“I woke up late the day they found out Raphael was missing.”
Zeroglyph, by Vivek Pravat
“At the height of the civil rights movement, Lydia Abarca was a prima ballerina for a major international company, starring in iconic works like George Balanchine’s Agon and Swan Lake, Jerome Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun, and William Dollar’s Le Combat.”
The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History, by Karen Valby.
“Twenty-one years after killing his mother and one year after killing a man in a bar fight, Hal Isaac stands on the steps of St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Vandergriff, Texas, and smokes a cigarette.”
The Dissonance, by Shaun Hamill
“Yorktown was laid down on 21 May 1934, at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., Newport News, Virginia.”
USS Yorktown, CV-5 by Steve Wiper
“It was the coldest winter for forty-five years.”
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
“Perched on a rocky hilltop in the Marah Valley of Afghanistan, Matt Secor certainly looked the part of U.S. Special Forces.”
Warplane by Hal Sundt
BANG “Laura!”
Rorschach by Tom King, Jorge Fornes and Dave Stewart
“Geography was my best subject. You can imagine how I feel when I read that the average American high school student is likely to identify Alabama as the capital of Chicago.”
Piece by Piece by Calvin Trillin
“I hate being sent out on missions without a proper briefing.”
Murder in the Dark, by Simon R. Green
“I build robots–their bodies and brains.”
The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots, by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone.
“The oars were audible before the boat came into view, this despite a noisy wind that coarsened the waters of the bay.”
– The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, by Erik Larson.
“Mr. Strang walked up the steps through a haze that might have been fog and onto the flag-draped platform.”
The Man Who Solved Mysteries by William Brittain. (Note: This is a short story collection, and the above sentence is from the first, “Mr. Strang Finds the Answers”.)
“They’d rung the doorbell unannounced on a chilly Friday night.”
We Used To Live Here, by Marcus Kliewer
“If you love maps, trivia, or just learning more about our world, then I think you’ll love this book.”
Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World, by Ian Wright
“The action of the play takes place in the backyard of a house in Pittsburgh in 1948.”
Seven Guitars, by August Wilson
“Thick cloud had pressed down on Berlin all night, and now it was lingering into what passed for the morning.”
Fatherland by Robert Harris
“If I don’t remember my father’s name, who will?”
Earning the Rockies by Robert D. Kaplan
“The train itself–a marvel of the age, a monument to the ingenuity of Man and to his ceaseless striving for mastery over the earth.”
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, by Sarah Brooks
In the summer of 1843, a group of African American activists in Ohio - among them ministers, teachers, and laborers - convened in the state capital of Columbus with the primary goal of fighting the state’s racist laws.
Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction by Kate Masur
“When Les Clark retired from the animation industry in 1975 he had worked for Walt Disney Productions for almost half a century.”
The Nine Old Men: Lessons, Techniques, and Inspiration from Disney’s Great Animators, by Andreas Deja
“Ectoplasm was the tattletale of the amateur.”
The Shadow on the Glass (Call of Cthulhu), by Jonathan L. Howard
“By creativity, I simply mean new ways of thinking about things.”
Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide, by John Cleese
“My name is Ruth.”
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
“It’s more rain than I’ve ever seen, all the summer’s hidden water coming down at once.”
Paper Cage, by Tom Baragwanath
“Where have you been?”
The Longmire Defense, by Craig Johnson