London 1867
The hordes surging into King’s Cross station were too eager to catch their trains that morning to remember that the terminus was built on the site of a smallpox and fever hospital.
Murder on the Great Northern Railway, by Edward Marston
“The day wasn’t meant to start like this.”
Hexed in Hawes by Kim Watt
The boy was odd.
Dorsal! by Gordon R. Dickson
I didn’t know you were a Melville fan.
They all knew the danger.
A Bespoke Murder, by Edward Marston
“As I write this, I have a beard that makes me resemble Moses.”
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A. J. Jacobs
“Lenny! Oh, Lenny!”
Crimes of the Heart, by Beth Henley.
“Science fiction must be the most heavily anthologized of all fields of literature - which is, of course, a tribute to its vitality and its popularity.”
Time Probe, ed. by Arthur C. Clarke
“They was born out the same womb, two minutes apart, Rosalie says, and her head lolls back.”
One of Us by Dan Chaon
January, 1916
The meeting was held in secret.
Instrument of Slaughter, by Edward Marston
It is important, when killing a nun, to bring an army of sufficient size.
Red Sister
Mark Lawrence
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. ~~`H.G.Wells. The War Of The Worlds.
“As the cruise ship almost tips over, the horizon that once bisected my lovely balcony door rises like a theater curtain and disappears.”
The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship, by Chaney Kwak
“Toward the end of 1861, a photographer named Nadar descended into the catacombs underneath Paris, armed with his photographic equipment.”
Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History, by Anika Burgess
Maureen Quinn usually had to drag herself reluctantly out of bed at five o’clock but it was different that morning.
Five Dead Canaries, by Edward Marston
The basis for a consistent classification of living organisms began in the mid-eighteenth century with Carolus Linnaeus’s (Karl von Linné) monumental work Systema naturae.
Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History, by Xiaoming Wang and Richard H Tedford
“Fuck!” cried Fern, ducking back inside the carriage a whisker before a clawed and scaled hand sailed past.
Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree
“Late one Thursday morning at the beginning of July 1914, a young woman with dark wet hair strode long-legged from the Serpentine in Hyde Park along Oxford Street towards Marylebone.”
– Precipice, by Robert Harris
Savernake Forest trembled in the fading light.
The Wolves of Savernake, by Edward Marston
“A prince of Faerie, nourished on cat milk and contempt, born into a family overburdened with heirs, with a nasty little prophecy hanging over his head–since the hour of Cardan’s birth, he had been alternately adored and despised.”
How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories, by Holly Black
“Allan Marley glanced out of the window at a cloudy, threatening sky.”
Stormy, by Jim Kjelgaard
“She turned to avoid a broken mass of gleaming marble that had once been a temple.”
The Rose Field by Philip Pullman
Blackwater Hall seemed to hover like a bird of prey over the river estuary whose name it held in its eager talons.
The Ravens of Blackwater, by Edward Marston
“When he closed his eyes, he could still see the flames.”
Into Unknown Skies: An Unlikely Team, A Daring Race, and the First Flight Around the World, by David K. Randall
“The mortar fire was nearer.”
Janissaries, by Jerry Pournelle
“Admiral’s compliments and you’re to come to his office right away,” Midshipman Staley announced.
The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.