response 25 of 104:

Jun 27 05:17 UTC 2001

Its A Study in Scarlet. It doesn't describe any events Holmes or Watson
were involved in in America - but I didn't say it did. 

response 27 of 104:

Jun 27 05:41 UTC 2001

Nope. The Sign only visits India, Andaman Islands, and England. 

response 29 of 104:

Jun 27 12:56 UTC 2001

_The_Valley_of_Fear_ also has much of its action in the US.

response 31 of 104:

Jul 1 07:10 UTC 2001

The thing about Manhattan is that everything is here, all mixed together,
that's what I love about it.  Ugly things and beautiful things you didn't even
think could exist.  It's loud and dirty, our apartment is teeny and you have to
walk up eight flights to get to it but we have a fireplace with carved angels,
a leopard-print chaise lounge, Maxfield Parrish prints of nymphs in classical
sunset gardens, pink-damask drapes and silk roses in platform shoes from the
40's and 70's that Izzy has collected.  Izzy grows real roses in pots on the
fire escape.  She loves flowers and is always teaching me the names of
different ones.  She especially likes the ones with really ugly names. 
Anastasia grows oregano, dill, parsley and basil on the fire escape.  She uses
them in her special inter-international recipes.  Anastasia believes you should
never be afraid to mix cultures.  She makes a Japanese-Italianish miso-pesto
sauce for pasta and a bright-pink tandoori tofu stir-fry.  I can tell what
she's making just by sniffing the air.  Sometimes when Anastasia doesn't feel
like cooking, she and Izzy and I go to our favorite restaurants.  We have
golden curried-vegetable samosas and yogurt-cucumber salad under trees filled
with fireflies in the courtyard of our favorite Indian restaurant.  We have
fettuccine at an Italian place where the Mafia guys used to shoot each other
while they were sucking up pasta.  We like the pink and green rice chips and
the rose petals in the salad with the peanut dressing and the ginger tofu at
our Thai place.  There is a Middle Eastern restaurant we go to where you can
get minty tabbouleh and yummy mushy hummus in pita bread for really cheap, and
a funny Russian restaurant with bright murals of animals in people clothes
dancing around cottages in the countryside.  We eat borscht there, and drink
tea from a silver samovar.

response 33 of 104:

Jul 3 02:15 UTC 2001

Oh dear.  I'm not quite sure how I managed to do that.

Would it help to repost #31?  If so, I will.

response 35 of 104:

Jul 6 02:46 UTC 2001

Haven't got a guess to offer, but sounds pretty recent.

response 37 of 104:

Jul 6 08:19 UTC 2001

(As soon as we find out what this is from, I think I'm going to find and read
it! :)  

response 39 of 104:

Jul 10 04:40 UTC 2001

I knocked and waited.  I knocked again.  My heart was imitating my fist. 
 What if my father answered the door?  After a while I heard footsteps 
and the sound of a peephole opening.  A tall white-haired man, with a 
huge white moustache that curled up at the ends, opened the door.

"Hello," he boomed Swissly.

"Hi," I said. "I'm looking for somebody."

"Who are you looking for?"  He twirled the end of his moustache around 
his finger and glowered at me.

"Irving Rose," I said.

The man's blue eyes looked like they were doing a jig and the rest of 
his body seemed like it would follow any second.  His cheeks turned 
pinker.  "You know Irving Rose!  The genius!  I haven't seen him in 
years."

"He used to live here?"  I asked.

"Yes he did.  In this very apartment.  I moved in when he left."

"Who are you?"  I asked.

"The landlord, Uncle Hansel," the man said.  He bowed so low that I was 
afraid his moustache would tickle me.  Instead all that happened was I 
got a little dizzy from his cologne.  Then he put out his big hand and I 
shook it.  I tried to see behind him, into the apartment where my father 
used to live.

"Could I come in?"  I asked.

"Didn't anyone tell you that children shouldn't go into the apartments 
of strange men!"  Uncle Hansel scolded.

"You're not strange," I reassured him, still trying to see.

"Well, all right, but we'll leave the door wide open and you must run 
out if you feel in the least uncomfortable, dear," Uncle Hansel 
insisted.

I followed him to a small, dim room that smelled of rye bread and 
strawberry jam.  It was filled with wooden furniture carved and painted 
with hearts and flowers.  There were jars of roses, ferns in birdcages, 
a collection of mechanical windup toys and as many cuckoo clocks as 
could fit on the walls.  As I looked at them, they all started chiming, 
and a flock of wooden cuckoos scooted in and out.  I wondered if that 
drove Uncle Hansel crazy, but he seemed to be enjoying it.  He smiled 
proudly at the birds and twirled his moustache.

"Would you like something to eat?"  Uncle Hansel asked.  "Although, come 
to think of it, little girls aren't supposed to accept food from 
strangers."

"You knew my father, though," I said.  I was hungry, and I had a pretty 
good sense of smell -- I bet there really would be rye bread and jam.

"Your father!"  Uncle Hansel exclaimed.  "Why of course!  The genius!  
You look just like him!"

"So could I maybe have a snack?" I asked.

"Of course.  Come with me."

response 41 of 104:

Jul 11 14:58 UTC 2001

I'll guess Bruce Coville.  Probably wrong, but it seems like the same 
writing style.

response 43 of 104:

Jul 13 04:09 UTC 2001

Here's a quote from another novel (resp:36 is from one of this author's 
novels, resp:34 and resp:39 from a short story):

She hardly recognized him because she knew he didn't recognize her, not 
at all.  Once, on a bus in New York, she had seen the man of her dreams. 
 She was twelve and he was carrying a guitar case and roses wrapped in 
green paper, and there were raindrops on the roses and on his hair, and 
he hadn't looked at her once.  He was sitting directly across from her 
and staring ahead and he didn't see anyone, anything there.  He didn't 
see Weetzie even though she had known then that someday they must have 
babies and bring each other roses and write songs together and be rock 
stars.  Her heart had felt as meager as her twelve-year-old chest, as if 
it had shriveled up because this man didn't recognize her.

response 45 of 104:

Jul 16 01:25 UTC 2001

The usual solution to this is to start giving really honking big clues.  But
you can just throw it up for whoever wants to go next if you like.

response 47 of 104:

Jul 19 13:00 UTC 2001

Sara- well, since you've declared the field open... who is that author 
anyway?

response 49 of 104:

Jul 20 04:30 UTC 2001

Francesca Lia Block is correct.  The first and third of the quotes I
posted are from the short story "Dragons in Manhattan."  The second is
from _I Was a Teenage Fairy_ and the latest from _Weetzie Bat_.

Block is, as I said, generally shelved in the young adult section of
bookstores.  Don't let that dissuade you from checking her stuff out.
She's cool.