Every morning felt like Henry’s first. Perhaps it came from working with code so much, the detailed sequence of inconsequential numbers that resulted in something coming to life, something that had never existed before. Perhaps it was because his aversion to leaving the house had grown so severe that he’d long given up trying, so he was left with only one wonder within his reach. Lily. The woman sitting in the chair next to his bed, smiling in the lovely, vaguely haunted way he sometimes sees as a side effect of overwhelming love, and other times as merely pity.
“That was a bad one,” she says.
“Was I snoring?”
“You were nightmaring. You woke up like I fired a gun next to your ear.”
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Two Sides to Every Murder by Danielle Valentine
Gia North’s lungs ached as she tore through the trees. The woods pushed in around her, hiding the cabins and Camp Lost Lake lodge from view. It felt like she was in the middle of nowhere.
It’s not too late, it can’t be too late, she thought willing her short legs to move faster. The muscles in her calves screamed.
She lept from the grass to the hard, packed earth of the trail–
Her foot slipped out from beneath her. She felt a sharp crack through her chin and tasted dirt in her mouth before she even realized she’d fallen.
It was the worst possible time to trip.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Girls Who Burn by M.K. Pagano
The last time I saw my sister alive, I told her I didn’t love her anymore.
I didn’t say it in those exact words. I didn’t say, “Fiona – I don’t love you anymore.” What I actually said, as she was walking away from me, was “You’re no better than Mom.”
But in our family, that means the same thing.
I’m thinking about that again, the parade a blur in the background, Fiona’s blond hair flying around her shoulders as she spun off and headed towards the woods. To the ravine.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
Kiela never thought the flames would reach the library. She was dimly aware that most of the other librarians had fled weeks ago, when the revolutionaries took the palace and defenestrated the emperor in a rather dramatic display. But surely they wouldn’t touch the library. After all, there were books here. Highly flammable, irreplaceable books.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Summer Ever After by Kortney Keisel
DeeDee Meyer holds up a clinch cover book.
You know the type I’m talking about – a bare-chested, muscular man with a swooning woman clinging to his chiselled body. The wind dramatically blows the woman’s hair back, and a part of her dress falls of her tiny shoulder, creating the perfect amount of tantalizing cleavage.
This is the type of book Deedee suggests for our book club’s next read.
Sweet, seventy-eight-year-old Grandma Deedee.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest
Lily Greene always imagined that if she were to have the tragic misfortune of dying young, it would happen in a valiant, honorable way. Similar to the heroes in her beloved fantasy novels. Maybe she’d die while rescuing a child (or cat) from a burning building. Or darting into the street to save an elderly person from being hit by a speeding truck.
She didn’t imagine that at twenty-five years old her final moments would be spent drenched in sweat, dehydrated out of her mind, on a crowded New York City subway train without AC during rush hour on one of the hottest days of the year. Because this was an event that she might not survive.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Something Kindred by Ciera Burch
There are only two things I know about my grandmother.
One: Her name is Carol Annette.
Two: She left Mom and Uncle Miles for good on a Tuesday morning, after promising to take them to the ice cream shop when they got out of school.
That’s why it makes no sense that Mom has dragged us from New Jersey, all the way to Maryland, to take care of her for the entire summer. Excerpt for the fact that my grandmother has cancer. I think the idea of losing her permanently freaks Mom out more than she’d ever admit.
Death does that.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Clever Creatures of the Night by Samantha Mabry
All the early mornings look like this: The distant hills are shrouded by a dull grey murk. The trees are frozen in their stark stances. The sky is so thick and ash-coloured that it’s impossible to tell what kind of birds soar silently by until they let out their small, distinguishable cries. When the sun finally hauls itself up and over the zigzag horizon, its wak light is tissue-paper pink.
Is this beautiful or not?
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Marnie Midnight and the Moon Mystery by Laura Ellen Anderson
In the little town of Thimbledown stood a big budlett tree where some teeny tiny creatures lived. And these teeny tiny creatures were going on a very BIG adventure!
The Snail Rail raced underground along the Slime Line at super speed. The bugs on board rode in colourful shell carriages, and the air was full of humans and clicks and flitters and flutters of critters of all shapes and sizes as they set off on their morning travels.
One carriage in particular was positively BUSTLING. Inside this little shell carriage sat the Midnights: a moth family who now had one less caterpillar and one more moth. For Marnie Midnight had recently transformed!
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The House of Last Resort by Christopher Golden
The rats are like fingers.
No. That’s not right. Fingers can reach out, can grasp and extend. The rats are not like fingers at all. They are periscopes, like those on submarines, each able to give its captain only a limited view of the world above. From their place below, among the dead, the lost ones can see only as far as the rats can see. But they are patient, and so they wait. And they let the rats run.
