More First Sentences From Novels

This is a follow up to Pulitzer Prize First Sentences published by the Christian Bookmobile not long ago.

Writers look for ways to grab readers and the best place to start is with the first sentence. This time, we're showing the first sentence of other books and letting you the book and author. The only prize for getting them all right is that you will have read a bunch of good first sentences. I'll post the answers next week.

1. What’s happened in Pecan Spring over the last few weeks has given us all a great deal to think about—especially me, since the tragedies struck so close to home.
2. AS I WAS PACKAGING WHAT REMAINED OF THE DEAD BABY, THE man I would kill was burning pavement north toward Charlotte.
3. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
4. I consider this body, mine, refracted under the steaming bathwater: my swaying chest-hair, legs bent to fit the tiny tub, lumpy kneecaps thrust near my chin, elegant feet concluding in inelegant toes, a row of potatoes at a group photo.
5. Librarian Paige Rogers had survived more exciting days dodging bullets to protect her country.
6. Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock.
7. THE DISTANCE BY wagon from Billerica to neighboring Andover is but nine miles.
8. MAE MOBLEY was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960.
9. A preacher with a lead foot, driving a red Mustang convertible with the top down, could make a state patrolman pretty testy.
10. He exited the church’s double doors and surveyed the gathering.
11. Sasha Edwards crouched behind the huge maple, its burnished, drying leaves rustling in the night wind.
12. Stop shaking. Crouched next to his small oak desk, Jakob clenched its side to steady himself, and took in a deep breath. (Sorry, I had to include two sentences for this one.)

a. Bunn, Davis , Lion of Babylon

b. Kent, Kathleen, The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel

c. Stockett, Kathryn, The Help

d. Williams, Shawna K., No Other

e. Karon, Jan, Home to Holly Springs

f. Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina

g. Lickel, Lisa J., The Map Quilt

h. Diaz, Junot , The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

h. Mills, DiAnn, Breach of Trust

j. Rachman, Tom, The Bathtub Spy

k. Reichs, Kathy,  Bare Bones

l. Albert, Susan, Bleeding Hearts (China Bayles Mystery)