“The marine layer was as thick as cotton and had formed a thousand-foot wall that shrouded the entrance to the harbor.”
– Nightshade, by Michael Connelly
“On a brisk autumn day when I was nine years old, I saw that trees could dance.”
TreeNotes: A Year in the Company of Trees, by Nalini Nadkarni
“Phyllis Wagonner was crying when she walked into Delio’s to meet Mother Grey for breakfast.”
Bury the Bishop, a cozy mystery by Kate Gallison.
700,000,000 BCE
The entire crew with the exception of himself and the maneuvering watch had been evacuated to the new colony on the western side of the giant supercontinent.
Overlord, the ninth Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
“I am a farmer singing at the plow
And as I take my time to plow along
A steep Kentucky hill, I sing my song–
A one-horse farmer singing at the plow!”
Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow by Jesse Stuart
“When you join the military, none of the recruiting material shows you trying to stow away on a bot freighter headed to a warzone on a hellhole of a planet.”
The Misfit Soldier, science fiction by Michael Mammay
“Why does the G in wage sound different from the G in wag?”
enough is enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell, by Gabe Henry.
“‘Let me go to the house of the Father.’ These words were whispered in Polish at 3:30pm on April 2, 2005.”
The Two Popes: Francis, Benedict, and the Decision That Shook the World by Anthony McCarten
Antarctica, 227,000 B.C.E.
The tremendous gravitational forces pulling at the man sent his conscious thoughts spinning into obscurity.
The Traveler, the eleventh Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
November 8, 1888
Whitechapel, London
Mary Jane Kelly stood silent and still as the man watched from a rickety chair in the darkened corner of her two-bed flat.
Ripper, the seventh Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
It was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him.
Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Rundell
The large man with the brown fedora sitting at its usual jaunty angle on his head sipped his coffee and watched the passersby on Flores Street.
Beyond the Sea, the twelfth Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
“March, and the weather’s miserable.”
– Never Flinch, by Stephen King
“There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.”
A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
“On a cool summer evening in 1939, hundreds of paper lanterns danced across the lawn of Paradise Pond in Northampton, Massachusetts, where the graduating women of Smith College’s senior class had gathered near midnight.”
Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II, by Lena Andrews
“He dreams of his mother.”
King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
Resplendent in his brilliant yellow coat with real gold embroidery on black velvet facings, cuffs, and collar, General Xacolotl would’ve stood out among any collection of subjects of the Holy Dominion, but he was also considerably taller.
Inferno’s Shadow, the fourth Artillerymen book, by Taylor Anderson
“SIX—seven—eight—nine—ten!”
“Tarzan and the Champion”, the first story in Tarzan and the Castaways, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“The prosecution has made its case: Batman responded to the Bat Signal, apprehended the crooks, and left them for the authorities.”
The Law of Superheroes, by James Dailey and Ryan Davidson
“Captain Phelan Morgan sat in his quietly-lit office contemplating the dark blue of the words he’d just written, floating before him against a cream-colored background in the virtual display of the mesh when Ghadi Saeed, his first mate, called to him in the mesh.”
11,000 Years, by Mark Roth-Whitworth
“Aaron has disappeared. It has happened before and, despite my recent hopes, it will probably happen again.”
Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow
Philadelphia
January 1939
Eleanor Kraus glanced around the dining room of her spacious three-story brick home on Cypress Street, in Philadelphia’s well-heeled Fitler Square neighborhood.
50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple’s Extraordinary Rescue Mission Into the Heart of Nazi Germany , by Steven Pressman
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Tarzan the Magnificent , the twenty-first Tarzan book, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“‘Cielo, what an enormous crystal globe, Filippo!’ exclaimed Dottore Giuseppe del Giovine, regarding the great inverted glass bell that hung over the professor’s dissecting table.”
The Women of Weird Tales: Stories by Everil Worrell, Eli Colter, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, and Greye La Spina (This is from the story “The Remorse of Professor Panebianco”, by Greye La Spina.)
“The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was fascinated by scientific experiments.”
An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment, by Patricia Fara
“Conscription Day is always the deadliest.”
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Tarros
“The heavy red-figured drapes over the courtroom windows were incompletely closed against the sun.”
The Chill, by Ross Macdonald
“So you want to live to be 100.”
The Delany Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom, by Sadie and Bessie Delaney with Amy Hill Hearth.
In the second week of April 1945 a rumour reached the war correspondents attached to the British Army in Germany.
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945, by Ben Shephard