Second frame of Chapter 3:

( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter:Uppark was to be of crucial importance to Wells over the next eleven years. To begin with it made a large contribution to his education. Later it became a place of refuge when his health was failing, where he was nursed, seen, prescribed for and advised by a first-rate London medical man, Dr William Collins. The ( Read more... )

Second frame of third page of first volume:

( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter:She was still seated in the armchair she had occupied last night, though now imprisoned beneath a settee that had closed over her like a lid. To her right, through the gap between the two clasped pieces of furniture, a piercing arrow of sunlight warmed her skin.
Steampunky novel set in an alternate Raj where Britain ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter:Prisoner release was probably on a par with policing reform as one of the most contentious issues that arose from the Good Friday Agreement (hereafter GFA). The political representatives of conflict-related prisoners such as Sinn Fein, the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) had ( Read more... )

First page of second chapter, with illustrations:

Kim Keller

Lorsque s'ouvre le premier volume d'Aldébaran, Kim Keller est une jeune fille âgée de 13 ans, écolière à la basic school d'Arena Blanca. Vingt-quatre albums plus tard, à la fin du troisième tome de Retour sur Aldébaran, le temps a passé : Kim a 26 ans. Elle est devenue une femme ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third story (“A Summer Night”):Upon one stage a woman sang.
Gosh. I had forgotten quite how good this is. It's not a novel; it's a sequence of linked short stories, with some internal inconsistencies, about the colonisation of Mars in 1999-2005, and then a coda in 2026 after disaster strikes Earth. Of course, the stories are more ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of Law 3:Over several weeks, Ninon de Lenclos, the most infamous courtesan of seventeenth-century France, listened patiently as the Marquis de Sevigné explained his struggles in pursuing a beautiful but difficult young countess. Ninon was sixty-two at the time, and more than experienced in matters of love; the marquis was a lad of ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third piece ("Jerusalem", a short story):He was glad to be out of it.
A collection of mostly minor stories, essays and speeches by Gaiman, including his first ever fiction publication in Imagine issue 14, which came out in May 1984, so I must have bought it at the time without realising its historical importance. A couple of ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter:Have you got everything you need for your child's upcoming birthday party? Is the big work project going as well as it could be? Will your gas hill be more than you can afford? When did your mother last call, is she OK? That ache in your hip hasn't gone away; are you sure it's not arthritis? That left-over mince ( Read more... )