“Buy a marriage bureau?”
The Marriage Bureau: The True Story of How Two Matchmakers Arranged Love in Wartime London, by Penrose Halson
“A gentle breeze from the north-east after a night of rain, and the washed sky over Malta had a particular quality in its light that sharpened the lines of the noble buildings, bringing out all the virtue of the stone; the air too was a delight to breathe, and the city of Valletta was as cheerful as though it were fortunate in love or as though it had suddenly heard good news.”
Treason’s Harbour by Patrick O’Brian (1983)
“The lift van banked.”
*The Flowers of Vashnoi *by Lois McMaster Bujold.
From the introduction: “We had a new monster every night.”
First line of the first story: “They rode west from the slaughter, through the painted desert, and did not stop until they were a hundred miles away.”
Full Throttle, by Joe Hill
“Mother was the youngest of the Floradora girls.”
Mother Wore Tights, by Miriam Young
“The Phantom Prom Date is unique among the annals of American hitchhiking ghosts.”
The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, by Seanan McGuire.
“The King stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.”
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)
“Harvey and Stemmes were making progress, but they couldn’t just blow into the club and flash the picture.”
– The Wanted, by Robert Crais
“I’ve never liked being the center of attention.”
The Sound of Silence: Growing Up Hearing with Deaf Parents, by Myron Uhlberg.
Twenty-six months before her second birthday, Maia learned the true difference between winter and summer.
Glory Season by David Brin
“Then good-bye, Pall, darling.”
The Honour of the House, by E. M. Channon.
“Being present for a person who has been harmed is without question one of the most important aspects of intervening in harm.”
Disrupting the Bystander: When #metoo Happens Among Friends, by A.V. Flox
Take your pick.
First sentence of author’s note (p xvii): Many of my books have focused on big-picture topics: major wars, an expansionist president, a controversial general, and the four men to hold the five-star rank of fleet admiral in the United States Navy.
First sentence of prologue (p xxi): For one family, in a working-class neighborhood nestled along the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois, the smattering of Christmas lights brought no holiday cheer.
First sentence of actual story (p 3): In a world at peace, there did not seem to be any particular danger to brothers serving on warships.
Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona, by Walter R Borneman
“When I first met Cecil, I almost couldn’t believe that anybody could live in such blackness–not for a day, and certainly not for ten long, lonely years.”
God Can Move Mountains: The Story of the Christian Appalachian Project, by Father Ralph W. Beiting
“It started as a joke.”
Bite Club by Laurien Berenson
“I was nursing a bottle of Murphy’s Irish Whiskey, drinking it from the neck of the bottle sparingly, and looking down from the window of my office at Berkeley Street where it crosses Boylston.”
The Widening Gyre by Robert P. Parker (1983)
“Bosch arrived late and had to park on a cemetery lane far from the grave site.”
– The Night Fire, by Michael Connelly
‘That nigger going down the street,’ said Dr Hasselbacher standing in the Wonder Bar, ‘he reminds me of you, Mr Wormold.’
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . — Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
I’d forgotten how good Graham Greene is. In future I shan’t bother with any other writer for fiction of this type.
(I’d decided to post in this thread before recalling that the first sentence of this 1958 novel has the N____ word. I wonder how sensitive today’s readers are to that.)
“On the January day I arrived in Milwaukee, it was so cold the streets themselves had blanched white.”
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, by Andrew Blum.
“Lieutenant Sikander Singh North leaned forward in the shuttle’s right-hand seat, eager to catch his first glimpse of the light cruiser Hector.”
Valiant Dust by Richard Baker