Dappled by its movement among the branches of a Japanese cherry, the afternoon light entered the study unhindered by draperies or shades.
A New Song by Jan Karon
“It was just us and the small Haines clinic staff eighteen years ago when I had our second daughter, Sarah.”
If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska, by Heather Lende
“Audrey Coil and Blake Winston had been sexting each other for weeks.”
Masked Prey by John Sandford.
“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.”
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
(second reading)
“Hello? Hello? Yes, I see it works. Good.”
Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin
“At the end of a hot November day, Miss Baines and Mrs. Williams of the Ladies’ Frocks Department at Goode’s were complaining to each other while they changed out of their black frocks before going home.”
The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John
“Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.”
The Ballad of the White Horse, by G.K. Chesterton
They’ve passed on, Georg," said Wilhelm Kuefer, as soon as he came down the ladder."
1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint
“That’s a really big sheep,” said Erasmus Keane, his observational powers functioning as flawlessly as ever.
The Big Sheep, by Robert Kroese
“Jean McConville was thirty eight years old when she disappeared , and she had spent early half of her life either or pregnant or recovering from childbirth” Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
“On the morning of Wednesday, 15 October 1586, Queen Mary entered the crowded courtroom at Fotheringhay Castle.”
The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh.
“Abraham Lincoln has become the subject of more writings than any other person in American history.”
– Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, by Edward Steers Jr.
“Several centuries (or so) ago, in a country whose name doesn’t matter, there was a tall, skinny, straggly-bearded old wizard named Prospero, and not the one you are thinking of, either.”
The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs
“‘There were men,’ said the witness. He was lean and dark, the color of an acorn, and seated beside his lawyer at the small table reserved for testimony, he appeared as tense as a sprinter on the starting line.”
Testimony, by Scott Turow.
“Let us begin with what might be considered a paradigmatic example of a bullshit job.”
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by David Graeber
“The hookers were slap-fighting a Hare Krishna up at the intersection when the bullet came through the windshield.”
-The Riptide Ultra-Glide, Tim Dorsey
“The sun that brief December day shone weakly through the west-facing window of Garrett Kingsley’s office. It made a thin yellow oblong splash on his Persian carpet and gave up.”
Pale Kings and Princes by Robert B. Parker
“When I was pregnant, I tried to make a SuperBaby.”
Raising a Rare Girl: A Memoir, by Heather Lanier
“The student union’s coffee shop was like a bad pop song: painfully repetitive and unnaturally upbeat.”
Take a Hint, Dani Brown, by Talia Hibbert
“In one of the most bizarre cases in recent history, a wild-haired young boy, estimated to be between six and eight years old, was discovered living on his own in the Ramapo Mountain State Forest near the suburb of of Westville.”
The Boy from the Woods, by Harlan Coben