#OpeningSentence

My head is throbbing again, a white-hot line of pain from the back of my skull down to the right side of my jaw, and a dead man is signaling me from across the common room.

— Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

The plastic awning of the café streamed with rain.

— The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Long after the House is gone, it’s there.

— Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

For all the danger in that forest with its tumbling-down ruins, the beauty pulled me back one last time.

— Interference by Sue Burke (Semiosis Duology, #2)

There were not so many places to lurk in the scholars’ residence on Thanma Street.

— The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #3)

The portable surgery unit hulked at the edge of a tract field, ringed by four-byfours and a lone Jeep.

— Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Damira followed the blood down the hill.

— The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.

— A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created.

— Time Shelter by Angela Rodel, Georgi Gospodinov

A sentient space station should have perfect temperature, Mallory Viridian thought.

— Chaos Terminal by Mur Lafferty

Let’s go to the baths today, Miss Ikuko said, so we all got ready.

— Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami

The axe cleaved the log in two.

— Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler

Each year when Shesheshen hibernated, she dreamed of her childhood nest.

— Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

I met the khanym when I tried to kill her.

— North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher