"One evening, it was toward the end of October, Harry Arno said to the woman he’d been seeing on and off the past few years, ‘I’ve made a decision.’ "
– Pronto, by Elmore Leonard
(After a quote from “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” by Robert Browning.) “But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats.”
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett
Side note: I’ve visited the town of Hamelin (Hameln in German). They do indeed have a legend and play it up for the tourists. The town has some fine examples of wood-facaded homes. Most likely, the legend springs from a large number of the town’s children’s having eaten the poison the piper, called the “rat catcher” in the German tale IIRC, had laid out to rid the town of rats.
“On July 18, 2016, at 2:22 A.M., Andy Bramante’s cellphone buzzed with an incoming text.”
The Class: A Life-Changing Teacher, His World-Changing Kids, and the Most Inventive Classroom in America, by Heather Won Tesoriero
“Time is money almost everywhere.”
Going for the Gold, by Emma Lathen
“At 9 a.m., Thursday, July 25, 2019, I was seated with a few other White House officials at the long table in one of the two Situation Rooms in the basement of the West Wing.”
Here, Right Matters: An American Story by Alexander Vindman.
“There was nothing cute about the first time Kerry Fuller met Jesse Strong.”
Real Men Knit, by Kwana Jackson
Francisco Simó Orts stood on the deck of his fishing boat, squinting at the Spanish coastline.
The Day We Lost the H-Bomb
by Barbara Moran
Side Note: I was on the 6th Fleet Commander’s staff on the flagship that participated in the search for this bomb off the Palomares coast of southeast Spain in January 1966. The search was delayed because they did not believe the fisherman who reported where it fell into the Mediterranean Sea.
“The unhappy little home was out in the country, some six miles south of Clanton on an old county road that went nowhere in particular.”
– A Time for Mercy, by John Grisham
“On the night of January 23rd, unseasonably calm and warm, a woman named Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons went missing during a charity gala in the exclusive island town of Palm Beach, Florida.” - Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen.
I’ve read many of his books and I was inspired by the Light and Amusing thread to get this one. So far, so good. Based on the title, I thought it would be a skewering of the orange growing industry. That isn’t the case. At least, not yet but I’ve just started it.
“Just outside the expanding light cone of the present a star died, iron-bombed.”
Iron Sunrise, by Charles Stross
“Stop fussing at it, now. Leave it alone. But my nails found my scalp anyway, running from front to back to front again.”
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris.
“There was an Angel of Death on top of an ornate mausoleum in one corner, arms extended. I remember that well because someone was practicing the organ and light drifted across the churchyard in colored bands through stained-glass windows.”
The Eagle Has Flown by Jack Higgins
“The manila folder was slapped down on my desk with a flick of a large, hairy wrist, snapping me out of my daydream.”
Mergers and Acquisitions: Or, Everything I Know About Love I Learned on the Wedding Pages, by Cate Doty
“It wasn’t going well.”
How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It, by K.J. Parker
“On the very eve of the birth of the Third Reich a feverish tension gripped Berlin.”
-The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
-Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
“Before maps, we had elevation.”
Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America, by Craig Childs
“High school assemblies are rarely the highlight of a student’s day.”
Immersion: A Pilgrimage into Service by James Menkhaus
“Rain and wind lashed the schooner Diana as she heeled into the gale.”
The King of Next Week, by E. C. Ambrose