First Chapter, First Paragraph, Teaser Intros & Teaser Tuesday

 

Yvonne at Socrates' Book Reviews hosts a bookish meme where we share the first lines, first paragraph or first chapter of our current read or the next book on our TBR. 

 

 

She's also hooked up with Ambrosia at the Purple Booker for Teaser Tuesdays.

~Grab your current read or next TBR.

~Open to a random page.

~Share two "teaser" sentences--just be careful that they don't include spoilers!

Here's mine from The Distant Hours by Kate Morton:

First lines (before the first chapter): Hush...Can you hear him? The trees can. They are the first to know he is coming.

First lines (of the first chapter): It started with a letter. A letter that had been lost a long time, waiting out half a century in a forgotten postal bag in the dim attic of a nondescript house in Bermondsey. I think about it sometimes, that mailbag: of the hundreds of love letters, grocery bills, birthday cards, notes from children to their parents, that lay together, swelling and sighing as their thwarted messages whispered in the dark.

Teaser (from page 215): But he looked so glum, and the memory came upon me so intensely of how I'd fallen into the world of the Mud Man when I was laid up with mumps or whatever it was, that I couldn't help saying, "If you really want to know, I suppose I could read it to you."

Synopsis (from Goodreads): The #1 internationally bestselling author of The Forgotten Garden mesmerizes readers with a haunting tale of long-buried secrets and the twists of fate that can alter lives forever. This enthralling romantic thriller pays homage to the classics of gothic fiction, spinning a rich and intricate web of mystery, suspense, and lost love.

Teaser Tuesday: Opening Night

Sponsored by The Purple Booker (click link for meme guidelines)
Back again for Teaser Tuesday (two weeks in a row!) Here's this week's contribution:

"Then I tell you. Yes, I would like to see this little freak play your part because she is in fact a little freak. She has dropped into this theatre like an accident in somebody else's dream and the effect is fantastic."

~from Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh 

Teaser Tuesday: The Man Born to Be King

Sponsored by The Purple Booker (click link for meme guidelines)

It's been a long time since I have participated in any of the long-standing bookish memes. Some of these are what guided me in the early days of book-blogging and I'd like to get back to them. Here's my contribution for this week's Teaser Tuesday:


ANNAS: Unfortunately, no; but something will have to be done about the man. He has a very bad influence.

~from The Man Born to Be King (p. 164), Dorothy L. Sayers play-cycle about the life of Christ.

It's been quite a while since I first read this and am looking forward to revisiting it this week.

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here's mine from This Private Plot by Alan Beechey.  I don't think I can do better than the first line: 

"The odd thing about a banana," Oliver Swithin mused as he chased the naked policewoman across the moonlit field, "is not that it's an excellent source of potassium, but that everybody seems to know it is." 

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here's mine from Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell (142): 

I would think it odd, he said, that he had never married. I did not, in fact, think it at all odd--the statistical chances against any woman being prepared to endure both the hairiness of his legs and the tedium of his conversation seemed to me to be negligible. I did not express this view, but said sympathetically that the military life must be difficult to combine with the domestic.

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here's mine from Naked Is the Best Disguise: The Death and Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes by Samuel Rosenberg: 

The syndrome set in motion by the ring and the book accelerates when Inspector Lestrade, who never gets anything right, finds a false clue to the murder. Pointing to a corner of the syndromic dark apartment, he shouts triumphantly: "Look at that!"

{This is turning into a rather dry, pedantic look at Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.}

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here's mine from The Patient in Room 18 by Mignon G. Eberhart (p. 49):

What with one thing and another, I had very little time of my own until about two o'clock in the afternoon when, after firmly getting rid of Miss Dotty, who evidenced a distressing disposition to cling and whisper in horrified italics, I sat down at the south-wing chart desk, drew a blank chart toward me, and presenting as forbidding a back against interruption as I could, I tried to think.

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here's mine from This New & Poisonous Air by Adam McOmber:

And even as I sit composing these lines at my own wooden table in my home where I can hear the sound of my good wife speaking to my children in the upper rooms, I wonder if I am still in that garden, lying on the cane floor, broken into my separate parts.
~"The Automatic Garden" (last line of the short story)

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here's my teaser from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (p. 241): There's a playground at the end of the block and I run to the swings and climb on, and Henry takes the one next to me, facing the opposite direction, and we swing higher and higher, passing each other, sometimes in synch and sometimes streaming past each other so fast it seems like we're going to collide, and we laugh, and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here are my teasers from Jack on the Gallows Tree by Leo Bruce (p. 65): 

If you thought there was any urgency you'd be leaping about in disguise or tearing round cross-examining people like a lunatic. I suppose you've got your reason for playing it slow.

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Wow.  I knew it had been a while since I posted a Teaser...but when I looked back and found that it had been over two months, I was astonished.  It's been a hectic spring to say the least.  We'll see if I can get back into the groove for all my favorite memes.

Here are my teasers from The Father's Day Murder by Lee Harris (p. 98):

He won't have a temper tantrum; he's not the type.  He may not talk to you, but if he does, you can believe every word he says.

Teaser Tuesdays

MizB of Should Be Reading hosts Teaser Tuesdays. Anyone can play along. Just do the following:

*Grab your current read.*Open to a random page.
*Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page.

*BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others.

*Share the title and author too, so other TT participants can add it to their TBR lists if they like your teaser.

Here's mine from A Spoonful of Sugar: A Nanny's Story by Brenda Ashford (p. 266): 

A vital ingredient in this recipe [for a happy home] I had since concluded was the mother. As long as the mother is happy, the household will be happy.  The mother truly is the heart and soul of the family.

********

Or as the popular saying goes: "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."