“It was five o’clock on a winter’s morning in Syria.”
*Murder on the Orient Express”, by Christie.
“When Red wins, she stands alone. Blood slicks her hair. She breathes out steam in the last night of this dying world.”
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
“I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot”, or “That Claudius”, or “Claudius the Stammerer”, or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius”, am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled.”
I, Claudius: from the autobiography of Tiberius Claudis, born 10 B.C., murdered and deified A.D. 54 , by Robert Graves.
If it had not been such a rain-lashed, windy evening, the people who jostled the pavements of Camden Town might have noticed something a little odd about a white-haired elderly gentleman who made his way against the steady flow of the crowd.
— The Ghosts, Antonia Barber
And thank you, @Peter_Morris, for identifying the book. I picked up a copy not too long ago. I’m also expecting a reasonably-priced copy of The Ghost of Dibble Hollow soon, and thank you, @The_Other_Waldo_Pepper, for identifying that.
Morgyn, who is still feeling a need to retreat to childhood
“Nate Romanowski knew trouble was on the way when he saw the falcon’s wings suddenly flare in the distance.”
Off the Grid, by C.J. Box
“At 2:20 a.m., as January 28th gave way to the 29th, I knew my father was dead. It was 1970, and I was at Madison Square Garden with Judy Dakin. The next morning, I would discover she wore magenta silk panties.”
Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother by Barry Sonnenfeld
“Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett flicked his eyes between the screen of the iPad mounted in front of him and the side windows, as the vast dark pine forest spooled out below the Cessna Turbo 206.”
Vicious Circle, by C.J. Box
“Wall Street is haunted by ancient visions.”
A Shark Out of Water, by Emma Lathen
“When Lyndon Johnson requested airtime one evening at the end of March 1968, network television bosses in the know assume the president planned address the nation on the growing conflict in Vietnam.” – Bag Man, by Rachel Maddow
Shortly after ten the mist began to dissipate, leaving them partially exposed.
Code Name: Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII’s Most Highly Decorated Spy, by Larry Loftis
“Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors?”
– Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, by George Eliot
“The first time Captain Thomas Halloway saw the USS Enterprise, the starship was nothing more than a simulation displayed on a designer’s terminal.”
“Meet with Triumph and Disaster,” by Michael Schuster and Steve Mollmann, from The Sky’s the Limit, ed. by Marco Palmieri
“William Greer was seventeen years old when he was riding his bike down the middle of a street in San Antonio, Texas, and was struck by a car.”
The Incomplete Book of Running, by Peter Sagal
“I’ve had clients who thought they needed an absurd level of security.”
Network Effect, by Martha Wells
The palace was over-heated, Mazarini thought.
1634: The Galileo Affair, by Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with the dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
“During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see.”
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
“When Miss Manners assumed the quixotic task of civilizing society, fake etiquette was not a problem.”
Minding Miss Manners in an Era of Fake Etiquette, by Judith Martin
“We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim…” Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open seas. “Rats,” he said; “stinking curs. They are all running away.”
— Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief, 1932
“Come on, Caitlyn.”
The Next Great Paulie Fink, by Ali Benjamin.