
Setting: USA

Okay, so person A has person B's cellphone number. Person A can't call person B's cellphone from his own cellphone for fear of having his identity tracked. What options are available? How easy would it be to get a mobile phone that wouldn't have a paper trail that lead to you? I know how prepay setups and such work, I'm just not 100% sure of what you'd have to hand over to get one. On an (unfortunately English, making its usefulness dubious) site, someone suggested driving to another city and paying someone to get you the phone so you don't appear on store cameras? Are there any flaws in this plans? Would the person have to hand over name and info to get the phone? Or are there simpler methods?

Google terms:
untraceable mobile phone
disposable mobile phone
prepaid mobile phone

http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1665/07/17/

Up all of us, and to billiards; my Lady Wright, Mr. Carteret, myself, and every body. By and by the young couple left together. Anon to dinner; and after dinner Mr. Carteret took my advice about giving to the servants, and I led him to give 10l. among them, which he did, by leaving it to the chief man-servant, Mr. Medows, to do for him. Before we went, I took my Lady Jem. apart, and would know how she liked this gentleman, and whether she was under any difficulty concerning him. She blushed, and hid her face awhile; but at last I forced her to tell me. She answered that she could readily obey what her father and mother had done; which was all she could say, or I expect. So anon I took leave, and for London. But, Lord! to see, among other things, how all these great people here are afeard of London, being doubtfull of anything that comes from thence, or that hath lately been there, that I was forced to say that I lived wholly at Woolwich. In our way Mr. Carteret did give me mighty thanks for my care and pains for him, and is mightily pleased, though the truth is, my Lady Jem. hath carried herself with mighty discretion and gravity, not being forward at all in any degree, but mighty serious in her answers to him, as by what he says and I observed, I collect. To London to my office, and there took letters from the office, where all well, and so to the Bridge, and there he and I took boat and to Deptford, where mighty welcome, and brought the good newes of all being pleased to them. Mighty mirth at my giving them an account of all; but the young man could not be got to say one word before me or my Lady Sandwich of his adventures, but, by what he afterwards related to his father and mother and sisters, he gives an account that pleases them mightily. Here Sir G. Carteret would have me lie all night, which I did most nobly, better than ever I did in my life, Sir G. Carteret being mighty kind to me, leading me to my chamber; and all their care now is, to have the business ended, and they have reason, because the sicknesse puts all out of order, and they cannot safely stay where they are.

Setting: Japan, preferably the Kobe-Kyoto-Osaka region. Tokyo info is welcome too.
Time period: contemporary

I'm having a total Google block. If a student wanted to study (Japanese or general) history in Japan, which universities would be recommended? My searches keep coming up with American schools studying Japanese history, the history *of* the schools, or general websites which don't say anything about reputation. I suspect I'm not wording it correctly. ( search terms ) Thanks!

I love days when the postman doesn't bring bills but brings nice letters.

These made me smile all day.

We all need a lift now again don't we.

I feel privileged to get letters like these because on the grand scale of things my job isn't very important. I guess there are lots of people who do far more essential jobs who rarely get praised by anyone. That's why I always keep a little box of thank you notes on my desk and every time someone makes my day I scribble a little note to say thank you. We all need affirmation, it's good for our well-being.