15
votes
Accepted
A story about a girl and a mechanical girl with a tattoo travelling on a train
This is The Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson. From Goodreads summary and reviews:
Piper has never seen the Mark of the Dragonfly until she finds the girl amid the wreckage of a caravan in the ...
- 67.9k
8
votes
Accepted
Russian (possibly) story in which a man is too shy to meet his pen-pal
It's a novel by Dostoevsky "Poor People". A novel in letters. The main characters are Makar Devushkin and Varya. Finally she marries another man and they go away from St. Petersburg.
- 236
7
votes
Accepted
Looking for a novel featuring a scene with an illegal street race, knocking books off the bumper of a car
Steps by Jerzy Kosinski has similar "book-knock-off" scene.
It starts on page 123 on the archive.org record and ends with the spoiler:
I found it with Google books search for "books&...
- 3,241
6
votes
Accepted
Looking for a SF/alternate history book about a 19th century style explorer who navigates lands with corrupted fauna and flora
Possibly Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson?
Set in 1912.
Published 1998.
Starting in America, traveling to an altered Europe.
The TOR paperback has a wild coast with steamships.
- 176
6
votes
Accepted
Science Fiction version of Queneau's "Exercices de Style"?
Exercices de Style is an unusual work by the French writer Raymond Queneau. Published in 1947, it tells the same short anecdote in 99 different ways. In the anecdote the narrator meets a young man ...
- 3,553
6
votes
Looking for a SF/alternate history book about a 19th century style explorer who navigates lands with corrupted fauna and flora
This sounds vaguely like Patricia Wrede's Frontier Magic trilogy, in particular one of the last two books, Across the Great Barrier and The Far West. These books were published in 2011 and 2012, so ...
- 10.2k
5
votes
I'm looking for a book about a boy in New York city who knows all about animals
The Beastly Arms by Patrick Jennings
Description from goodreads.com:
An accessible middle-grade novel from popular author Patrick Jennings
now in paperback. 11-year-old Nickel moves with his mother ...
- 3,241
4
votes
Book about Wife POV killing her husband and throwing his body down a well
Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne, perhaps?
The book is narrated by the titular character, although I don't recall whether her manner is distinctive or her accent peculiar.
Here are the plot ...
3
votes
Looking for a SF/alternate history book about a 19th century style explorer who navigates lands with corrupted fauna and flora
Your description made me think of The Chrysalids by John Wyndham - it's set in the future rather than the past, but it does have a 19th-ish century America vibe to it as it's set long enough after an ...
- 131
2
votes
What is the name of this op-ed/essay/newspaper article written by Walt Whitman
It's "The Eighteenth Presidency!", found here.
Whence then do these nominating dictators of America year after year start out?
From lawyers' offices, secret lodges, back-yards, bedhouses, ...
- 283
2
votes
YA novel about a girl who gets caught stealing, and then has to deal with the social consequences
Rand al'Thor provided a Goodreads list of Teenage Kleptomaniacs, and the title and image of one of the books jumped out at me, Angel Baker, Thief by Jeannette Eyerly.
Fifteen-year-old Angel, released ...
- 9,693
2
votes
Accepted
Choose your own adventure, with car racing in the Alps and a kidnapping plot
Following up from prior comments, you may very well be remembering Behind the Wheel by R.A. Montgomery.
You're driving a prize race car in the biggest road race in Europe. As the day approaches you'...
- 9,693
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible