“On my third day in Chicago, the Venezuelans evacuated my hotel.”
The Robots of Gotham, by Todd McAulty.
Author and title?
“Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his skin.”
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005)
“I love”
Honey, I Love and Other Love Poems, by Eloise Greenfield.
“Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway.”
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
Oops!
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. The intro to the anniversary edition I have said that she spent one day on that sentence.
“It was the year 1810 in Montrath, Queen’s County, Ireland.”
Frances Warde and the First Sisters of Mercy, by Marie Christopher.
Different societies see landscapes differently.
A Time Travelers Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer
“The size sixteen shorts slipped easily over her hips.”
Blanche Among the Talented Tenth, by Barbara Neely.
“It was nearly midnight and I was just getting home from detecting.”
Robert B. Parker, A Catskill Eagle (1985)
Thanks! I think it was Oscar Wilde who once joked that he worked all morning putting in a comma, and all afternoon taking it out again.
“It was an event of momentous proportions.”
Straight Outta Deadwood, edited by David Boop. The quote is from the first story, “Cookie”, by Shane Lacy Hensley.
“John Beauchamp Jones, the observant, gossipy clerk in the War Department in Richmond, took note in his diary under date of May 15, 1863, that General Lee had come down from his headquarters on the Rappahannock and was conferring at the department.”
– Gettysburg, by Stephan W. Sears
“When it comes to coffee, I’m a late adopter.”
Holy Grounds: The Surprising Connection between Coffee and Faith, by Tim Schenck.
Edith Eva Eger’s memoir The Choice begins with her introduction:
Chapter 1 starts:
“You have the following rights:”
California Presidential Primary Election Handbook
This time there would be no witnesses.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams
“I am not as I once was.”
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin
“What matters in the end is the truth.”
The Storyteller of Marrakesh, by Joydeep Roy-Bhallacharya
“Stephen’s god died a little after noon on the longest day of the year.”
Paladin’s Grace, by T. Kingfisher (pen name for Ursula Vernon)
This is set in the same world as The Clocktaur Wars duology and Swordheart. All four highly recommended.
“I wonder if you wouldn’t mind trying something out.”
Restless Creatures: The Story of Life in Ten Movements, by Matt Wilkinson