Introducing... The Words That Made Us by Andrea Busfield

Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

Prologue

I have a name though it's unlikely you've heard it. Instead, you'll recognise and claim to know me through words of your own making such as gitano, ijito, gjupci, sipsiwn, and yiftos. In England - the birthplace of Shakespeare and Dickens - I'm known as gypsy, my people as gypsies. In other places, at other times, there have been other names, most of them stemming from a medieval belief that we were Egyptian. Sometime later, when this was clipped to 'gypcian, we lost not only the truth, but also entitlement to a capital letter - something the rest of the world's nations appear to enjoy.

However, our journey doesn't stop there.

-- The Words That Made Us by Andrea Busfield

Introducing... The Pecan Children by Quinn Connor

 Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

A screech shreds the delicate membrane of the night. 

A great blue heron hoists itself free of the river, and Sasha winces. That sudden thrill of sound yanks every nerve-- the urgent, mechanical blare blasting in her ear.

When will this ever end?

It's the train, howling like a heartbreak as it passes into, or really through, the town. No trains stop in the old pecan town now, and no roads lead there, either, not since the storm that took out the only highway. Sasha's small riverboat, that eternal go-between, chugs doggedly back and forth, the only way in or out.

-- The Pecan Children by Quinn Connor

Introducing...Real Americans by Rachel Khong

  Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

BEIJING, 1966

She isn't afraid, but he is. They stand, in the darkness, before a glass case of old things. A Ming dynasty inkstone. A chrysanthemum carved from horn. A Song painting stamped with ruby red collector's seals. And on a silk pillow, so slight it could be missed: an ancient lotus seed with a legend behind it. 

The story goes like this: One night, long ago, a dragon emerged from the sky and dropped this seed into the emperor's open hand. His advisors huddled near to examine it. What fortune! they remarked. This seed would grant the emperor his greatest wish. Unfortunately, he died that night, while contemplating his options. He might have asked the immortality.

She takes a hammer from her knapsack. With all her strength, she strikes the glass. It makes a beautifully clear sound as it shatters. Quickly, the two get to work, securing the relics. It is an attempt to spare them from the Red Guards' destruction-- an act of protest, small, against a movement she's no match for.

-- Real Americans by Rachel Khong

Introducing...Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

 Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

THE OFFICE OF DR. WARREN, PSYCHIATRIST

Dr. Warren sits in a gray folding chair, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. He wears a brown suit, a red tie, and thin-rimmed glasses, and his bald, liver-spotted head is as waxed and shiny as a freshly buffed sports car. When I knock on the door, he points to the vacant chair facing him, his gaze fixed on an old-school manilla folder in his lap.

"Hello," I say tentatively.

No response. After a brief hesitation, I squeak across the floors in my sneakers and sit.

Dr. Warren remains bent over his file.

-- Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

Introducing... I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

 Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

Here at the beginning it must be said the End was on everyone's mind.

-- I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

Introducing... Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

  Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

r/AmItheasshole
Posted by just_in_267
AITA for naming my ugly dog after my ex best friend?

I [29m] have been friends with Chad [32m] since we were born. Our moms are best friends and we grew up together and were roommates for the last 10 years, up until the incident that set our current situation into motion.

A little backstory. I have this...streak if you will? Basically every woman I date more than a few times ends up finding her soulmate after we break up. It's a thing. It started three years ago and it's now happened five times. We break things off and the very next person they date ends up being The One.

My friends think this is hilarious. I always part ways with the women on good terms, and I'm happy they're happy. But my buddies tease me mercilessly about it. They call me the good luck charm.

-- Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

Introducing... Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

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It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird's was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with the dozens of books and papers with which he always traveled.

-- Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Introducing... Act of Defiance by Brian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson, Tom Clancy

Introducing books through the first paragraph or so...

Dimitri Gorov resisted the compulsion to shove his hands into his overcoat pockets.

It wasn't just the bitter cold making him tremble. 

Fear was the true culprit.

-- Act of Defiance by Brian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson, Tom Clancy

Introducing... The Gathering Girl by Amanda Irene Rush

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

It is early 2009. I am married to my second husband, Aaron. A man who won't rock the Ferris wheel car because he knows it scares me. A man who materialized in my life just weeks after my divorce was final in 2004, as though fate had him waiting in the wings. A man who still feels, to me, like a prize.

-- The Gathering Girl by Amanda Irene Rush

Introducing... Ready or Not by Cara Bastone

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I didn't start this day thinking I'd be handing over a Dixie cup of my own urine to a woman in lavender scrubs.

"What's the verdict?" I ask about seven seconds after the nurse dips the stick into the cup on the other side of the exam room.

-- Ready or Not by Cara Bastone

Introducing...The Promise Between Us by Barbara Claypole White

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

Raleigh, North Carolina

Crouched in the corner of my baby girl's bedroom, we both shake, the three-legged mutt and the mother with a colony of fire ants multiplying in her brain. Hardly a fire-ant protection squad, but we would die to keep Maisie safe.

Ringo nudges my arm and wriggles close. His circle of trust is small, namely me, but then I rescued him after he collapsed in our driveway, deprived of food and love. Neither of us has eaten. I can't, and Ringo won't leave my side. Not tonight.

-- The Promise Between Us by Barbara Claypoole White

Introducing... The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.

-- The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Introducing... Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles

Introducing books by the first chapter or so...

Grief is the most solitary emotion; it makes islands of us all.

I've spent a lot of time visiting graves over the past few weeks. Some times with Annie, but mostly alone. The people who see me there give me a wide berth. I'm not sure why. For thirty miles around, almost everyone knows me. Penn Cage, the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. When they avoid me as they do-- waving from a distance, if at all, then hurrying on their way-- I sometimes wonder if I have taken on the mantle of death. Jewel Washington, the county coroner and a true friend, pulled me aside in City Hall last week and told me I look like living proof that ghosts exist. Maybe they do. Since Caitlin died, I have felt nothing more than the ghost of myself.

Perhaps that's why I spend so much time visiting graves.

-- Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles

Introducing... All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

My mother always started the story by saying, "Well, she was born in the backseat of a stranger's car," as though that explained why Wavy wasn't normal. It seemed to me that could happen to anybody. Maybe on the way to the hospital, your parents' respectable, middle-class car broke down. That was not what happened to Wavy. She was born in the backseat of a stranger's car, because Uncle Liam and Aunt Val were homeless, driving through Texas when their old beat-up van broke down. Nine months pregnant, Aunt Val hitchhiked to the next town for help. If you ever consider playing Good Samaritan to a pregnant woman, think about cleaning that up.

-- All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood

Introducing... The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

All I knew at the beginning was that the first two nurses assigned to the Professor had not lasted twelve days, and now it was my turn.

-- The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan

Introducing... Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

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The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself.

-- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Introducing... When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

Though I love to see my children resting soundly, in the quiet of their slumber my uneasy mind retraces our journey. How did I come to be here, with two of my three children curled on the bristly bedspread of a hotel room? So far from home, so far from voices I recognize.

-- When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi

Introducing...Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

It was snowing already, in early November, after days of hot, clear fall weather. The flakes landed on her tent like slow rain. She lay still, aware of every small, square inch around her, and in that stillness imagined changing her mind, sleeping almost warm for a few more hours, and after daybreak and coffee, packing up with the others and driving home.

Earlier that night, Kenny had asked her, "Do you still love him?" They'd been sitting by the fire. Aaron had already turned in.

-- Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets

Introducing... America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

Sons of a revolution fight for liberty. They give blood, flesh, limbs, their very lives. But daughters... we sacrifice our eternal souls. This I'm sure of, as I stand in the quiet emptiness of my father's private chambers.

I'm here now because my father is dead and buried.

And I'm left to make sense of it all.

-- America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

Introducing... The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

Richard Chapman presumed there would be a stripper at his brother Philip's bachelor party. Perhaps if he had actually thought about it, he might even have expected two. Sure, in sitcoms the stripper always arrived alone, but he knew that in real life strippers often came in pairs. How else could there be a little pretend (or not pretend) girl-on-girl action on the living room carpet? Besides, he worked in mergers and acquisitions, he understood the exigencies of commerce as well as anyone: two strippers meant you could have two gentlemen squirming at once. You could have two girls hovering just above two sets of thighs-- or if the girls saw the right combination of neediness and dollar signs in the men's eyes, not hovering but in fact descending upon each of the men's laps. Richard wasn't especially wild about the idea of an exotic dancer in his family's living room: there was a place for everything in his mind, even the acrobatically tensed sinews of a stripper. But that place wasn't his home. He didn't want to be a prig, however; he didn't want to be the guy who put a damper on his younger brother's bachelor party. And so he told himself the entertainment would be some girl from Sarah Lawrence or Fordham or NYU with a silly, mellifluous made-up name making a little money for tuition. He didn't completely believe this, but in some backward universe sort of way, he felt a little less reprehensible-- a little less soiled-- if he was getting turned on by a twenty-one-year-old sociology major with a flat stomach and a Brazilian who understood intellectually the cultural politics of stripping and viewed herself as a feminist capitalist.

-- The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian