musen wrote:

• It was written over 20 years ago
• It was popular enough to have been translated into different languages
• It was a mystery
• It was set in an English speaking country
• It started with a death of a rich person
• It involved inheritance because of that death
• It involved serial murders
• It had a puzzle outside of the murders
• One of the clues for the puzzle was a nonsensical word starting with "the"
• It MAY have been written by Agatha Christie

You've probably found it elsewhere by now, but I'm pretty sure you're thinking about And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.

this is a great idea.

There was a book I read in Gr. 6 I've always wanted to try and figure out.
It was about a young Chinese girl, living in America I believe, who goes back to China and meets her farming family. That's all I can remember, besides the cover, which I'm pretty sure had a tiger.
o_o

ashabellanar wrote:this is a great idea.

There was a book I read in Gr. 6 I've always wanted to try and figure out.
It was about a young Chinese girl, living in America I believe, who goes back to China and meets her farming family. That's all I can remember, besides the cover, which I'm pretty sure had a tiger.
o_o

Going back to the ancestral lands is a really common theme in immigrant fiction, but if we can narrow it down a bit, we might be able to find it.

• What year were you in sixth grade? Do you remember if the book seemed new or old?
• Do you remember if the setting was modern or historical?
• Was the girl a child or teenager/young woman? Did she travel alone or with someone from the American side of the family?
• Was it a happy reunion, ot was the meeting problematic due to cultural differences/poverty/reasons?
• Are you sure it was fiction, or could it be a biographical story?

It would have been around 2004... and the book seemed newly published, the cover was pretty modern.
The setting was modern, supposed to be "present day" I believe. She was a teenager, maybe around 15? I can't unfortunately remember if she traveled with anyone, I believe she may have gone alone.
The meeting was problematic due to their poverty and initial nonacceptance of her.
I am 95% certain it was fiction. Now I am second guessing myself.
I'm pretty sure it was fiction.
Thank you for the help, by the way. Great questions, also. Jogging my memory a bit
I will come back if I can think of any other factoids...

I've had a look in a couple of North American library databases; unfortunately no matches have come up. I can't access the Library of Congress database, it keeps timing out when I try.

Alternative suggestions: If it was on the curriculum for the class (especially if the whole class read it) your old teacher likely remembers it. If your school has a library, the school librarian should be able to find it.

Okay, it's been a long time since I read this one, and I'm not entirely sure when or even where I was, but here goes. It was definitely a library book, and we've moved a couple-few times, and the library that I think it was in pretty much completely rearranged itself, so yeah.

Anyway, the book was about a relatively young female... I'm not sure what to call them. They weren't human as we know them, but I can't remember if her people just weren't all that evolved compared to us or a completely different species. Sorry.

What I remember was that they may have been semi aquatic, as I remember something about a massive wave that was hitting the coast, and she and her people ended up clinging to boulders, just trying to ride it out. I remember the water hit them and retreated several times because she was thinking that if it were continuous one way or another, she would have a much easier time breathing. Also, she described some kind of webbing between their fingers, I think. Something about catching fish? I don't know, it's been a long time.

The less evolved part (sounds bad, but work with me here) was that even basic medical care was practically non existent. Kind of a 'you live or die' kind of thing. She mentioned how one of the other females in her tribe? Call it a tribe. She broke an arm, and it was never really set. She mostly lost the use of that arm, I think. Then there was a male, may have been the leader, who got into a fight. He broke his leg, badly (bone through skin, ew) and usually they'd basically leave him to die, but the main character wanted to try fixing it and pulled it straight, splinted it and everything. The male really didn't cooperate, because obviously that's gonna hurt.

If I remember correctly, there was little to no actual dialogue in the book. And the whole thing has been bugging me off and on for years. Does this thing even exist, or am I making things up?

@starcookie:

Sounds like Peter Dickinson, A bone from a dry sea. Take a look at this summary (I hope you can access it from where you are located).

@zrofyre
Did you ever find that book? It sounds to me a lot like many of the Andre Norton books, but those were written much earlier. However they could easily have been re-released around the right time. Unfortunately she wrote a LOT of books, and while I remember reading several that sound similar to this, I cannot narrow it down without starting in to the whole several shelves... but maybe add her name to your search terms and try again?

@ lilybel

How... you... I think that might actually be it. THANK YOU! You have no idea how long that has been bugging me. I honestly was starting to wonder if it even existed at all.

There was a fiction book I started reading a few years ago about the Spiritualist movement and there were 2 sisters (I think one might have been named Kate? So maybe it was about the Fox Sisters?). But I don't remember the author or the book. And my searches haven't found it.