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| Books in database: 3164 | ||||||||
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| Janice Meredith | Paul Leicester Ford | "Alonzo now once more found himself upon an element that had twice
proved destructive to his happiness, but Neptune was propitious,
and with gentle Breezes wafted him toward his haven of bliss,
toward Amarylis, Alas, when but one day from happiness, a Moorish
zebec." "Janice!" called a voice. | Buy | |
| Michael O'Halloran | Gene Stratton-Porter | "Aw kid, come on! Be square!" | Buy | |
| The Right of Way | Sir Gilbert Parker | "Not guilty, your honor!" | Buy | |
| Satan Sanderson | Hallie Erminie Rives | "To my son Hugh, in return for the care and sorrow he has caused me all the days of his life, for his dissolute career and his desertion, I do give and bequeath the sum of one thousand dollars and the memory of his misspent youth." | Buy | |
| Black Mischief | Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh | "We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim . . ." Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away." | Buy | |
| The Praise Singer | Mary Renault | "A good song, I think." | Buy | |
| Tai-Pan | James Clavell | "A pox on this stinking island," Brock said, staring around the beach and up at the mountains. "The whole of China at our feets and all we takes be this barren, sodding rock." | Buy | |
| The Magic Plus Fours | Pelham Grenville Wodehouse | "After all," said the young man, "golf is only a game." | Buy | |
| The Mighty and Their Fall | Ivy Compton-Burnett | "Agnes first, Henngist second, Leah third!" said Lavinia Middleton, as her sisters and brother contested the access to the cloakroom in the hall. | Buy | |
| Excellent Women | Barbara Pym | "Ah, you ladies!" | Buy | |
| Buddenbrooks | Thomas Mann | "And - and - what comes next?" "Oh, yes, yes, what the dickens does come next? C'est la question, ma très chère demoiselle!" Frau Consul Buddenbrooks shot a glance at her husband and came to the rescure of her daughter. | Buy | |
| Touch and Go | C Northcote Parkinson | "And a damned good riddance!" exclaimed Rear-Admiral Fothergill | Buy | |
| A Message from the Sea | Charles Dickens | "And a mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my life!" said Captain jorgan, looking up at it. | Buy | |
| This Rough Magic | Mary Stewart | "And if it's a boy," said Phyllida cheerfully, "we'll call him Prospero." | Buy | |
| The Good Soldier Schweik | Jaroslav Hasek | "And so they've killed out Ferdinand,"1 said the
charwoman to Mr Svejk, who had left military service years
before, after having been finally certified by an army medical
board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs--ugly,
mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged. 1 The archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of the Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph, was assassinated with his wife at Sarajevo by the Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, in 1914. | Buy | |
| The Bonfire of the Vanities | Tom Wolfe | "And then say what? Say, 'Forget you're hungry, forget you got shot inna back by some racist cop--Chuck was here? Chuck come up to Harlem--'" | Buy | |
| Tom Tiddler's Ground | Charles Dickens | "And why Tom tiddler's ground?" asked the Traveller. | Buy | |
| The Last Coyote | Michael Connelly | "Any thoughts that you'd like to start with?" | Buy | |
| Small World | David Lodge | "April is the cruellest month", Persee McGarrigle quoted silently to himself, gazing through the grimy windowpanes at the unseasonable snow crusting the lawns and flowerbeds of the Rummidge campus. | Buy | |
| Tom Swift and His Airship | Victor Appleton | "Are you all ready, Tom?" | Buy | |
| The Sheik | Edith Maude Hull | "Are you coming in to watch the dancing, Lady Conway?" | Buy | |
| Patricia Plays a Part | Mabel Barnes-Grundy | "Are you listening, or have you both suddenly become deaf?" | Buy | |
| The Salt Eaters | Toni Cade Bambara | "Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?" | Buy | |
| Biggles in the Antarctic | Captain W E Johns | "As a job, ours is about the dullest ever." | Buy | |
| Island | Aldous Huxley | "Attention," a voice began to call, and it was as though an oboe had suddenly become articulate. "Attention," repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. "Attention." | Buy | |
| Payment Deferred | C S Forester | "Be quiet, children," said Mrs. Marble. | Buy | |
| The Harvester | Gene Stratton-Porter | "Bel, come here!" | Buy | |
| Caesar's Women | Colleen McCollough | "Brutus, I don't like the look of your skin. Come here to the light, please." | Buy | |
| The People of the Abyss | Jack London | "But you can't do it, you know," friends said, to whom I applied for assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of London. "You had better see the police for a guide," they added, on second thought, painfully endeavoring to adjust themselves to the psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better credentials than brains. | Buy | |
| Little Eve Edgarton | Ellen Hallowell Abbott | "But you live like such a fool—of course you're bored!" drawled the Older Man, rummaging listlessly through his pockets for the ever-elusive match. | Buy | Read |
| Master of the Game | Sidney Sheldon | "By God, this is a real donderstorm!" Jamie McGregor said. He had grown up amid the wild storms of the Scottish Highlands, but he had never witnessed anything as violent as this. The afternoon sky had been suddenly obliterated by enormous clouds of sand, instantly turning day into night. The dusty sky was lit by flashes of lightning--weerlig, the Afrikaners called it--that scorched the air, followed by donderslag--thunder. Then the deluge. | Buy | |
| Little Women | Louisa May Alcott | "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. | Buy | |
| The Iron Woman | Margaret Deland | "Climb up this tree, and play house!" Elizabeth Ferguson commanded. | Buy | |
| Comes The Dawn | Christina Skye | "Come out, villain!" | Buy | |
| The Vendor of Sweets | Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan | "Conquer taste, and you will have conquered the self," said Jagan to his listener, who asked, "Why conquer the self?" Jagan said "I do not know, but all our sages advise us so." | Buy | |
| Ill Wind | James Hilton | "Curious, the way things do jump out of nothing." | Buy | |
| Firestarter | Stephen King (used pseudonym Richard Bachman) | "Daddy, I'm tired," the little girl in the red pants and the green
blouse said fretfully. "Can't we stop." "Not yet, honey." | Buy | |
| The Snake Pit | Mary Jane Ward | "Do you hear voices?" he asked. | Buy | |
| Assignment - Sumatra | Edward S Aarons | "Don't touch me," Lydia said. | Buy | |
| Changes | Danielle Steel | "Dr. Hallam . . . Dr. Hallam . . . Dr. Hallam . . . Cardiac Intensive, Dr. Hallam . . ." The voice droned on mechanically as Peter Hallam sped through the lobby of Center City Hospital, never stopping to answer the page since the team already knew he was on his way. | Buy | |
| Lord Loveland Discovers America | Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson | "Even the Last Resort has refused me." Loveland broke the news to his mother when he had kissed her. | Buy | |
| The Valiants of Virginia | Hallie Erminie Rives | "Failed!" ejaculated John Valiant blankly, and the hat he held dropped to the claret-colored rug like a huge white splotch of sudden fright. "The Corporation--failed!" | Buy | |
| The Bars of Iron | Ethel May Dell | "Fight? I'll fight you with pleasure, but I shall probably kill you if I do. Do you want to be killed?" | Buy | |
| The Mississippi Bubble | Emerson Hough | "Gentleman, this is America!" | Buy | |
| John Halifax, Gentleman | Dinah Maria Mulock | "Get out o' Mr. Fletcher's road, ye idle, lounging, little--" "Vagabond," I think the woman (Sally Walkins, once my nurse,) was going to say, but she changed her mind. | Buy | |
| On the Face of the Waters | Flora Annie Steel | "Going! Going! Gone!" | Buy | |
| Brazilian Gold Mine Mystery | Andy Adams | "Guard this letter as you would your life!" | Buy | |
| Mugby Junction | Charles Dickens | "Guard! What place is this?" | Buy | |
| Laddie | Gene Stratton-Porter | "Have I got a Little Sister anywhere in this house?" inquired Laddie at the door, in his most coaxing voice. | Buy | |
| Great Lion of God | Taylor Caldwell | "He is very ugly," said his mother. | Buy | |
| The Marriage of William Ashe | Mrs. Humphry Ward | "He ought to be here," said Lady Tranmore, as she turned away from the window. | Buy | |
| The Number of the Beast | Robert A. Heinlein | "He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter." | Buy | |
| The Breaking Point | Mary Roberts Rinehart | "Heaven and earth," sang the tenor, Mr. Henry Wallace, owner of the Wallace garage. His larynx, which gave him somewhat the effect of having swallowed a crab-apple and got it only part way down, protruded above his low collar. | Buy | |
| The Sand Pebbles | Richard Milton McKenna | "Hello, ship," Jake Holman said under his breath. | Buy | |
| The Nanny Diaries | Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus | "Hi, this is Alexis at the Parent League. I'm just calling to follow up on the uniform guidelines we sent over . . ." | Buy | |
| The Last Days of Pompeii | Edward George Bulwer-Lytton | "Ho, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to-night?" said a
young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and
effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb. "Alas, no! dear Clodinus; he has not invited me," replied Diomed, a man of portly frame and of middle age. "By Pollux, a scurvy trick! for they say his suppers are the best in Pompeii." | Buy | |
| The History of Mr. Polly | H G Wells | "Hole!" said said Mr Polly, and then for a change, and with greatly increased emphasis: "'Ole!" | Buy | |
| The Forty Days of Musa Dagh | Franz Werfel | "How did I get here?" | Buy | |
| Blue Hurricane | F van Wyck Mason | "Howdy, Matt, never guessed ye'd drive in through a storm like this one," drawled the grocer peering shortsightedly over square-lensed spectacles | Buy | |
| Lady Rose's Daughter | Mrs. Humphry Ward | "Hullo! No!--Yes!--upon my soul, it is Jacob! Why, Delafield, my dear fellow, how are you?" | Buy | |
| Wintersmoon | Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole | "I am asking you again to marry me as I did a fortnight ago." | Buy | |
| The Valley of Fear | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | "I am inclined to think--" said I. "I should do so," Sherlock Holmes remarked, impatiently. I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals, but I admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption. "Really, Holmes," said I, severely, "you are a little trying at times." | Buy | |
| The Last Chronicle of Barset | Anthony Trollope | "I can never bring myself to believe it, John," said Mary Walker, the pretty daughter of Mr. George Walker, attorney, of Silverbridge. | Buy | |
| Red Pottage | Mary Cholmondeley | "I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the bars of his cage. | Buy | |
| In the Reign of Terror | G A Henty | "I don't know what to say, my dear." | Buy | |
| Lucien Leuwen | de Stendhal | "I don't mean to take advantage of my title of father to interfere with you, my son. You are free." | Buy | |
| Under Two Flags | Ouida | "I don't say but what he's difficult to please with his Tops," said Mr. Rake, factotum to the Hon. Bertie Cecil, of the 1st Life Guards, with that article of hunting toggery suspended in his right hand as he paused, before going upstairs, to deliver his opinions with characteristic weight and vivacity to the stud-groom, "he is uncommon particular about 'em; and if his leathers aint as white as snow he'll never touch 'em, tho' as soon as the pack come nigh him at Royallieu, the leathers might just as well never have been cleaned, them hounds jump about him so; old Champion's at his saddle before you can say Davy Jones. . . ." | Buy | |
| Brideshead Revisited | Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh | "I have been here before," I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I ad been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest. | Buy | |
| Inside the Bar | George John Whyte-Melville | "I hope you feel your arm a little easier, sir, this evening?" says Miss Lushington, reappearing in her own peculiar department, fresh and blooming from the revision of her toilet, which usually takes place about seven P.M. Miss Lushington's habits are peculiarly regular and methodical; her attractions of a dazzling, not to say gaudy, description; she is a thorough woman of business, if indeed such a designation be not a contradiction in terms; but when she does take a day's pleasure, there are few ladies who can produce a more satisfactory effect than Miss L. | Buy | |
| Septimus | William John Locke | "I love Nunsmere," said the Literary Man from London. "It is a spot where faded lives are laid away in lavender." | Buy | |
| Interview with the Vampire | Anne Rice | "I see . . ." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window. | Buy | |
| Presumed Innocent | Scott Turow | "I should feel sorrier," Raymond Horgan says. I wonder at first if he is talking about the eulogy he is going to deliver. He has just looked over his notes again and is returning two index cards to the breast pocket of his blue serge suit. But when I catch his expression I recognize that his remark was personal. | Buy | |
| The Prisoner of Zenda | Anthony Hope | "I wonder when in the world you're going to do anything, Rudolf?" said my brother's wife. | Buy | |
| Sybil, or The Two Nations | Benjamin Disraeli | "I'll take the odds against Caravan." | Buy | |
| Ender's Game | Orson Scott Card | "I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's one. Or at least as close as we're going to get." | Buy | |
| Steel Beach | John Varley | "In five years, the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman. | Buy | |
| The Real Adventure | Henry Kitchell Webster | "Indeed," continued the professor, glancing demurely down at his notes, "if one were the editor of a column of --er advice to young girls, such as I believe is to be found, along with the household hints and the dress patterns, on the ladies' page of most of our newspapers--if one were the editor of such a column, he might crystallize the remarks I have been making this morning into a warning--never marry a man with a passion for principles." | Buy | |
| The Listener | Walter de la Mare | "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door. | Buy | |
| Dinner at Antoine's | Frances Parkinson Keyes | "Isn't it all wonderful, darling? Would you ever have dreamed, back in Milwaukee, that it could be warm like this the second of January? Or that everything in New Orleans would be just ten times as cute and quaint as we thought it would be?" | Buy | |
| Soldiers of Fortune | Richard Harding Davis | "It is so good of you to come early," said Mrs. Porter, as Alice Langham entered the drawing-room. "I want to ask a favor of you. I'm sure you won't mind. I would ask one of the debutantes, except that they're always so cross if one puts them next to men they don't know and who can't help them, and so I thought I'd just ask you, you're so good-natured. You don't mind, do you?" | Buy | |
| Virginia of Virginia | Amelie Rives (later Princess Amelie Chanler Troubetzkoy) | "It's a girl," said Roden, laying a wager with himself. "No; it's a boy. Hanged if it isn't a girl!" He took his short brier-wood pipe from his mouth, knocked out its contents against the side of the wagon, and pocketed it. | Buy | |
| In the Penal Colony | Franz Kafka | "It's a remarkable piece of apparatus," said the officer to the explorer and surveyed with a certain air of admiration the apparatus which was after all quite familiar to him. The explorer seemed to have accepted merely out of politeness the Commandant's invitation to witness the execution of a soldier condemned to death for disobedience and insulting behavior to a superior. | Buy | |
| The Royal Box | Frances Parkinson Keyes | "It's no use, Althea. I've tried and tried to figure out some way of keeping it. But we'll have to give up the telephone." | Buy | |
| Ramage and the Rebels | Dudley Pope | "It's not exactly making war, sir," Ramage said, putting as much disapproval in his voice as he dared. | Buy | |
| The Keeper of the Bees | Gene Stratton-Porter | "JAMES LEWIS MACFARLAND." The bearer of this name swung his feet to the floor and sat up suddenly, cupping his big hands over his knees to steady himself. | Buy | |
| The Gnostic Gospels | Elaine Pagels | "Jesus Christ rose from the grave." With this proclamation, the Christian church began. This may be the fundamental element of Christian faith; certainly it is the most radical. | Buy | |
| Captains and the Kings | Taylor Caldwell | "Joey, Joey? O God! Joey?" his mother cried out of her extremity and pain. | Buy | |
| Almayer | Joseph Conrad | "Kaspar! Makan!" The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour. | Buy | |
| The Red Planet | William John Locke | "Lady Fenimore's compliments, sir, and will you be so kind as to step round to Sir Anthony at once?" | Buy | |
| North and South | John Jakes | "Like some help loading that aboard, young sir?" The stevedore smiled but there was no friendliness in his eyes, only avarice inspired by the sight of an obvious stranger. | Buy | |
| Silence--A Fable | Edgar Allan Poe | "Listen to me," said the Demon as he placed his hand upon my head. | Buy | |
| Fools Die | Mario Puzo | "Listen to me. I will tell you the truth about a man's life. I will tell you the truth about his love for women. That he never hates them. Akready you think I'm on the wrong track. Stay with me. Really--I'm a master of magic." | Buy | |
| Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart | Joyce Carol Oates | "Little Red" Garlock, sixteen years old, skull smashed soft as a rotted pumpkin and body dumped into the Cassadaga River near the foot of Pitt Street, must not have sunk as deep as he'd been intended to sink, or floated as far. | Buy | |
| The Covered Wagon | Emerson Hough | "Look at 'em come, Jesse! More and more! Must be forty or fifty families." | Buy | |
| Citizen of the Galaxy | Robert A. Heinlein | "Lot ninety-seven," the auctioneer announced. "A boy." | Buy | |
| The Wide, Wide World | Elizabeth Wetherell (pseudonym of Susan Bogert Warner) | "MAMMA, what was that I heard papa saying to you this morning
about his lawsuit?" I cannot tell you just now. Ellen, pick up that shawl, and spread it over me." "Mamma!–-are you cold in this warm room?" "A little,-–there, that will do. Now, my daughter, let me be quiet a while--don't disturb me." | Buy | |
| Battlefield Earth | L. Ron Hubbard | "Man," said Terl, "is an endangered species." | Buy | |
| Under the Red Robe | Stanley J Weyman | "Marked cards!" | Buy | |
| Stairwell Justice | Jay Brandon | "Motion to have the jury killed, Your Honor." "Come now, counsel," said kindly old Judge Burr, leaning down from the bench. "That seems a little radical, doesn't it?" | Buy | |
| Running for Her Life | Laurie John | "Move out of the way!" a woman shouted hysterically to a group of pedestrians crossing the street. | Buy | |
| The Hundredth Chance | Ethel May Dell | "My dear Maud, I hope I am not lacking in proper pride. But it is an accepted--though painful--fact that beggars cannot be choosers." | Buy | |
| The Prince of Graustark | George Barr McCutcheon | "My dear," said Mr. Blithers, with decision, "you can't tell me." | Buy | |
| Eugene Onegin | Alexander Sergivich Pushkin | "My uncle, a most worthy gentleman, When he fell seriously ill, Constrained everyone to respect him, Couldn't have done better if he tried. His behaviour was a lesson to us all." | Buy | |
| Frank Fairlegh | Francis "Frank" Edward Smedley | "Never forget, under any circumstances, to think and act like a gentleman, and don't exceed your allowance," said my father. | Buy | |
| Robbie | Isaac Asimov | "Ninety-eight--ninety-nine--one hundred." Gloria withdrew her chubby little forearm from before her eyes and stood for a moment, wrinkling her nose and blinking in the sunlight. | Buy | |
| The Outcry | Henry James Jr | "No, my lord," Banks had replied, "no stranger has yet arrived. But I'll see if any one has come in--or who has." | Buy | |
| Off on a Comet! | Jules Verne | "Nothing, sir, can induce me to surrender my claim." "I am sorry, count, but in such a matter your views cannot modify mine." "But allow me to point out that my seniority unquestionably gives me a prior right." "Mere seniority, I assert, in an affair of this kind, cannot possibly entitle you to any prior claim whatever." | Buy | |
| Jumanji | Chris Van Allsburg | "Now remember," Mother said, "your father and I are bringing some guests by after the opera, so please keep the house neat." | Buy | |
| Speak Now | Frank Yerby | "Now you," the policeman said. "Documents!" | Buy | |
| Hard Times | Charles Dickens | "Now, what I want is Facts," | Buy | |
| World of Wonders | Edwin Abbott Abbott | "Of course he was a charming man." | Buy | |
| Christine | Stephen King (used pseudonym Richard Bachman) | "Oh my God!" my friend Arnie Cunningham cried out suddenly. "What is it?" I asked. His eyes were bulging from behind his steel rimmed glasses, he had plastered one hand over his face so that his palm was partially cupping his mouth, and his neck could have been on ball-bearings the way he was craning back over his shoulder. | Buy | |
| The Princess Casamassima | Henry James Jr | "Oh yes, I daresay I can find the child, if you would like to see him," Miss Pynsent said; she had a fluttering wish to assent to every suggestion made by her visitor, whom she regarded as a high and rather terrible personage. | Buy | |
| The Bostonians | Henry James Jr | "Olive will come down in about ten minutes; she told me to tell you that." | Buy | |
| Oliver's Story | Erich Segal | "Oliver, you're sick." | Buy | |
| The Woman Thou Gavest Me | Sir Hall Caine | "Out of the depths, O Lord, out of the depths," begins the most beautiful of the services of our church, and it is out of the depths of my life that I must bring the incidents of this story. | Buy | |
| The Rebel Angels | Robertson Davies | "Parlabane is back." | Buy | |
| The Page Turner | David Leavitt | "Paul! Let me fix your tie!" | Buy | |
| Little Men | Louisa May Alcott | "Please, sir, is this Plumfield?" asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him. | Buy | |
| The One Woman | Thomas Dixon Jr | "Quick--a glass of water!" A man sprang to his feet, beckoning to
an usher. When he reached the seat, the woman had recovered by a supreme effort of will and sat erect, her face flushed with anger at her own weakness. "Thank you, I am quite well now," she said with dignity. | Buy | |
| Gat Heat | Richard S Prather | "Sex," she said. | Buy | |
| The Caxtons | Edward George Bulwer-Lytton | "Sir--Sir, it is a boy!" "A boy," said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much puzzled; "what is a boy?" | Buy | |
| Michael Strogoff | Jules Verne | "Sire, a fresh dispatch." "Whence?" "From Tomsk?" "Is the wire cut beyond that city?" "Yes, sire, since yesterday." "Telegraph hourly to Tomsk, General, and keep me informed of all that occurs." | Buy | |
| Catch a Falling Spy | Len Deighton | "Smell that air," said Major Mann. | Buy | |
| See, I Told You So | Rush H. Limbaugh, III | "So, Mr. Limbaugh . . . when do you hope to conquer America? And after you do, Mr. Limbaugh, just how oppressive will you be?" | Buy | |
| The Bear and the Dragon | Tom Clancy | "So, who were his enemies?" Lieutenant Colonel Shablikov asked. | Buy | |
| Bardelys the Magnificent | Rafael Sabatini | "Speak of the Devil," whispered La Fosse in my ear, and, moved by the words and by the significance of his glance, I turned in my chair. | Buy | |
| Black Oxen | Gertrude Atherton | "Talk. Talk. Talk. . . . Good lines and no action . . . said all . . . not even promising first act . . . eighth failure and season more than half over . . . rather be a playwright and fail than a critic compelled to listen to has-beens and would-bes trying to put over bad plays." | Buy | |
| Angry Moon | Terrill Lankford | "Tequila", the stranger said with a wicked grin. | Buy | |
| 1876 | Gore Vidal | "That is New York." I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine. | Buy | |
| Sons and Lovers | D H Lawrence | "The Bottoms" succeed to "Hell Row." Hell Row was a block of thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brook-side on Greenhill Lane. | Buy | |
| The Port of Missing Men | Meredith Nicholson | "The knowledge that you're alive gives me no pleasure," growled the grim old Austrian premier. | Buy | |
| Capable of Honor | Allen Stuart Drury | "The latest wacky rumor in this wacky city [reported one of the Washington Evening Star's many lady columnists in Monday's paper] is that Patsy Jason Labaiya, sister of Presidential Likely Gov. Ted Jason of California and wife of Panamanian Ambassador Felix Labaiya, will run for the U.S. Senate. . . ." | Buy | |
| Our Admirable Betty | Jeffrey Farnol | "The Major, mam, the Major has a truly wonderful 'ead!" said Sergeant Zebedee Tring as he stood, hammer in hand, very neat and precise from broad shoe-buckles to smart curled wig that offset his square, bronzed face. | Buy | |
| Mosquitoes | William Faulkner | "The sex instinct," repeated Mr. Talliaferro in his careful cockney, with that smug complacence with which you plead guilty to a characteristic which you privately consider a virtue, "is quite strong in me. Frankness, without which there can be no friendship, without which two people cannot really ever 'get' each other, as you artists say; frankness, as I was saying, I believe." | Buy | |
| A Room with a View | E M Forster | "The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!" | Buy | |
| Terms of Endearment | Larry McMurtry | "The success of a marriage invariably depends on the woman," Mrs. Greenway said. | Buy | |
| 54-40 or Fight | Emerson Hough | "Then you offer me no hope, Doctor?" | Buy | |
| My Spy | Christina Skye | "There's a naked man in the swimming pool." | Buy | |
| The River Road | Frances Parkinson Keyes | "There's no use going to the window yet, Merry. It's barely five, and you know these things never start on time. I don't believe the parade's left the campus yet." | Buy | |
| Lucky Jim | Kingsley Amis | "They made a silly mistake, though," the professor of history said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually sank beneath the surface of his features at the memory. | Buy | |
| The Courts of Idleness | Dornford Yates | "This," said Fairie, "is too thick." | Buy | |
| The Satanic Verses | Salman Rushdie | "To be born again " sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." | Buy | |
| The Princess Passes | Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson | "To your happiness," I said, lifting my glass, and looking the girl in the eyes. She had the grace to blush, which was the least that she could do, for a moment ago she had jilted me. | Buy | |
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain | "TOM!" | Buy | |
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain (pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens) | "TOM!" No answer. "TOM!" No answer. "What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!" No answer. The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service--she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear: "Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--" | Buy | |
| Tarus Bulba | Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol | "Turn round, my boy! How ridiculous you look! What sort of a priest's cassock have you got on? Does everybody at the academy dress like that?" | Buy | |
| The Custom of the Country | Edith Newbold Wharton (nee Jones) | "Undine Spragg--how can you?" her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid "bell-boy" had just brought in. | Buy | |
| The Reef | Edith Newbold Wharton (nee Jones) | "Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna." | Buy | |
| Sea Urchins | W W Jacobs | "Wapping Old Stairs?" | Buy | |
| A Handful of Dust | Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh | "Was anyone hurt?" "No one I am thankful to say," said Mrs. Beaver, "except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass roof into the paved court." | Buy | |
| Princess Daisy | Judith Krantz | "We could always shoot this on top of the RCA Building," Daisy said, walking past the parapet, above which rose a high, metal railing designed to forestall would-be suicides. "They're not nearly as paranoid as you Empire State people." She gestured scornfully at the ledge behind her. "But, Mr. Jones, if it's not the view from precisely here, the message just won't be New York." | Buy | |
| Men and Wives | Ivy Compton-Burnett | "Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?" | Buy | |
| Fathers and Sons | Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev | "Well, Piotr, not in sight yet?" was the question asked on May the 20th, 1859, by a gentleman of a little over forty, in a dusty coat and checked trousers, who came out without his hat on to the low steps of the posting station at S-----. He was addressing his servant, a chubby young fellow, with whitish down on his chin, and little, lack-lustre eyes. | Buy | |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy (Count Lev Tolstoi) | "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist--I really believe he is Antichrist--I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you--sit down and tell me all the news." | Buy | |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes." | Buy | |
| Victorine | Frances Parkinson Keyes | "Well, thanks a million, Captain Bob. No one but you could have ferreted this out for me." | Buy | |
| Couples | John Updike | "What did you make of the new couple?" | Buy | |
| The Light That Failed | Rudyard Kipling | "What do you think she'd do if she caught us? We oughtn't to have
it, you know," said Maisie. "Beat me, and lock you up in your bedroom," Dick answered, without hesitation. "Have you got the cartridges?" "Yes; they're in my pocket, but they are joggling horribly. Do pin-fire cartridges go off of their own accord?" "Don't know. Take the revolver, if you are afraid, and let me carry them." "I'm not afraid." Maisie strode forward swiftly, a hand in her pocket an her chin the air. Dick followed with a small pin-fire revolver. | Buy | |
| The Light That Failed | Rudyard Kipling | "What do you think she'd do if she caught us?" | Buy | |
| An Academic Question | Barbara Pym | "What jewels will you be wearing tonight, Mother?" | Buy | |
| Her Father's Daughter | Gene Stratton-Porter | "What makes you wear such funny shoes?" | Buy | |
| A Sensitive Case | Eric Wright | "What's this?" | Buy | |
| The Manticore | Robertson Davies | "When did you decide you should come to Zürich, Mr. Staunton?" | Buy | |
| Red Rabbit | Tom Clancy | "When do you start, Jack?" Cathy asked in the quiet of their bed. | Buy | |
| Geek Love | Katherine Dunn | "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, walwaltzing around her, hypotized with longing. | Buy | |
| Over Sea, Under Stone | Susan Cooper | "Where is he?" | Buy | |
| Charlotte's Web | E B White | "Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. | Buy | |
| So Red the Rose | Stark Young | "Whereas, the Creator," Malcolm Bedford wrote, "has seen fit to remove from the earthly scene our beloved friend, Hugh McGehee, and, whereas, Zachary Taylor, President of the United States of America, stated that Edward McGehee of Woodville, brother of the deceased, was the best man he ever knew, making him, furthermore, executor of his estate, it is the opinion here that the virtues of said Hugh McGehee were no less great." | Buy | |
| Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | "Who is John Galt?" | Buy | |
| Riders in the Chariot | Patrick White | "Who was that woman?" asked Mrs. Colquhoun, a rich lady who had
come recently to live at Sarsaparilla. "Ah," Mrs. Sugden said, and laughed, "that was Miss Hare." | Buy | |
| The Makioka Sisters | Junichiro Tanizaki | "Would you do this please, Koi-san?" Seeing in the mirror that Taeko had come up behind her, Sachiko stopped powdering her back and held out the puff to her sister. Her eyes were still on the mirror, appraising the face as if it belonged to someone else. The long under-kimono, pulled high at the throat, stood out stiffly behind to reveal her back and shoulders. | Buy | |
| To the Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf (nee Stephen) (Adeline Virginia Woolf) | "Yes, of course," if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added. | Buy | |
| The Old Countess | Anne Douglas Sedgwick | "You are an artist, Monsieur?" | Buy | |
| The Harbor | Ernest Poole | "You chump," I thought contemptuously. I was seven years old at the time, and the gentleman to whom I referred was Henry Ward Beecher. What it was that aroused my contempt for the man will be more fully understood if I tell first of the grudge that I bore him. | Buy | |
| The Valley of the Moon | Jack London | "You hear me, Saxon? Come on along. What if it is the Bricklayers'? I'll have gentlemen friends there, and so'll you. The Al Vista band'll be along, an' you know it plays heavenly. An' you just love dancin'--" | Buy | |
| Hollywood Wives | Jackie Collins | "You look fantastic!" "You think?" "I know." | Buy | |
| The Younger Set | Robert William Chambers | "You never met Selwyn, did you?" | Buy | |
| Point Counter Point | Aldous Huxley | "You won't be late?" There was anxiety in Marjorie Carling's voice, there was something like entreaty. | Buy | |
| The Heat's On | Chester Himes | "You're my friend, ain't you?" the giant asked. | Buy | |
| Come What May | Jill Limber | "Young lady, you could be the answer to my prayers." General Allen pointed to Amanda Giles' bodice. "But we'll have to do something about those." | Buy | |
| The Good Soldier Svejk | Jaroslav Hasek | 'And so they've killed our Ferdinand,' said the charwoman to Mr Svejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs--ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged. | Buy | |
| The Heritage of the Desert | Zane Grey | 'But the man's almost dead.' | Buy | |
| Fisherman's Hope | David Feintuch | 'But Vasily's a Russian, and we're short on Eurasians.' | Buy | |
| Challenger's Hope | David Feintuch | 'Carry on!' | Buy | |
| Granchester Grind | Tom Sharpe | 'Godber was murdered,' said Lady Mary. | Buy | |
| Dark Hester | Anne Douglas Sedgwick | 'I suppose I have hated her from the first moment I say her,' Monica Wilmott heard herself saying, and she saw Hester as she had first seen her, sitting in the open window of the Chelsea drawing-room against the background of the river; extraordinarily quiet, extraordinarily assured, with black eyebrows and a thin black cloak lined with red. | Buy | |
| The Lamplighter | Charles Dickens | 'If you talk of Murphy and Francis Moore, gentlemen,' said the lamplighter who was in the chair, 'I mean to say that neither of 'em ever had any more to do with the stars than Tom Grig had.' | Buy | |
| The Old Devils | Kingsley Amis | 'If you want my opinion,' said Gwen Cellan-Davies, 'the old boy's a terrifically distinguished citizen of Wales. Or at any rate what passes for one these days.' | Buy | |
| City of Spades | Colin MacInnes | 'It's all yours, Pew, from now,' he said, adding softly, 'thank God,' and waving round the office a mildly revolted hand. | Buy | |
| Lost at the South Pole | Franklin W Dixon | 'So you'd like to go on that expedition to the South Pole, would you, Ted?' asked Walter Hapworth, as he threw down the newspaper he had been reading. | Buy | |
| Midshipman's Hope | David Feintuch | 'Stand to!' I roared, but I was too late; even as Alexi and Sandy snapped to attention, Hibernia's two senior lieutenants strolled around the corridor bend. | Buy | |
| Red Gardenias | Jonathan Latimer | 'There's a burglar downstairs,' Ann Fortune said. | Buy | |
| A King's Cutter | Richard Woodman | 'You will be,' said Lord Dungarth, lifting his hands for emphasis, 'merely the hand of a puppet.' | Buy | |
| J R | William Gaddis | --Money. . . ? in a voice that rustled. | Buy | |
| Kiss of the Spider Woman | Manuel Puig | --Something a little strange, that's what you notice, that she's not a woman like all the others. She looks fairly young, twenty-five, maybe a little more, petite face, a little catlike, small turned-up nose. The shape of her face, it's . . . more roundish than oval, broad forehead, pronounced cheeks too but then they come down to a point, like with cats. | Buy | |
| Beloved | Toni Morrison | 124 was spiteful. | Buy | |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | 1801-- I have just returned from a visit to my landlord -- the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. | Buy | Read |
| Tales of a Female Nomad | Rita Golden Gelman | 1985. I am living someone else's life. | Buy | |
| Sometimes a Great Notion | Ken Kesey | Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range . . . come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River . . . | Buy | |
| Suttree | Cormac McCarthy | Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you. | Buy | |
| Dearly Beloved | Anne Morrow Lindbergh | Dearly beloved--late again! | Buy | |
| Evening in Byzantium | Irwin Shaw | Dinosauric, obsolete, functions and powers atrophied, dressed in sport shirts from Sulka and Cardin, they sat across from each other at small tables in airy rooms overlooking the changing sea and dealt and received cards just as they had done in the lush years in the rainfall forest of the West Coast when in all seasons they had announced the law in the banks, the board rooms, the Moorish mansions, the chateaux, the English castles, the Georgian town houses of Southern California. | Buy | |
| Tai-Pan | James Clavell | Dirk Struan came up onto the quarterdeck of the flagship H.M.S. Vengeance, and strode for the gangway. The 74-gun ship of the line was anchored half a mile off the island. Surrounding her were the rest of the fleet's warships, the troopships of the expeditionary force, and the merchantmen and opium clippers of the China traders. | Buy | |
| Pavane | Keith John Kingston Roberts | Durnovaria, England, 1968. The appointed morning came, and they buried Eli Strange. The coffin, black and purple drapes twitched aside, eased down into the grave; the white webbings slid through the hands of the bearers in nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti . . . The earth took back her own. And miles away Iron Margaret cried cold and wreathed with steam, drove her great sea-voice across the hills. | Buy | |
| In the Days of the Comet | H.G. Wells (Herbert George Wells) | I saw a gray-haired man a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and writing. | Buy | |
| The Color of Water | James McBride | I'm dead. You want to talk about my family and here I been dead to them for fifty years. Leave me alone. Don't bother me. They want no parts of me and me I don't want no parts of them. Hurry up and get this interview over with. I want to watch Dallas. | Buy | |
| The Sands of Time | Sidney Sheldon | If the plan goes wrong, we will all die. He went over it again in his mind for the last time, probing, testing, searching for flaws. He could find none. The plan was daring, and it called for careful, split-second timing. If it worked, it would be a spectacular feat, worthy of the great El Cid. If it failed . . . | Buy | |
| The Rum Diary | Hunter S. Thompson | In the early Fifties, when San Juan first became a tourist town, an ex-jockey named Al Arbonito built a bar in the patio behind his house on Calle O'Leary. | Buy | |
| The Last Puritan | George Santayana | In the first years after the war Mario Van de Weyer was almost my neighbour in Paris, for he lived just where the Left Bank ceases to be the Latin Quarter and I where it's not yet the Faubourg Saint Germain. | Buy | |
| The 42nd Parallel | John Roderigo Dos Passos | It was that emancipated race That was chargin up the hill Up to where them insurrectos Was afightin fit to kill CAPITAL CITY'S CENTURY CLOSED General Miles with his gaudy uniform and spirited charger was the center for all eyes especially as his steed was extremely restless. | Buy | |
| Christine | Alice Cholmondeley | Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin Thursday, May 28th, 1914. My blessed little mother, Here I am safe, and before I unpack or do a thing I'm writing you a little line of love. I sent a telegram at the station, so that you'll know at once that nobody has eaten me on the way, as you seemed rather to fear. It is wonderful to be here, quite on my own, as if I were a young man starting his career. | Buy | |
| Moonlight Become You | Mary Higgins Clark | Maggie tried to open her eyes, but the effort was too great. Her head hurt so much. Where was she? What had happened? She raised her hand, but it was stopped inches above her body, unable to move any farther. | Buy | |
| Gentlemen Prefer Blondes | Anita Loos | March 16th: A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and a paper and put down all of my thoughts it would make a book. This almost made me smile as what it would really make would be a whole row of encyclopediacs. | Buy | |
| Compulsion | Meyer Levin | Nothing ever ends. | Buy | |
| 1919 | John Roderigo Dos Passos | Oh the infantree the infantree With the dirt behind their ears ARMIES CLASH AT VERDUN IN GLOBE'S GREATEST BATTLE 150,000 MEN AND WOMEN IN PARADE but another question and a very important one is raised. | Buy | |
| The Bridges of Madison County | Robert James Waller | On the morning of August 8, 1965, Robert Kincaid locked the door to his small two-room apartment on the third floor of a rambling house in Bellingham, Washington. He carried a knapsack full of photography equipment and a suitcase down wooden stairs and through a hallway to the back, where his old Chrevelet pickup truck was parked in a space reserved for residents of the building. | Buy | |
| Rogue Herries | Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole | Over this country, when the giant Eagle flings the shadow of his wing, the land is darkened. So compact is it that the wing covers all its extent in one pause of the flight. The sea breaks on the pale line of the shore; to the Eagle's proud glance waves run in to the foot of the hills that are like rocks planted in green water. | Buy | |
| Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov | Pale Fire, a poem in heroic couplets, of nine hundred ninety-nine lines, divided into four cantos, was composed by John Francis Shade (born July 5, 1898, died July 21, 1959) during the last twenty days of his life, at his residence in New Wye, Appalachia, U.S.A. | Buy | |
| Go Ask Alice | Anonymous | September 16 Yesterday I remember thinking I was the happiest person in the whole earth, in the whole galaxy, in all of God's creation. Could that only have been yesterday or was it endless light-years ago? | Buy | |
| Stand on Zanzibar | John Brunner | Stock cue SOUND: "Presenting SCANALYZER, Engrelay Satelserv's unique thrice-per-day study of the big big scene, the INdepth INdependent INmediate INterface between you and your world!" | Buy | |
| Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood | Rebecca Wells | Tap-dancing child abuser. That's what The Sunday New York Times from March 8, 1973, had called Vivi. The pages of the week-old Leisure Arts section lay scattered on the floor next to Sidda as she curled up in the bed, covers pulled tightly around her, portable phone on the pillow next to her head. | Buy | |
| The Green Berets | Robin Moore | The Green Berets is a book of truth. | Buy | |
| The Tale of the Body Thief | Anne Rice | The Vampire Lestat here. I have a story to tell you. It's about something that happened to me. | Buy | |
| From the Terrace | John O'Hara | There are alive today hundreds of men who saw Samuel Eaton, who accepted wages from him, envied him, hated him, laughed at him behind his back, worked hard for him, cheated him, and never addressed him except as Mr. Eaton or Mr. Samuel. | Buy | |
| Misery | Stephen King (used pseudonym Richard Bachman) | umber whunnnn yerrrnnn umber whunnnn fayunnnn These sounds: even in the haze. | Buy | |
| Whirlwind | James Clavell | IN THE ZAGROS MOUNTAINS: SUNSET. Now the sun touched the horizon and the man reined in his horse tiredly, glad that the time for prayer had come. | Buy | |
| Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son | George Horace Lorimer | CHICAGO, October 1, 189-- Dear Pierrepont: Your Ma got back safe this morning and she wants me to be sure to tell you not to over-study, and I want to tell you to be sure not to under-study. What we're really sending you to Harvard for is to get a little education that's so good and plenty there. When it's passed around you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You'll find that education's about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and that it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight and the screw-driver lost. | Buy | |
| The Lady of the Decoration | Frances Little (pseudonym of Fannie Macaulay) | San Francisco, July 30, 1901 My dearest Mate: Behold a soldier on the eve of battle! I am writing this in a stuffy little hotel room and I don't dare stop whistling for a minute. You could cover my courage with a postage stamp. In the morning I sail for the Flowery Kingdom, and if the roses are waiting to strew my path it is more than they have done here for the past few years. | Buy |