Pick Your Favorite Line

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Vote for your favorite opening line from the adult fiction titles published in 2020 in our collection.

Which line do you like the best?

She watched her reflection in the empty glass bottle as the truth crept in with the wine in her veins.

NOW IS THE MOMENT OF RECKONING.

I'm a priest, for Christ's sake - how can this be happening to me?

It is a truth insufficiently acknowledged that a person in possession of a business must at some point want to yell at someone.

They came on boats, on trains, great unceasing waves of them - the poor, the disenfranchised, the seekers, the dreamers.

I hate men.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I came to a place where there was a clearing, and I laid down in it to sleep.

"Keep up, ya little shite, or ya're going back in the bag."

Sarah Mead pictured her husband's face on the log she was about to split.

Let's say that you are a sixty-nine-year-old Jamaican man called Stanford, or Stan for short, who once faked your own death.

For the first twelve days of our life, we were one person.

If my kids had been with me, it wouldn't have happened.

"If I only could, I'd make a deal with God."

I always thought anorexia was a dinosaur.

I've imagined my husband's death a thousand times.

The only way out now is to stay busy, so I have borrowed Anna Karenina from my mother and will not allow myself to cry until I have read it.

BETWEEN TAKES, MARCUS DID HIS BEST NOT TO ACKNOWLEDGE the obvious: this was a stupid-ass way to die.

It is impossible to know what you would do to escape a shitty marriage and give your daughters a fair shot at success.

It's like a caterpillar in a jar, this idea he's got in his head.

I KILLED MY BROTHER WITH A PENNY.

THE FOREMAN LISTS THE CHARGES for which I stand accused.

"I think they might be keeping dead bodies in their condo!"

When I was young, my father taught me something that has given me considerable insight into humanity: As you walk through life, he said, don't be surprised to find that there are fewer people seeking truth than those seeking confirmation of what they already believe.

I'll know its working when he starts to scream.

The real trouble came at midnight.

Why could she not quit pondering that flounced petticoat?

Sometimes chocolate is the only thing standing between me and murder.

I've decided to stop lying to you.

Between life and death there is a library,' she said.

After all the grand celebrations leading to my one hundredth birthday, I had feared dreadfully that the calendar day itself would be a disappointment.

There is a razor-thin edge between justice and revenge, where the two easily blur if left unchecked.

Heaven expects our best.

She has a bad, bad mystery to her.

This story ends in blood.

My mother killed my father when I was seven years old.

"Do you regret saying yes so quickly when I asked you to do this?"

When Margery was ten, she fell in love with a beetle.

My Polish grandmother, to the end of her days, never trusted a man who smiled at the dark or wore white in wintertime.

Why had I never considered the possibility that an arms dealer might wield actual arms?

Nobody ever believes me when I tell them my uncle Earl owns a museum.

There's something off about the house.

"He fixes everything that's wrong with you in three days."

Call me harlot.

I have gone by many names.

THIS IS HOW I drowned.

There was a wolf at the gallery door.

The Viking my brother got me for my birthday was tall and had muscles.

There are the facts, and then there is the truth.

Once the queen's head is severed, he walks away.

WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Numbers, Like people, have no inherent quality.

She keeps a journal to forget as much as to remember.

It was bitterly cold, the day of the fish-stunning.

My grandmother used to tell me that when our ancestors die, they don't just disappear, they continue to watch over us.

It was my mother who took me to the police station.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

SOMEONE TRIES TO kill me at least once a day.

WHERE WILL YOU BE when your life ends?

"LET'S KILL him again in slow motion," I said.

What in the name of flaming Hades do you mean his lordship wants me to officiate at the wedding of a tortoise?"

The artist leaned closer to the decapitated head.

They were coming, and he knew they were coming, and he knew why-they were coming to kill him and to kill the president and to kill anyone else who got in their way.

The girl is forbidden from making a sound, so the yellow bird sings.

After taking a good, long look at myself, I've realized that I may be a little outspoken in putting forward my opinions, just a bit too quick to judge others to their detriment, much too inclinded to think I know what's best for someone else, and entirely too skeptical of every claim to better my life made by salesman of all stripes, including politicians.

THE DEAD GIRL never gets to write her own story.

A girl is running for her life.

MOST OF LIFE'S defining moments happen unexpectedly; sometimes they slide past you completely unnoticed until afterward, if at all.

How could I have been so stupid?

It's easy to forget, now that so many facts have been laid bare, but we once lived in a state of holy ignorance.

I'm not a fan of human arms.

Remember, Lisa's mother had often said, it's good to know where you want to be, but sometimes you have to go in the opposite direction to get there.

THE TASER FELT LIKE NAIL GUNS FIRING into him from all direction.

This is not a fairy tale.

It seems as though I'm the kind of person who lands in the hospital in a cocktail dress on a Tuesday night with no ID and no friends.

A ZUCCHINI FLEW over my head, missing it by a few centimeters.

It looked like she had fallen from the sky.

Everyone is haunted by something.

It's hard to say who I fell in love with first.

As soon as I step off the elevator, something seems weird to me, off-kilter or unaligned - like a friend forcing a smile when she's secretly livid with you.

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