“I had just finished one of Fritz Brenner’s hearty breakfasts–freshly squeezed orange juice, shirred eggs, Georgia ham, and hash brown potatoes–and gotten settled at my desk in the office when the phone squawked.”
Stop the Presses! A Nero Wolfe Mystery, by Robert Goldsborough
“From the ‘About Us’ page of the Snoop company website:
Hey. We’re Snoop. Come meet us, message us, snoop on us - whatever. We’re pretty cool.
Are you?”
One By One by Ruth Ware
“On his way back from Aldebaran, a particular salesman stopped by the Vatican.”
Mysterion 2: Stories from the Online Magazine, 2018-2019, edited by Donald S. Crankshaw and Kristin Janz. (This sentence begins the first story, “We Have Discerned a Potential Deal”, by J. P. Sullivan.)
“What David always hated most about the Sumner family dinners was the way everyone talked about him as if he were not there.”
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm
“The angel was cleaning out his closets when the call came.”
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore
“When the multiverse was confirmed, the spiritual and scientific communities both counted it as evidence of their validity.”
The Space Between Worlds , by Micaiah Johnson
“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis.”
The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, edited by Otto Penzler. (Note that the above sentence is the first in the first story in this anthology, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, by Edgar Allan Poe.
“The call came through the office landline, through a system that was at least twenty years old and had fought off all technological advances.”
The Judge’s List by John Grisham
“Gold had been asked many times to write about the Jewish experience in America. This was not strictly true.”
– Good As Gold, Joseph Heller
“The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born – we weren’t even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Franny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg.”
– The Hotel New Hampshire, by John Irving
“Mr Dunworthy opened up the door to the laboratory and his spectacles promptly steamed up.”
-Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
“Canuck Canuck walks like a duck.”
Octagon Magic by Andre Norton
“Seen from a plane, the car would have looked like a slow beetle creeping across an endless beach, the sun glinting off its polished black armor.”
Never by Ken Follett
“The sound was born on a summer night at the old Crystal Springs pavilion in Fort Worth, Texas, when Bob Wills and his string band were entertaining the cowboys and their ladies from 9 until fist fight.” Baja Oklahoma, Dan Jenkins
“I suppose Russia must test new airplanes over the Pripet Marshes, or Siberia, or wherever desolation dictates.”
“Cow manure?”
The Gift of the Magpie, by Donna Andrews
“The magpies are back.”
The Death of Mrs. Westaway, by Ruth Ware
(That is the actual first sentence. I had to laugh when I saw the previous post by @Dendarii_Dame!)
Hmm, “Speak to me only in first sentences…”
Nah.
"Help Wanted: Raconteur
Open-minded and gritty traveler, to recount his adventures through the universe, with particular attention to enlightenment and the various roles taken on by members of the local population."
Space, Inc. Edited by Julie E. Czerneda (Note that this is an anthology, and this sentence is from the first story, “The Eightfold Career Path; Or Invisible Duties”, by James Alan Gardner.)
“As I hustled out from the hangar into the Persian Gulf twilight, my muscles tightened, and power flowed into my hands.” American Craftsmen, by Tom Doyle