What Is This Book?

[AuroraStar]

spordelia said:

Not so futile. That would be the Ford Supermodels of the World series.

ABEBooks is great for finding books where you've only got partial information and they're on the obscure side.

Ahh you're awesome, thanks.

[sleepy]

This is a big shot in the dark, and I'm not expecting to have much luck, but there's a book my mom gave me when I was 7 and my parents were divorcing. It's a young adult novel about a girl whose...parents were divorcing.

Here are random things I remember about it:
- She drew rainbows on the corners of her notebook pages, but ended up ripping them all out because she was sad about her parents.
- She had a dog, and one night she and her dog ran away into the woods. The dog got a tick (it seemed scary and riveting at the time, but when I write it out, it sure doesn't sound so scary).
- She and her friends stole designer labels out of clothes in the mall (because it was cool to sew them all on t-shirts, I think) and her mom threw a fit and told her it was stealing.

I know that's not a lot to go on, but is this ringing any bells?

Edited: This would have been early-mid 1980s ('83, maybe). And I want to say the girl's name was Lila, but I may be mixing that up with the Charles in Charge book that I also read around then.

[spinsterliz]

My sister had a book called "The Rainbow Kid" that kinda sounds like that, but the main character was called Aviva, not Lila. I never read the book but I know the girl loved rainbows, had a dog and and her parents were split so maybe that's it?

[sleepy]

Wow, I think that may be it! Thank you!!!

[hobocamp]

I've always wanted to reread this book I read as a kid about a family that had a volcano in their basement, so they never had to turn on their furnace and their lawn was always green and nice in the winter. Anyone know what it is?

[Ripley]

Hobocamb, is it The Finches' Fabulous Furnace?

ETA: Loganberry Books has an interesting-looking resource for these types of questions.

[hobocamp]

That's it! Aw, thanks.

[glitterbug]

Okay, this is something I read at the beginning of this year - I've got a feeling it's a new book, but I could be wrong. Anyway, there's an older woman who's kind of a powerful witch, who teams up with a younger man to solve some kind of mystery. They travel to different worlds to try and find pieces of the jigsaw - I think it's something like a different letter or word in each world. The main thing I can remember is that there's a big fight at the end where one of the baddies turns into a Mexican god (Quetzalcoatl?)
I'm also fairly sure this book is translated, originally it's French/German (my main feeling is Belgian) Is this making sense to anyone? It's really annoying me!!

[Deleted]

It's not Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, is it?

[glitterbug]

No, although I've read that and enjoyed it. I think the woman's name might be Agatha (or similar) and the young man helping her is some kind of police officer. It's really starting to annoy me now, I've spent hours on amazon with no result.

ETA: Woo-hoo! It's Dance of the Assassins by Herve Jubert. It's pretty good if you're into young people's fantasy type books.