Category: The Friday 56 Page 2 of 15

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

from Page 56% of:

The Worst Man by Jon Rance

Wilf sits at the table staring blankly at his plate, and it’s obvious that eventually one of us will have to ask the burning question, and right now all eyes are on me. I clear my throat.

‘Everything all right?’ I say, trying to sound as casual as possible even though it’s glaringly obvious that everything is not okay. This is one of those moments in life that requires great seriousness and sensitivity and probably shouldn’t be handled in a pub after ten pints of beer.

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

from Page (55 and) 56 of:

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

We work. My work is my life. I pray for work. I hate my work. I need my work. I pull/push meat for the buzzing saws.

I halve the body.

The saw eats gladly.

Two halves a body.

I have a body.

I halve a body.

I do the same. I do the same.

The saw goes like God told it not to stop. All us on the line work like this. The saw is strong and hot.

Do the job. Do it right.

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

from Page 56 (and 57) of:

A Necromancer Called Gam Gam by Adam Holcombe

“We want to make a bit of a spectacle, so we’re taken seriously,” she said, then with a wink, reached into the horse. Well, “into” was relative to who was watching, but Mina could see past the illusion, and she saw the necromancer pull a gem from between the horse’s ribs. When it was free, the horse’s true form showed. “What better way to do that than two ladies riding in on skeletal horses?”

Mina looked into the abyssal pits of Sebastian’s eyes and figured Gam Gam had a point.

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

I’m stuck in Towel Day mode, apparently…
from Page 56 (and tiny bit of 57) of:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Away in front of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked down the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to do that because they’d built it that way.

Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty metres long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mindbogglingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which carried within it the most brain-wrenching device ever conceived, a device which made this starship unique in the history of the galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named – the Heart of Gold.

‘Wow,’ said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn’t much else he could say.

He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press.

‘Wow.’

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

from Page 56 of:

Questland by Carrie Vaughn

A mechanical whump vibrated under our feet.

“What was that?” Almonte said, moving her rifle to the ready.

A metallic slam clanged resoundingly, then another. A sudden, horrified realization came over me, and I looked back a her, wide-eyed.

“You know,” I said, “I didn’t check for traps.”

The ground under us dropped away, dirt and debris falling into a pit along with all of us.

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

from Page (55 and) 56 of:

The Manifestor Prophecy by Angie Thomas

“Good thing the museum is depicting them accurately,” Dad says. “Accurate representation matters when it comes to real folks.”

Uh, I don’t think this is about the museum anymore.

“Cal, I told you LORE was already mad that I wanted to write the books. I couldn’t write everything exactly how tt happened.”

Geez, a whole government didn’t want him to write his life story?

“Did you or did you not write the school a lot like ours, Ty?” Dad says.

“Yeah.”

“And Chloe is a lot like Zoe?”

“Yeah.”

“And the Einan character is like Roho?”

Uncle Ty sighs. “Yes.”

“Then you could’ve written a better depiction of me,”

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

from Page 56 of:

The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow

Not a good night to be out on the open ocean.

Too much swell and chop, and the roll coming out of the storm keeps working the boat back toward the coast.

Frank hacks it out about ten miles into the ocean anyway. He fished these waters hundreds of times as a kid. He knows every current and channel and he knows just where he wants to dump the bodies so if they ever come to shore, it’ll be in Mexico.

The federales will figure it’s a dope deal gone bad, and put about two minutes’ work into solving the case.

Still, it’s a bitch out here tonight, with the wind and rain and the roll, and Frank’s biggest fear is that he’ll run into a Coast Guard vessel that will stop him and want to know what kind of jackass is taking a boat out on a night like this.

I’ll just play stupid, Frank thinks.

Which shouldn’t be hard, given my track record tonight.

His neck hurts from the wire. But pain is good, he figures, seeing as how by all rights he shouldn’t be feeling anything.

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it.

from Page 56 (and 57) of:

Ozark Dogs by Eli Cranor

Evail loved his big brother, a bond that went even deeper than blood. In a way, Rudnick was the start of everything all those nights in the field, the kits’ calls playing out scared and lonely. It was just like the hunting. Rudnick had simply asked if Evail would do it, and then he did. Again and again. For a while, the brothers went hunting almost every night. It was the summer before Rudnick’s senior year in high school. Evail on the cusp of sixteen.

And then Rudnick was gone, Evail went to prison, and everything changed. The darkness shifted and the calls howled from the inside out. When Evail returned, he took to the field alone, no longer using the recordings, opting instead for the darkness, working along the tree lines and stalking his prey. He wore the hides of the creatures he’d taken. A mass of fur and bone death-still in the shadows, Evail crouching, waiting, the gun barrel blue in the night. Coyotes were loyal and thick as thieves. When one went down, the others came running. It wasn’t until there was a pile of blood-warm bodies that the big boy would finally come sauntering up from the shadows. The alpha. Rudnick had always been the alpha. He wasn’t anything anymore.