Highlights from October and November: Lines Worth Repeating

Things got away from me last month, and I didn’t get anything put together for October. And now I’m late with November, too. I tell you, I’m halfway tempted to fire my staff. But, as I’m the staff, I’d have to replace myself afterward—and that’d be awkward. I might as well just catch up and try to do better at the end of December.

Amari and the Great Game by B.B. Alston

“Amari,’ says Maria. “It’s not your job to save the world every summer,” I don’t have a choice!”

Pretty please?” I ask.

“Fine, fine. Anything for a fellow human.”

I lean in, lowering my voice to a whisper. Just so you know, we don’t usually call each other humans.

Tiny scratches his bald head, his confused eyes flashing bright yellow before changing back. “But why? You are human, yes?”

I nod. “It’s just… we assume everyone we meet is human, so there isn’t any reason to mention it.”

His shoulders droop dramatically. “So many things to remember to fit into human world.”

Working It Out by Jo Platt

I read her text twice, acknowledging it to be actually a rather impressive composition; fewer than one hundred words and with more triggers than a rifle range.

6 Ripley Avenue by Noelle Holten

Just like her, the public were seekers of truth, only sometimes they needed a nudge in the right direction.

Racing the Light by Robert Crais

“Why would Josh ignore her?”

“Because he can. He’s self-absorbed, arrogant, irresponsible, and rotten with privilege.”

“Oh. The usual reasons.”

I wondered what other secrets he kept, and if those secrets had driven him away form his home and his family and Ryan.

Ryan probably wouldn’t like the answer.

Adele probably wouldn’t like the answer, either.

The people who hired me to find someone they love, almost never wanted the truth.

And when I found the truth, I often wished I hadn’t found it.

Pike answered on the first ring. I’ve never called Joe Pike when he didn’t answer the first ring. Pike would have to be dead in a ditch not to answer the first ring, and then he’d probably answer the second ring.

Pike said, “Zongtong.”

I said, “Okay. I give.”

“It’s the word for president in Standard Chinese.”

“You don’t speak Chinese.”

“Jon Stone.”

Of course. Stone was multilingual. He was fluent in Spanish, Korean, Arabic, Russian, and now, apparently, Chinese. And these were only the languages I had personally heard him speak. Some guys were born annoying.

She sounded as lost as yesterday’s kiss…

The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo, Chi-Young Kim (Translator)

“How old are you, princess?”

“I’m six.”

Six. Hornclaw already knew, but now that she hears how the girl says it, it feels as though she would remember the girl’s babyish pronunciation forever. The moisture in her words never evaporating.

The Ophelia Network by Mur Lafferty

Frankly it was a little disappointing that the male hackers weren’t hoodie-and-fingerless-glove-wearing unwashed young adults constantly looking over their shoulders. The women weren’t gorgeous Goth chicks, either. Everyone looked boring and normal. Each was dressed professionally, if a little rumpled, as they worked into the night.

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

There is no practice more vexing than that of authors describing in travel for the edification of people who have already traveled in coaches. As I must adhere to form, however, I will simply list a series of phrases for the unlikely reader who has never gone anywhere: thin eggshell dawn-soaked curtains stained with materials unknown to science; rattling fit to grind bones to powder; the ripe stench of horse and driver and bog.

Now I have fulfilled my literary duties…

The girl who had broken off from the line was twelve, with a moon face which was so beautiful I had no notion whether she should be congratulated or censured for taking matters a trifle too far.

I hope that the epitaph of the human race when the world ends will be: Here perished a species which lived to tell stories.

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman

The second date was, if anything, even better than the first. They have been to Brighton to watch a Polish film. Donna hadn’t realized there were Polish films, though obviously there must be. In a country that size, someone is going to make a film once in a while.

Joyce finally cracks. “So where are we off to, then?”

“To meet an old friend of mine,” says Elizabeth. “Viktor.”

“We used to have a milkman called Victor,” says Joyce. “Any chance it’s the same Victor?”

“Very possible. Was your milkman also the head of the Leningrad KGB in the eighties?”

“Different Victor,” says Joyce, “Though they finish milk-round, very early, don’t they? So perhaps he was doing two jobs?”

“It’s the people, in the end, isn’t it?…It’s always the people, You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.”

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

“My mind’s on the job,” I said defensively, plucking the cherry from my drink. “Really. I swear.”

“Uh-huh.” Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Do we have have the ‘don’t lie to the telepath’ talk again? It won’t take long. I say ‘don’t lie to the telepath, it never works,’ you glare at me, and then you go find something you can hit.”

“Finding something I can hit is the plan.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said flippantly. “I’m the bad thing that happens to other people.”

Sometimes I think the universe listens for lines like that one, so that it can punish the people who use them.

Screwed by Eoin Colfer

You see, laddie. I’m a businessman. And what we got here is a business opportunity.

Except he says opera-toonity. For some reason he can’t pronounce the word right and I wouldn’t mind but he works it into every second sentence. Irish Mike Madden says opera-toonity more than the Pope says Jesus. And the Pope says Jesus a lot, especially when people sneak up on him.

Little things like that really get to me. I can take a straight sock to the jaw, but someone tapping his nails on a table or repeatedly mispronouncing a word drives me crazy. I once slapped a coffee out of a guy’s hand on the subway because he was breathing into the cup before every sip. It was like sitting beside Darth Vader on his break. And [’ll tell you something else: three people applauded.

He doesn’t know about my aversion to killing people, so is convinced that I can’t let him live. If Shea survives, he is done in this world of shadows, but Freckles would never stop coming. He’s Irish, like me, and we know all about holding grudges. When it comes to vendettas, the Irish make the Sicilians look Canadian.

Desert Star by Michael Connelly

Ballard told herself not to be annoyed with Bosch. She knew that putting him on a team did not make him a team player. That was not in his DNA.

He knew this was a pessimistic view of the world, but fifty years of toiling in the fields of blood had left him without much hope. He knew that the dark engine of murder would never run low on fuel. Not in his lifetime. Not in anyone’s.

Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan

“Sounds like a really good plan to me,” Hadrian declared, “Royce?”
“I like any plan where I don’t die a horrible death.”

“Besides, this shouldn’t be a problem for you, of all people. I am certain you have stolen from occupied homes before.”

“Not ones where the owner can swallow me in a single bite.”

“So we’ll have to be extra quiet now, won’t we?”

Missing Pieces by Peter Grainger

People do not tell the police all they know for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes those reasons are perfectly sound. But we can be certain of one thing: if the police officer concerned suspects you of concealing information, he or she will assume the worst. It comes, as they say, with the territory.

The maverick intuitive geniuses on the television screen are wonderful entertainment, of course. But it’s the people who keep lists that solve cases in the real world.

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Having a cat is one small step from having two cats, and to be a single woman within a syllable of fifty in possession of two cats is tantamount to declaring life over. Catherine Standish has had her share of scary moments but has survived each of them, and is not about to surrender now.

She started drawing up a mental list of everyone she didn’t trust, and had to stop immediately. She didn’t have all day.

“We don’t like being out of the loop.”

“You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that.”

At the bar he ordered a large scotch for himself, because he wanted to give the impression of being kind of a lush, and also because he wanted a large scotch.

Wistful Ascending by JCM Berne

He was wearing a close-fitting jumpsuit. The yellow was somewhere between neon and actively fluorescent, with accents in a metallic purple rumored to cause an assortment of mental illnesses if a human stared at it too long.

First lesson: Space bears were not sticklers for personal hygiene.

The boy sighed. “My name is long and stupid. But you can call me Rinth.”

“I’m sure it’s not stupid.”

“Amarinthalytics. It sounds like a subject in school that everybody fails.”

“Tell him I said hello. No hard feelings.”

She cocked her head and looked at him with her blank yellow eyes. “Really?”

Rohan shrugged. “I mean, I’m not eager to be best friends, but I also don’t want him worried that I’m going to walk down the hall and pull his testicles out of his body through his ears.”

“That is a very vivid description of vengeance to come from a man with no hard feelings.”

“I’m still an il’Drach Hybrid, you know. Our emotional milieu is mostly made up of hard feelings.

“That is your mantra? ‘Be nice’? Not, for example, ‘Be good’?”

“Yeah. Once you try to do the right thing, the moral thing, you find all sorts of ways to justify whatever. Oh, this action here is cruel, but it’s for the greater good, so it’s right. But you can’t argue with nice.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)