A few of these titles are familiar, particularly Imperial Woman by PS Buck since I have a copy.

But the entire list is a strange assortment of seemingly inconsequential titles, isn't it?

It is a rather random list ... I recognized the Nora Roberts title, that's a super early book for her (I looked it up and it's from 1984). I'd guess the Rose Wilder Lane book look-ups may have something to do with last year's surprisingly popular Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, by Laura Ingalls Wilder / Pamela Smith Hill, but that's just a guess on my part (I have Pioneer Girl, but still haven't read it).

Did you notice the Betty MacDonald book? I still get twitchy seeing her name on this forum ... ;)

For a while I was hunting down OOP gardening books by Richardson Little Wright and Beverley Nichols and Abe Books and eBay were both incredibly helpful.

Interesting list indeed.

I'm only familiar with Mandingo (because of the memorably trashy cover on one edition that burned itself into my consciousness and refuses to go away), Angelique (because it was forbidden fruit when I was a teen but is probably rather mild by today's standards), and the Jack the Ripper book, which I think I have read. It's interesting that such a famous author as Cornwell should have a book that's out of print.

The Larousse Gastronomique must be a specific edition, because I saw one recently in a book shop.

I was surprised at this list. There were only 2 that I recognized: "The Green Hat" and "Co-dependent No More."

I know a bit about eight of them, I reckon. One in particular brought back memories - Masquerade by Kit Williams. It was quite a famous book when it was published; he was a jeweller and artist who made a piece of jewellery in the form of a hare which was then buried somewhere in England. He then wrote the book which was a story (about a hare) with pictures and riddles, which, when put together, gave the location of the hare. Of course, the book was a huge best-seller - clever stuff! My friends and I spent many happy hours pouring over the pictures with no success.

The hare was eventually found. I have a copy of the book which has an appendix which explains the riddles and how the finder managed to solve it. This site tells you a lot more about the book.

I've read a few of them. My then-husband once had a paperback copy of Mandingo (might help explain the "then"). I'm surprised to see a couple by David Wilkerson as they would be of religious nature and I'd think not too hard to find.

I ordered Heidi Grows Up and Heidi's Children, probably from Abe, after a cousin found my long lost copy of Heidi in some of her mother's things.

Martin, I also remember the fuss that was caused by Kit Williams' Masquerade although I never read it. It seems dozens of amateur sleuths started digging up people's gardens and plaguing Williams with questions; not at all what he anticipated.

I would have thought with the huge number of copies printed it would have been quite easy to find one for sale.

More About Masquerade

I tried 'looking up' The Green Hat in our library system but found nothing. To buy a second-hand paperback copy would cost the best part of $40! Really way too much pay for a book I might read only once . . . in fact I only purchase the very occasional secondhand book when I can get them for the princely sum of one penny (plus postage) I have been lucky enough to buy a couple of new hard backs this way.

Netla, I remember reading those Angelique books as a teenager. They were not 'forbidden' (probably those in authority had never heard of them) but they were considered 'hot stuff' back in the day . . . mostly for what they didn't say rather than on long 'descriptive' passages. ;-)

I have either read or heard of at least 8 of the titles and have heard of several more of the authors, but I must admit, I didn't recognize most of them.

I have or have had several of the titles. I donated Barbara Brachman's quilt pattern book (which is wonderfully researched) when I pared down my quilt book collection to make room for knitting books. I read the Angelique books in my late teens/early 20's (racy stuff in those days), and still have the first volume somewhere. I still have Conrad Richter's superb novel The Trees, the first of his trilogy The Awakening Land about the settling of the Ohio Valley. The final book in the series is The Town, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1951. I have skimmed the book Permaculture, about a kind of organic food gardening based on replicating plant communities found in nature. We used to have Larousse Gastronimique, but donated it to make room for cookbooks we actually use. I read Heidi Grows up as a child, but didn't like it or the other sequel as well as Spyri's original. I read Imperial Woman back in my high school days. And finally, I used to have a copy of Asimov's short story collection Nine Tomorrows from the Science Fiction Book Club. It seems to have disappeared at some point, probably doing one of my many moves.

I recognized 6, and have 4 of them.

I bought Masquerade for the lavish illustrations, only afterwards realizing it was a puzzle. I never got close to solving it! Years later I found "Quest for the Golden Hare" which explained the riddles, as well as telling the stories of the man who found the hare (who didn't actually solve the riddles, by the way, but used the marginal clues, especially the phrase in the first painting "one of six to eight" which referred to Katherine of Aragon), and the pair of school math teachers who did solve the riddle but missed getting the hare by a few days.

I suspect Pargeter's Heaven Tree Trilogy is requested by the folks who've discovered her Cadfael series and want to try her more serious novel. I read through the first one, but as I remember it, the ending was rather depressing and I didn't finish the other 2.

I read the Rose Wilder Lane novel in high school, and it's obviously based on her mother's stories, telling the story of a young pioneer couple named (surprise) Charles and Caroline.

The 2 Heidi sequels are enjoyable enough, but not anywhere close to the original. Its popularity as OOP may be either because of its illustrator Pelagie Doane, or because it was actually ghost-written by the Judy Bolton author Margaret Sutton. JB fans are avid collectors of anything Sutton wrote! According to what Sutton's daughter told the Yahoo Judy Bolton mailing list, the publishers were so dismayed by Tritten's submission that they handed it to Sutton to fix up. The sequels are based on story fragments from Spyri's notes, apparently.

I've always wanted to find Bradbury's Dark Carnival too! It's an early collection that was revised and reprinted as The October Country, which I have as a 70's paperback with one of Bob Pepper's covers.

And finally, I have Asimov's Nine Tomorrows in paperback, but the one I got our of the library multiple times, and finally paid an outrageous sum for as an adult is the anthology he edited, Tomorrow's Children. I discovered several authors there - Zenna Henderson is the one I can think of, off hand - and the collection ended with Asimov's own The Ugly Little Boy. Nine Tomorrows does include The Last Question - has anyone else ever seen the planetarium show based on the story? Unforgettable.

I had no clue that the, um, sort of cult film classic for kids of the late 70's/early 80s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, was a book first. Also no clue that director/screenwriter Cameron Crowe wrote it after enrolling in a high school--at age 22--just to get the lay of the land to write the book. Nor did I know that Crowe wrote for Rolling Stone at a fairly tender age, landing interviews with new hard rock bands because the "older" writers didn't want them (Wikipedia "fact," make of it what you will.) Fascinating stuff to mesince I am one of those late 70s/early 80s high schoolers. "Good morning, Mr. Hand." Thanks for posting the list.

I also had no idea that Conrad Richter wrote anything other than The Light in the Forest and think that the Cushing Sisters book sounds interesting just based on the title.

Bookmom, the Richter series was made into a TV movie a while back, probably in the 1980's. Elizabeth Montgomery played Sayward, the main character. It wasn't bad, but the books were better, as is so often the case.

Donnamira, I had no idea that Margaret Sutton had anything to do with the Heidi sequels. I am one of those Judy Bolton fans. Her books resonated with me in part because I grew up in a small Pennsylvania town not that different from the ones she used for her settings.

I've never seen that planetarium show, but I would like to. Asimov is better known for his novels, but "The Last Question" and "The Ugly Little Boy" were very moving short stories.

Rosefolly, thanks for the info. I'm another grew up in a small PA town girl myself, hence the Richter connection.

Rosefolly, according to Wikipedia, the Last Question planetarium show hasn't been produced since the 80's. When I saw it in 1970 or so at the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester NY, the effects were stunning, but are probably old-hat now. The Strasenburgh had a brand-new, first-of-its-kind computer-controlled projector and a very innovative director. The show began with the usual night sky in the planetarium dome, then to series of fairly static images for each stage of the story, then to the deep dark amorphous 'chaos' of the end, and closed (SPOILERS!) with an explosion of light from the apex of the dome that spun out to reform the night sky, illustrating the reboot of the universe. Really effective, especially with the planetarium setting that encompasses the audience all around.

And the extra bennie was Asimov coming to Rochester for the opening and giving a public lecture, which I attended of course!

After browsing the Wikipedia article, I wonder if the popularity of Nine Tomorrows as an OOP is because of this story? Although it's first appearance was in a magazine, it was first anthologized in Nine Tomorrows. Apparently LQ ranks with Nightfall & The Ugly Little Boy as the best of Asimov's short stories.

I would agree with that assessment. I liked all three stories.

I am not a regular reader of short stories, but there are a number of SF short stories I like a lot. One of my all time favorites is LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."