“It was spring, and my sister Lisa and I were in her toy-sized car, riding from the airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, to her house in Winston-Salem.”
Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (first line of the first story in the collection, “Active Shooter”)
“When a sailor was swimming on the surface of the open ocean, his horizon was a mere 1.1 miles away.”
A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O’Brian by Dean King et al.
“A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.”
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
“What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?”
What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by Randall Munroe. (Note: The above question is credited to “Amelia, Age 5”.)
“Not any one of us Ashmores–Eubie, Mother, or I, Fayette–will ever forget that summer we got mixed up with all those mules, the wild mountain man, and the moonshiners who were shooting at us.”
Eight Mules from Monterey, by Patricia Beatty
“President William McKinley arrived in Buffalo, New York, on the evening of September 4, 1901, intent on deflecting history with a speech.”
President McKinley – Architect of the American Century , by Robert W. Merry
“Mary MacCandless came up from the underground station, turned left onto Bayswater Road, crossed the busy junction with Park Lane, and stopped to admire the glass and chrome skull rack on Tyburn.” Quantum of Nightmares, by Charles Stross
“The doctor rolled a machine into the room and parked it at the foot of my mom’s bed, next to a pair of bassinets with stainless steel legs and transparent plastic cradles.”
Deaf Utopia: A Memoir–and a Love Letter to a Way of Life, by Nyle DiMarco.
“The problem with wasps is people.”
Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps, by Seirian Sumner
“On the late afternoon of 27 October 1858, a flurry of activity disturbed the genteel quietness of East Twentieth Street, New York City.”
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris
" ‘Can you come into my office?’ "
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A Novel, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Sparrows chirrup and settle on the cold slate shingles of the old shop roof.”
Castles from Cobwebs, by J. A. Mensah
“For the third time I went over the final additions and subtractions on the first page of Form 1040, to make good and sure.”
And be a Villain by Rex Stout.
“The call came through the office landline, through a system that was at least twenty years old and had fought off all technological advances.”
– The Judge’s List, by John Grisham
“There are a few things we can’t live without.”
My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings, edited by Zosia Mamet.
“Dear You, the body you are wearing used to be mine.”
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
“The sunshine of a fair Spring morning fell graciously upon London town.”
Something New by P.G. Wodehouse. (Note: This is an American edition; the book appears to have been titled Something Fresh when it was first published.)
Yes, “fresh” in American idiom at the time meant a guy who made unwelcome advances on women, so they changed the title in the US edition.
Ten days after the great battle that drove General of the Sea Hisashi Kurokawa and the tattered remnants of his once-mighty fleet from Madras, only two of his little squadron of Grik-built cruisers, Nachi and Tatsuma, remained to steam into the port of Cochin.
Deadly Shores (Destroyermen #9), by Taylor Anderson
“It was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.”
The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-1945 by Ian Kershaw