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Kowloon. The teeming final extension of China that is no part of the north except in spirit--but the spirit runs deep and descends into the caverns of men's souls without regard for the harsh, irrelevant practicalities of political borders. The land and the water are one, and it is the will of the spirit that determines how man will use the land and the water--again without regard for such abstractions as useless freedom or escapable confinement. The concern is only with empty stomachs. Survival. There is nothing else. All the rest is dung to be spread over the infertile fields. - Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Supremacy [1986] (ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK The cacophony spun out of control as the crowds swelled through the amusement park in the countryside on the outskirts of Baltimore. The summer night was hot, and nearly everywhere faces and necks were drenched with sweat, except for those screaming as they plunged over the crests of a roller coaster, or shrieking as they plummeted down the narrow, twisting gullies of racing water in torpedo sleds. The garishly colored, manically blinking lights along the midway were joined by the grating sounds of emphatic music metallically erupting out of an excess of loudspeakers--calliopes presto, marches prestissimo. - Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Ultimatum [1990] (ch. 1) JANUARY 197-- "Attention! Le train de sept heures a destination de Zurich partira du quai numero douze." The tall American in the dark-blue raincoat glanced up at the cavernous dome of the Geneva railway station, trying to locate the hidden speakers. The expression on his sharp, angular face was quizzical; the announcement was in French, a language he spoke but little and understood less. Nevertheless, he was able to distinguish the word Zurich; it was his signal. - Robert Ludlum, The Holcroft Covenant [1978] (ch. 1) The angry waters of the Oman Gulf were a prelude to the storm racing down through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea. It was sundown, marked by the strident prayers nasally intoned by bearded muezzins in the minarets of the port city's mosques. The sky was darkening under the black thunderheads that swirled ominously across the lesser darkness of evening like roving behemoths. Blankets of heat lightning sporadically fired the eastern horizon over the Makran Mountains of Turbat, two hundred miles across the sea in Pakistan. - Robert Ludlum, The Icarus Agenda [1988] (ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK The band of carolers huddled at the corner, stamping their feet and swinging their arms, their young voice penetrating the cold night air between the harsh sounds of automobile horns and police whistles and the metallic strains of Christmas music blaring out from storefront speakers. The snowfall was dense, snarling traffic, causing the hordes of last-minute shoppers to shield their eyes. - Robert Ludlum, The Matarese Circle [1979] (ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK Loring walked out the side entrance of the Justice Department and looked for a taxi. It was nearly first thirty, a spring Friday, and the congestion in the Washington streets was awful. Loring stood by the curb and held up his left hand, hoping for the best. He was about to abandon the effort when a cab that had picked up a fare thirty feet down the block stopped in front of him. - Robert Ludlum, The Matlock Paper [1973] (ch. 1) The cold rays of the moon streaked down from the night sky and bounced off the rolling surf, which burst into suspended sprays of white where isolated waves crashed into the rocks of the shoreline. The stretch of beach between the towering boulders of the Costa Brava was the execution ground. It had to be. May God damn this goddamned world--it had to be! - Robert Ludlum, The Parsifal Mosaic [1982] (ch. 1) Sundown. The distressed sloop, its mainmast shattered by lightning, its sails ripped by the winds of the open sea, drifted into the small, quiet beach of a private island in the Lesser Antilles. During the past three days, before the dead calm descended, this section of the Caribbean had suffered not only a hurricane with the force of the infamous Hugo, but sixteen hours later a tropical storm whose bolts of lightning and earthshaking thunder had set fire to a thousand palms and caused a hundred thousand residents of the island chain to look to their gods for deliverance. - Robert Ludlum, The Scorpio Illusion [1993] (ch. 1) Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople. - Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade [1997] (The Undertaking) "Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. The camel, a white Arabian Dhalur (single hump) from the famous herd of the Ruola tribe, had been a parting present, its saddle-bags stuffed with low-carat gold and flashy orient gems, from a rich desert tycoon who owned a Levantine hotel near Palmyra. I always thought it to my aunt's credit that, in view of the camel's provenance, she had not named it Zenobia, Longinus, or Aurelian, as lesser women would have done; she had, instead, always called it, in a distant voice, my camel, or the camel. - Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond [1956] It was Warrington's invariable habit--when no business or social engagement pressed him to go elsewhere--to drop into a certain quaint little restaurant just off Broadway for his dinners. It was out of the way; the throb and rattle of the great commercial artery became like the far-off murmur of the sea, restful rather than annoying. He always made it a point to dine alone, undisturbed. The proprietor nor his silent-footed waiters had the slightest idea who Warrington was. - Harold MacGrath, Half a Rogue [1906] (ch. I) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK An old man, clothed in picturesque patches and tatters, paused and leaned on his stout oak staff. He was tired. He drew off his rusty felt hat, swept a sleeve across his forehead, and sighed. He had walked many miles that day, and even now the journey's end, near as it really was, seemed far away. - Harold MacGrath, The Goose Girl [1909] (ch. 1) Out of the unromantic night, out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard, genuinely astonished, lowered his pipe and listened. - Harold MacGrath, The Lure of the Mask [1908] (ch. 1) The king sat in his private garden in the shade of a potted orange tree, the leaves of which were splashed with brilliant yellow. It was high noon of one of those last warm sighs of passing summer which now and then lovingly steal in between the chill breaths of September. The velvet hush of the mid-day hour had fallen. - Harold MacGrath, The Puppet Crown [1901] It was with the advent of the Laudie London era that I realized the whole teenage epic was tottering to doom. - Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners [1959], one of "The London Novels" 'It's all yours, Pew, from now,' he said, adding softly, 'thank God,' and waving round the office a mildly revolted hand. - Colin MacInnes, City of Spades [1957] (pt. 1, ch. 1), one of "The London Novels" Frankie Love came from the sea, and was greatly ill at ease elsewhere. When on land he was harassed and didn't fit in at all. - Colin MacInnes, Mr Love and Justice [1960], one of "The London Novels" So this, thought Ferrier, was El Fenicio, an open courtyard behind a wineshop, a rectangle of hard-packed earth on which rows of small wooden tables and chairs had been set out to face a bare platform of a stage. - Helen MacInnes, Message from Malaga [1971] (ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK April in Paris, and a sprinkle of rain, a sudden whip of cool breeze, a graying sky to end the bright promise of the evening. John Craig decided that his saunter along the Boulevard Saint-Germain might come to a quick end any moment now, and began looking for a place of retreat. - Helen MacInnes, The Double Image [1965] (ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK The lake was cold, black, evil, no more than five hundred yards in length, scarcely two hundred in breadth, a crooked stretch of glassy calm shadowed by the mountainsides that slipped steeply into its dark waters and went plunging down. There were no roads, no marked paths around it; only a few tracks, narrow ribbons, wound crazily along its high sides, sometimes climbing up and around the rough crags, sometimes dropping to the sparse clumps of fir at its water line. The eastern tip of the lake was closed off by a ridge of precipices. The one approach was by its western end. - Helen MacInnes, The Salzburg Connection [1968] (ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK Ryder opened his tired eyelids and reached for the telephone without enthusiasm. "Yes?" - Alistair MacLean, Goodbye California [1977] (ch. 1), (also titled The Jacket) It was at twenty seconds to six o'clock on the morning of February 9, 1972, that the earth shook. - Alistair MacLean, Goodbye California [1977] (foreword), (also titled The Jacket) Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad closed the door behind him and crossed the courtyard of his house by the pale light of the stars. His step was lethargic, and his walking stick sank into the dusty earth whenever he leaned on it wearily. He felt on fire and craved cold water so he could wash his face, head, and neck and escape, if only briefly, from the July heat and from the inferno in his belly and head. - Naguib Mahfouz, Palace of Desire [1991] (ch. 1) She woke at midnight. She always woke up then without having to rely on an alarm clock. A wish that had taken root in her awoke her with great accuracy. For a few moments she was not sure she was awake. Images from her dreams and perceptions mixed together in her mind. She was troubled by anxiety before opening her eyes, afraid sleep had deceived here. Shaking her head gently, she gazed at the total darkness of the room. There was no clue by which to judge the time. - Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk [1990] (ch. 1) Their heads were huddled around the brazier, and their hands were spread over its fire: Amina's thin and gaunt, Aisha's stiff, and Umm Hanafi's like the shell of a turtle. - Naguib Mahfouz, Sugar Street [1992] (ch. 1) Displaying page 54 of 95 for this topic: << Prev Next >> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 [54] 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95
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