“I don’t see how it can harm me now to reveal that I only passed math in high school because I cheated.”
A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age, by Alec Wilkinson.
There was a new rumbling sound below, but it went unnoticed by the eight-year-old girl swaying in the sailcloth hammock.
Maelstrom, by Taylor Anderson (‘Destroyermen’ #3)
“My gown was beautiful.”
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
This was NAP 1/c Nataka’s last chance.
Distant Thunders, by Taylor Anderson (‘Destroyermen’ #4)
“It was so quiet, one of the killers would say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.”
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders - Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
“Hey, Doaker…Doaker!”
The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson
“Bosch had the pills lined up on the table ready to go.”
– Desert Star, by Michael Connelly
The atmosphere in the wardroom of the old Asiatic Fleet “four-stacker” destroyer USS Walker (DD-163) was no longer animated; it was more … subdued and sickened than anything else.
Rising Tides, by Taylor Anderson (‘Destroyermen’ #5)
“It’s the Day of Good Birds in the city of Um-Helat!”
How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin (Note that this is a short story collection, and the above sentence is from the first story, “The Ones Who Stay and Fight”.)
At four minutes after ten on the evening of November 28, 1942, Maurice and Eugene Levy, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, were distracted from their chat with a couple sitting opposite them in the basement bar of the Cocoanut Grove in Boston.
FIRE! In Boston’s Cocoanut Grove - HOLOCAUST! by Paul Benzaquin 1959
“Stephen Maturin squared up to his writing-desk once more: he had been called away to attend to one of the ship’s boys who in the lightness of his heart had contrived to stun himself in the foretop by taking the maul from its place, tossing it to a considerable height and so misjudging the revolutions as it fell that the massive head struck him down, speechless and unnaturally pale.”
21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey by Patrick O’Brian
“One bright night in the year 2016, my face aglow with who knows how many MilliGAUSS of x-radiation from the computer screen in front of me, I was surfing the net when I moused upon a web node reading THE MYSTERY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION”
The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe
If Jim Qwilleran had read his horoscope in the daily paper on that particular morning, perhaps none of this would have happened.
The Cat Who Went Underground, by Lilian Jackson Braun
“Look out! The wombats are loose again!”
The Twelve Jays of Christmas by Donna Andrews
“The man lives, or the man dies. It is a matter of the weather.”
Goodwin, Jason. The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim Book 5) (p. 9). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
Behold: Kali Tragus, the Russian thistle.
Thistlefoot, by GennaRose Nethercott. In the present day, 70 years after the death of it’s previous owner, two siblings unexpectedly receive their inheritance - the hut of Baba Yaga!
“Josh agreed to meet her at the Coffee Club, which was where they’d met the first time he interviewed her.”
– Racing the Light, by Robert Crais
Shug, Stalker of Hare, was enjoying a warm day on the Ridge.
That Was Now, This Is Then, by Michael Z Williamson
“No one had any doubt that the bombers would come.”
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
“The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen.”
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher