What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

I remember this being kind of an eerie/atmospheric YA mystery novel but I could have that part confused with another book I read at the time. There was a mystery or a crime so it was dark in that sense. I think there was a girl who was the victim and either had hidden the jewel or had the doll and did not know the jewel was hidden inside it. There was an older male bad guy I think, maybe a relative. So either she knew where the jewel was hidden and he wanted it and didn't know where it was hidden or it was hidden in plain sight and neither of them knew where it was hidden...

Sometimes I think I made this up on my own because I don't remember any other details!

There was a topic about this a while ago ... in that thread it ended up being A Certain Magic, but there are some other possibilities in the thread too.

Possibly Mystery at the Doll Hospital? The jewel in the doll in this one is actually 2 stolen star sapphires.

None of these sound right...but they all sound like other good reads!

I seem to remember something about cleaning the doll up, like it was grimy, abandoned, ignored...

But the Certain Magic book seems too recent also.

Wait a minute, it could be Mystery at the Doll Hospital. Let me see if I can check that out.

All of this is reminding me of how much I liked Betty Ren Wright's The Dollhouse Murders:

"Twelve-year-old Amy is having difficulties at home being responsible for her brain-damaged sister, Louann. While visiting her Aunt Clare at the old family home, she discovers an eerily-haunted dollhouse in the attic-an exact replica of the family home. Whenever she sees it, the dolls, representing her relatives, have moved. Her aunt won't listen to Amy's claims that the dolls are trying to tell her something. This leads Amy to research old news reports where she discovers a family secret-the murder of her grandparents. The two sisters unravel the mystery. Amy grows to accept her sister and to understand that Louann is more capable than she had first thought."

From Library School Journal via Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Dollhouse-Murde...

Emma wrote: "Wait a minute, it could be Mystery at the Doll Hospital. Let me see if I can check that out. "

Thanks, Emma. Please return and let us know.

All these books sound interesting!

I will. I've ordered a used copy through Amazon.

Thank you all!

I just re-read A Certain Magic, and it doesn't sound like what you are looking for. It's an older book though, since I first read in the mid 80's.

Good luck!

Well, if you are right about the cleaning up part, they definately do that in the book I suggested. And the Dollhouse Murders was good too. Yes, I DO collect stories about dolls. :o)

If you're really vague about how well you remember it, you could be confusing a Disney movie called Child of Glass with the book it was loosely based on-- The Ghost Belonged to Me

All the resonating imagery you mention matches the movie. (At IMDb the reviews 8 March 1999 titled "Excellent, spooky story" and 23 February 2007 "This was the defining movie of my childhood" together pretty well describe it.)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17..., maybe?

Did you check The Secret of the Ruby Ring?

There was a Nancy Drew story with a very similar plot, The Riddle of the Ruby Gazelle. Don't know if this helps at all!

I'm pretty disappointed to report that Mystery at the Doll Hospital does not seem to be my book. I received it in the mail yesterday and read it through, waiting for the moment of recognition. It never came although so many details of Mystery echo the book for which I'm searching. This sea voyage/jewel/doll/mystery plot must be somewhat cliche, differentiated only by its details. There is a canary named Pitti Sing in Mystery and a bell went off when I first read the name but I now realize that that is only a result of the ubiquity of Gilbert & Sullivan :D ! There may have been a monkey in my book, or that detail could be borrowed from A Little Princess. That was the type of book I loved as a girl, a Frances Hodgson Burnett. Even the name "Captain Fernbank", the doll's original purchaser in Mystery, seemed to ring a bell.

Mystery at the Doll Hospital was written in 1955 and has a brother/sister duo, Judy and John, who solve the crime with their friend Detective Purdy. Reading the book, it was clear to me that I'd never read it before.

I'm going to check out Child of Glass/The Ghost Belonged to Me now. I am a major Watcher in the Woods fan so it's possible I saw Child of Glass as well.

The Secret of the Ruby Ring sounds good but--as I graduated HS in 1992 and it came out in 1994--cannot be the book. :)

And the Nancy Drew does not seem right either. I did not read a lot of Nancy Drew's and I think I would remember if it was Nancy. I'll certainly check it out though, leaving no stone unturned.

I'm also going to re-check the thread that was solved with A Certain Magic...that book is sounding more likely, especially if the letters serve as flashbacks of some kind...that might explain why I would remember the book as being older.

What about Mystery of the Secret Dolls

Besides Nancy Drew as a suggestion, I'm wondering if there might be a Three Investigators mystery which had a jewel hidden in a doll? It seems somewhat familiar, although I can't pin down off the top of my head which one it might be.

Hum, how about Ten Mile Treasure?

Argh, am feeling overwhelmed and disheartened. Sometimes I think I dreamed the image of the jewel coming out of the doll up after watching Jack and Joan discover El Corazon in Romancing the Stone!

I had put The Ghost Belonged to Me on hold at the library so I picked it up and read it today. Funny, great YA ghost story, but not the book. I appreciate that Leela4 warned me that I would have had to be very vague for it to have been this one, but it was available through the library system, whereas A Certain Magic was not, so I thought I'd try it. Also, Erin doesn't think A Certain Magic sounds right.

@Rachel Lee, are there any jewels involved in Mystery of the Secret Dolls? I think I would remember an Underground Railroad theme, as this was another of my favorites. But then again, that makes it a possible good candidate...

@These Are Not The Droids You're Looking For, I mean Michael :), I was not aware of the Three Investigators before today. That's an awfully big selection of books, but they sound pretty awesome, what with two of the Investigators being a child actor and a special effects man's son, and Alfred Hitchcock as a supporting character. I'm going to rule these out with Nancy Drew however. For now.

@Ann, Ten Mile Treasure looks intriguing but they don't have it at the NYPL and I can't find enough information about it online. Can you tell me more about it, jewel/doll-wise :)?

Thank you!

Hum, ok, let me think about this for a sec. (Big grin) Er, just exactly HOW detailed do you want me to be? I LOVED that book as a kid and still own a (very) tattered copy of it. :o)

The story starts with a family with 3 children, 2 boys and a girl, moving to the south west to try to set up and run a "Theme" motel/bed and breakfast set in an old Stage Coach stop. They meet and become friends with 2 Native American children, also a girl and boy.

There is also a rich neighbor with a spoiled rotten daughter.

The first part of the book deals with the kids meeting each other, the family getting settled etc.

It starts getting good when the pet cat of the white family disappears while all the kids are out exploring. They find it in a small cave--and also in the cave is an abandoned stage coach. Inside the coach are all the belongings of the passengers that had disappeared when the coach did. The doll is one of the things that the kids find in the coach. She's a French fashion doll with her entire wardrobe. The missing treasure in the case of this story wasn't found--altho finding the coach, and the bodies of the passengers--does clear the name of a man who had disappeared in the late 19th century with a fortune.

Does that help? You can find copies of the book periodically on ebay and even more occassionally at one of the book swap places.

Ann aka Iftcan wrote: "Hum, ok, let me think about this for a sec. (Big grin) Er, just exactly HOW detailed do you want me to be? I LOVED that book as a kid and still own a (very) tattered copy of it. :o)

The story..."

I love it! The Ghost Belonged to Me has jewels and no doll and it at least sounds like Ten Mile Treasure has a doll and no jewels! As I am now collecting YA jewel and/or doll reads, this sounds like a definite must-have. It doesn't sound like anything I've read before though...

> I was not aware of the Three Investigators before today. That's an awfully big selection of books, but they sound pretty awesome

If you tackle these, bear some things in mind:

1) The original series (there are spinoffs too) was by five different authors who had five different ideas of what the series should be like. So you may find yourself liking some authors better than others, or you may consider them all equal.

2) The tone varied. Two books I've looked at recently have what I would call a patronizing tone, but half a dozen others don't. So if you don't like the tone in one, try a different book.

3) Alfred Hitchcock is only in the books printed before 1980. After that he was replaced with Hector Sebastian. Even reprints of the books from before 1980 replaced him. (Don't blame the publisher. It's one of those stupid estate lawsuit things.)

> Sometimes I think I dreamed the image of the jewel coming out of the doll up after watching Jack and Joan discover El Corazon in Romancing the Stone!

This still has me suspecting you saw "Child of Glass" and confused it with another book you read. If you know how to use BitTorrent, it looks like there's an active torrent of it right now. On the other hand, if you read those two IMDb entries I mentioned and said "Nope, that wasn't it", never mind.

Leela4 wrote: "> Sometimes I think I dreamed the image of the jewel coming out of the doll up after watching Jack and Joan discover El Corazon in Romancing the Stone!

This still has me suspecting you saw "Child ..."

Actually, Leela4, someone has made this movie available on YouTube in 11 parts so I was able to watch it just now without downloading the BitTorrent application:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD4NeA...

I would have been 3 or 4 when it came out on TV. It didn't ring any bells for me but I wonder if at some point I did see it or some part of it that did not stick in my conscious memory...or a friend saw it and told me about it...maybe on the playground with messed up or embroidered details. I love this idea.

It's very different from the book but you're right that there's a lot about the movie that resonates with the details of my search. The main details and also the parallel between Captain Dumaine and Amory Timmons.

I love that actress who plays the mother, Barbara Barrie. What a long career she's had.

I also loved how on YouTube, in Part 11, after the movie, there's an ad for Disney World. I got to go there once as a kid.

Hey, great! This topic has made me want to see it again, but not enough to spend the time on it BitTorrent would require.

>I would have been 3 or 4 when it came out on TV.

The last time I saw it was in the 1990s when I stumbled across it on TV one afternoon. Sheer luck.

> or a friend saw it and told me about it...maybe on the playground with messed up or embroidered details

Very plausible. Kids who have seen it tend to remember the seance and the ending most vividly.

The scene *I* (think I) remember best was when the mother was crying after her party had gone wrong and the woman she was trying to impress stopped to tell her what a delightful time she had had. So she starts laughing instead.

Here is another one to consider Missing Melinda - while I cannot recall exactly what was hidden inside this doll, it was something valuable, and it's a great book!

Ooh, forgot about that one! Animated movie. Not as scary as, say, Snow White, but pretty grim. The chief villain was a woman, but she had a henchman. And two alligators! And the "doll" was a teddy bear.

I don't think The Rescuers movie was based on a specific book, just the Miss Bianca series (by Margery Sharp) in general. I remember being disappointed about that as a child.

CLM - I just picked up a copy of Missing Melinda and there were $100 bills hidden inside her, if that helps:)

I checked A Certain Magic and Agnes Cecilia out from the library and have finished them both. Really nice reads. Nothing I read as a child.

I watched The Rescuers again too. I had watched that again not too long ago. I watched another Disney movie about jewels and dolls too, just for the heck of it, while I'm on this jag, you know. It was called Bejewelled, with Emma Samms. Quite painful to watch actually (but watch it I did). Another bad French accent...I did not like the little girl's accent in The Child of Glass. It took me the whole movie, it felt like, to decipher the "murdered lass" in "Sleeping lies the murdered lass, vainly cries the child of glass. When the two shall be as one, the spirit's journey will be done."

Any objections to my moving this query to POSSIBLY SOLVED? I don't want to abandon it, but would like to let it go. Is POSSIBLY SOLVED a good place for it?

Emma wrote: "Any objections to my moving this query to POSSIBLY SOLVED? I don't want to abandon it, but would like to let it go. Is POSSIBLY SOLVED a good place for it? "

Emma, it sounds as though you haven't found your book, so it's up to you, but I would leave it here, in the UNSOLVED folder, and occasionally (once every month or two) feel free to bump it up by posting a "bump" message post.

ETA: This thread is only a couple of months old. One of my books wasn't found for over 2 years; I'd left the thread in the UNSOLVED folder.

Okay, that sounds good, Lisa. Thanks!

And thanks everybody so far!

There is no doll in The Ruby in the Smoke, one of my all time favorite books! But I wonder, Emma, if you aren't thinking of this book anyway, and confusing it with another book with a doll?

I read Ruby in the Smoke recently, after devouring the His Dark Materials trilogy and looking for more. Definitely not it, unfortunately. Also saw the "Masterpiece" episode with Billie Piper and Matt Smith from the BBC Doctor Who series. Julie Walters' portrayal of Mrs. Holland is excellent!

It may be a silly suggestion but it sounds similar to the plot to "don't say a word" by Andrew Klavan. Which is also a movie. In that it has a young girl (well is young when the crime happens), a horrible crime, a doll with I think a ruby hidden inside of it and bad guys coming after her for the ruby.

How about Ginny and the Mystery Doll by Catherine Woolley? I'd post a link here (because it is listed in goodreads) but I don't know how.

Susan, For future reference, just click on the add book/author link that's right above each comment box. Ginnie and the Mystery Doll by Catherine Woolley. If in the book field you key in title and author you can click the add button and the link to the book will appear, and if you change to author field the link to the author will also show. It take a bit to get the hang of it, but once you do, it's easy, and fun!

Susan wrote: "How about Ginny and the Mystery Doll by Catherine Woolley?"

Was thinking it was that one myself but couldn't for the life of me remember the title.

Except that in Ginny and the Mystery Doll--the gem is a baroque pearl--and its not actually hidden inside the doll.

I read a book on a Navy deployment called "Night of the Hunter" written in 1955 by Robert Mitchum. It's got a really evil guy that marries these kids mother and eventually stabs her. There is a doll with money, jewels, or a deed in it as well. There are scenes near a river that stand out vividly. Check it out. Freaky book...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

Mike--Night of the Hunter has money hidden inside the doll. It was hidden there by the children's father, just before he was captured by the police for robbing a bank, I believe it was. The Preacher (the evil guy) is the father's cell-mate and manages to find out some how that the KIDS know where the money is, so he kills the Dad. Then he either escapes or its not realized HE was the killer and he gets released. He hunts down the Mum and kids, woos her and marries her--just to kill her. The kids escape and at least the last 1/3 of the book is the chase for them. Um, guess you can tell I read it, right? lol, so definately NOT that very freaky book.

I did see Night of the Hunter fairly recently.

Here's a link to a nice juxtaposition between the classic right hand/left hand scene from Night of the Hunter with Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing homage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0DLTQ....

Who'd have thought this would turn into a Night of the Hunter board! I couldn't remember the plot details that well...I just remember being very uncomfortable and kind of freaked out as I read it in the middle of the ocean! After posting this I wanted to buy the Kindle version but I'm afraid I couldn't find it. If anyone knows where I can get an electronic copy that would be cool.

Emma, are you still looking for this book?

No response, moving to Abandoned.

This reminds me of the movie Don't Say A Word which is based on the book Don't Say a Word. It was published as early as 1991.

I'm looking for this same book! I read it in the mid 1980s when I was around 10. I recall one of the doll characters kept repeating "Burma ruby! Red as pigeon's blood!" (which I have googled and not found anything). I might have the line wrong, but I think it was pigeon's blood. The ruby was hidden in either a doll or a piece of the dollhouse furniture.

KatieZP, this request has been abandoned by the original poster (until we hear otherwise). I would suggest creating a new topic/request for your book.

OK thanks, will do!

KatieZP wrote: "I'm looking for this same book! I read it in the mid 1980s when I was around 10. I recall one of the doll characters kept repeating "Burma ruby! Red as pigeon's blood!" (which I have googled and no..."

When the Dolls Woke by Marjorie Filley Stover?

Yes, thanks!!!

You're welcome. If the op ever comes back, maybe it will help them. At least you've found your book.