Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon
Two hours before dawn I sat in the peeling kitchen and smoked one of Sarah’s cigarettes, listening to the maelstrom and waiting. Millsport had long since put itself to bed, but out in the Reach currents were still snagging on the shoals, and the sound came ashore to prowl the empty streets. There was a fine mist drifting in from the whirlpool, falling on the city like sheets of muslin and fogging the kitchen windows.
Chemically alert, I inventoried the hardware on the scarred wooden table for the fiftieth time that night. Sarah’s Heckler & Koch shard pistol glinted dully at me in the low light, the butt gaping open for its clip. It was an assassin’s weapon, compact and utterly silent. The magazines lay next to it. She had wrapped insulating tape around each one to distinguish the ammunition; green for sleep, black for the spider venom load. Most of the clips were black-wrapped. Sarah had used up a lot of green on the security guards at Gemini Biosys the previous night.
Harlan Coben: Deal Breaker
Otto Burke, the Wizard of Schmooze, raised his game another level.
‘Come on, Myron.,’ he urged with neoreligious fervor. ‘I’m sure we can come to an understanding here. You give a little. We give a little. The Titans are a team. In some larger sense I would like all of us to be a team. You included. Let’s be a real team, Myron. What do you say?’ Myron Bolitar steepled his fingers. He had read somewhere that steepled fingers made you look like a thoughtful person. He felt foolish.‘I’d like nothing more, Otto,’ he said, returning the pointless volley for the umpteenth time. ‘Really I would. But we’ve given as much as we can. It’s your turn now.’
Mark Billingham: Sleepyhead
Thorne hated the idea of coppers being hardened. A hardened copper was useless. Like hardened paint. He was just… resigned. To a down-and-out with a fractured skull and the word SCUM carved into his chest. To half a dozen Girl Guides decapitated courtesy of a drunken bus driver and a low bridge. And the harder stuff. Resigned to watching the eyes of a woman, who’s lost her son, gaze over as she gnaws her bottom lip and reaches absently for the kettle. Thorne was resigned to all this. And he was resigned to Allison Willetts.
‘Stroke of luck, really, sir.’He was resigned to having to think of this small girl-shaped thing, enmeshed in half a mile of medical spaghetti, as a breakthrough. A piece of good fortune. A stroke of luck. And she was barely even there. What was undeniably lucky was that they’d found her in the first place.
Eleanor Druse:The Journals of Elanor Druse - My Investigation of the Kingdom Hospital Incident
On December thirteenth of the year 2002, I was awakened in the wee-hour stillness of a winter night by my ringing telephone. At that hour, especially at my age, phone calls often amount to progress reports from the angel of death, whose duties include making unscheduled house calls in the dead of night and filling the obituaries with the names of my elderly friends. I expected that this was just such a call and was surprised to hear my son's voice instead.
Bobby works the night shift as an orderly at Kingdom Hospital here in Lewiston, Maine. He was calling from work, and I thought it might be about one of the hospice patients I visit from time to time. I do some volunteer work on Kingdom Hospital's sunshine ward. I go in once a week or so; I sit with the dying and make their final days less lonely, hold their hands, pray with them, read Swedenborg or William Blake to them - anything to help them make ready for their grand journeys. If they are adventurers or spiritualists, then I'm happy to be of service with my crystals, cards, or runes, or even with a séance if they are anxious to reach a friend or family member.”
Robert Jordan: The Path of Daggers
Etheniell had seen mountains lower than these misnamed Black Hills, great lopsided heaps of half-buried boulders, webbed with steep twisting passes. A number of those passes would have given a goat pause. You could travel three days through drought-withered forests and brown-grassed meadows without seeing a single sign of human habitation, then suddenly find yourself within half a day of seven or eight tiny villages, all ignorant of the world. The Black Hills were a rugged place fro farmers, away from the trade routes, and harsher now than usual. A gaunt leopard that sould have vanished at the sight of men watched from a steep slope, not forty paces away, as she rode past with her armored escort. Westward, vultures wheeled patient circles like an omen. Not a cloud marred the blood-red sun, yet there were clouds of a sort. When the warm wind blew, it raised walls of dust.
With fifty of her best men at her heels, Ethenielle rode unconcernedly, and unhurriedly. Unlike her near-legendary ancestor Surasa, she had no illusion that the weather would heed her wishes just because she held the Throne of the Clouds, while as for haste... Their carefully coded, closely guarded letters had agreed on the order or march, and that had been determined by each person's need to travel without attracting notice. Not an easy task. Some had thought it impossible.
Martha Wells: Wheel of the Infinite
Maskelle had been asking the Ancestors to stop the rain three days running now and, as usual, they weren't listening.
She stood on a little hill, surrounded by the heavy jungle that lined either side of the river of mud that had once been the road, and watched the wagons crawl painfully by. They were wooden and brightly painted, but the roofs hadn't been tarred in too long and she knew it was hardly any drier inside them than out. One of the oxen, straining to keep the wheels moving forward against the tide of mud, moaned loudly. I sympathize, Maskelle thought.
Anne Rice: Blood Canticle
I want to be a saint. I want to save souls by the millions. I want to do good far and wide. I want to fight evil! I want my life-sized statue in every church. I'm talking six feet tall, blond hair, blue eyes -.
Wait a second. Do you know who I am?
Anne Rice: Blackwood Farm
Lestat, if you find this letter in your house in the Rue Royale, and I do sincerely think you will find it - you'll know at once that I've broken your rules.
I know that New Orleans is off limits to Blood Hunters, and that any found there will be destroyed by you. And unlike many a rogue invader whom you have already dispatched, I understand your reasons. You don't want us to be seen by members of the Talamasca. You don't want a war with the venerable Order of Psychic Detectives, both for their sake and ours.
Clive Cussler: Valhalla Rising
They moved through the morning mist like ghosts, silent and eerie in phantom ships. Tall, serpentine prows arched gracefully on bow and stern, crowned with intricately carved dragons, teeth bared menacingly in a growl as if their eyes were piercing the vapor in search of victims. Meant to incite fear into the crew's enemies, the dragons were also believed to be protection against the evil spirits that lived in the sea.
The little band of immigrants had come across a hostile sea in long, elegantly shaped black hulls that skimmed the waves with the ease and stability of trout in a peaceful brook. Long oars reached from holes in the hulls and dipped into the dark water, pulling the ships through the waves. Their square red-and-white striped sails hung limp in the listless air. Small lapstrake boats twenty feet long and carrying extra cargo were tied to the sterns and towed behind.
Mario Puzo: The Family
The golden rays of the summer sun warmed the cobblestone streets of Rome as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia walked briskly from the Vatican to the three-story stucco house on the Piazza de Merlo where he'd come to claim three of his young children: his sons Cesare and Juan and his daughter Lucrezia, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. On this fortuitous day the vicechancellor to the Pope, the second most powerful man in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, felt especially blessed.
At the house of their mother, Vanozza Cattanei, he found himself whistling happily. As a son of the church he was forbidden to marry, but as a man of God he felt certain that he knew th Good Lord's plan. For did not the Heavenly Father create Eve to complete Adam, even in Paradise? So did it not follow that on this treacherous earth filled with unhappiness, a man needed the comfort of a woman even more? He'd had three previous children when he was a young bishop, but these last children he had sired, those of Vanozza, held a special place in his heart. They seemed to ignite in him the same high passions that she had. And even now, while they were still so young, he envisioned them standing on his shoulders, forming a great giant, helping him to unite the Papal States and extend the Holy Roman Catholic Church far across the world.
Yvon Desportes (Herausgeber): Semantik der syntaktischen Beziehungen - Akten des Pariser Kolloquium zur Erforschung des Althochdeutschen
Die Lexikalisierung nonverbaler Kommunikationskomponeneten in althochdeutschen literarischen Quellen
1. Theoretische Voraussetzungen
Gesprochene und geschriebene Sprache stellen zwei aufeinander bezogene, aber unterschiedlich gestaltete Sprachformen dar, bei denen sich nicht nur formale, sondern auch struckturelle Unterschiede feststellen lassen. Auf die struckturspezifischen Merkmale der gesprochenen Sprache gehen Sprachtheorien meistens nicht ein, und zwar vor allem deshalb, weil die Sprachwissenschaft sich hauptsächlich mit Sprache als rein verbalem Zeichensystem beschäftigt. Diese Einstellung hat zur Folge, daß der Unterschied zwischen gesprochener und geschriebener Sprache eigentlich nur - oder fast nur - auf die Ausdrucksseite zurückgeführt wird, während die Morphologie, die syntagmatischen Beziehungen, die lexikalisch-semantische Strucktur und sogar die Textebene ohne Berücksichtigung jener Eigenschaften untersucht und dargestellt werden, die zur Charakterisierung der gesprochenen Sprache dienen. Zwar hat es vor allem in den letzten Jahrzenten nicht an Vorschlägen gefehlt, die Sprache aus einem anderen Blickwinkel zu betrachten, doch ist nicht zu übersehen, daß das Interesse an den Bestandteilen der Sprechsprache, die nichtverbalen Charakter haben, außerhalb des Bereichs der Linguistik entstanden ist.
Es liegt auf der Hand, daß das Verhältnis zwischen gesprochener und geschriebener Sprache die Grundlage für meine Fragestellung bildet. Dabei soll jedoch nicht die äußere Gestalt der Sprachzeichen berücksichtigt werden, wie es etwa H. Paul im 21. Kapitel seiner Prinzipien tut, oder in Anlehnung an S. Sonderegger, der konstatiert: "Jede Kultursprache verfügt über ien Schriftsystem, wodurch gesprochene Sprache für kürzere oder längere Zeit in Form eines phonisch reproduzierbaren graphischen Zeichensystems festgehalten werden kann" Bei meinem Vorhaben geht es dagegen eher um funktionsbedingte als um formbedingte Bezihungen zwischen Sprechsprache und Schriftsprache.
Posie Graeme-Evans: The Innocent
Prelude
That winter had bitten down hard and early, the ground almost ringing as the horses stumbled against frozen clods on the track leading to the forest.
It was late afternoon and great clouds, bellies heavy with snow, were building into the west, crowding out the last light of the day. The wind was rising, too, and the man on the big roan horse was anxious. His exhausted animal stumbled again, and as he jerked its head up with a curse his eyes scanned the face of the darkening forest. This was not a good place to stop, too exposed, but he had no choice; he would have to wait for the messenger.
Shay McNeal: The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar - The Truth Behind the Romanov Mystery
Setting the Stage - Chaos and Fear
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Romanov dynasty had ruled Russia for 300 years and Tsar Nicholas II was considered one of the wealthiest men in the world. Russia was an immense country comprising one-sixth of the world's land mass. The Tsar's recent construction of a railway across Russia had met with great enthusiasm. The Trans-Siberian Railway from European Russia to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean was thought to be the key to unlocking the vast mineral treasures of Siberia, thereby leading to economic expansion that would be similar to that of the American west.
However, the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 ended disastrously for Russia. On the domestic front, the mishandling of street demonstrations resulted in the bloody massacres of December 1905 which severely damaged Nicholas's reputation. These events generated a feeling of great unease during the last years of Nicholas's reign and even caused his allies to start questioning his ability as a successful political and military leader of Russia. Yet we shall see that once the Bolsheviks had taken power, these same individuals in various governments would find themselves working secretly to save the Tsar and his family, almost as if that would have been the lesser of two evils. Some however did act out of fidelity for a loyal ally, while still others acted out of family and personal considerations. But first, to comprehend further Russia's gradual slide into revolution, the Tsar's abdication and the uncertain future of Nicholas and his family during their last days in Ekaterinburg, let us return to the years just before the February Revolution. During the war years the Russian government, as well as the personal lives of Nicholas and Alexandra, were becoming more tumultuous and contentious with each passing day.
Rosemary & Donald Crawford: Michael & Natasha - The Life and Love of the Last Tsar of Russia
The woman who was lying in one of the crowded wards of the Laënnec, a busy Paris charity hospital in the rue de Sevres, was just another dying patient and if the card at the end of her bed bore the name Princess Brasova, it meant little enough to the nurses bustling around her in this January of 1952. Many of the unfortunates who came to the hospital to die protested their dignity and even their once-upon-a-time grandeur.
To the yound nurses, the woman was just one more of those sad Russian émigrés with whom Paris had been all too familiar in the years since 1918. Once they had money, jewels, and position; more importantly, they had hope. Now that was all a very long time ago - a vanished age - and the world had moved on. There was little enough anyone could do for the woman anyway, save perhaps to ease the pain of the cancer which had taken the life from her face and arms long before it would take the life from her body. Her last address had been an attic at 11 rue Monsieur, only a few streets away from the hospital in the 7th arrondissement, on the Left Bank, but when she had become ill and unable any longer to look after herself, the fellow émigré who had let her live in the tiny boxroom had brusquely ordered her to leave. But for the hospital, she would have had nowhere to go. She was seventy-one, and death would be a mercy.
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
The Boy Who Lived
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Worst Birthday
Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr Vernon Dursley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his nephew Harry's room.
'Third time this week!' he roared across the table. 'If you can't control that owl, it'll have to go!'
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Owl Post
Harry Potter wa a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year. For another, he really wanted to do his homework, but was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a wizard.
It was nearly midnight, and he was lying on his front in bed, the blankets drawn right over his head like a tent, a torch in one hand and a large leather-bound book (A History of Magic, by Bathilda Bagshot) propped open against the pillow. Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, 'With-Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless - discuss'.
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The Riddle House
The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it 'the Riddle House', even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a finelooking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles aroung, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict and unoccupied.
The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was 'creepy'. Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The sotry had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was any more. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, and a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead.
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Dudley Demented
The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. Cars that were usually gleaming stood dusty in their drives and lawns that were once emerald green lay parched and yellowing - for the use of hosepipes had been banned due to drought. Deprived of their usual car-washing and lawn-mowing pursuits, the inhabitants of Privet Drive had retreated into the shade of their cool houses, windows thrown wide in the hope of tempting in a non-existent breeze. The only person left outdoors was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.
He was a skinny, black-haired, bespectacled boy, who had the pinched, slightly unhealthy look of someone who has grown a lot in a short space of time. His jeans were torn and dirty, his T-shirt baggy and faded, and the soles of his trainers were peeling away from the uppers. Harry Potter's appearance did not endear him to the nieghbours, who were the sort of people who thought scruffiness ought to be punishable by law, but as he had hidden himself behind a large hydrangea bush this evening he was quite invisible to passers-by. In fact, the only way he would be spotted was if his Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia stuck their heads out of the living-room window and looked straight down into the flowerbed below.
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Other Minister
It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. He was waiting for a call from the president of a far-distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anyhting else. The more he attempted to focus on the print on the page before him, the more clearly the Prime Minister could see the gloating face of one of his political opponents. This particular opponent had appeared on the news that very day, not nonly to enumerate all the terrible things that had happened in the last week (as though anyone needed reminding) but also to explain why each and every one of them was the government's fault.
The Prime Minister's pulse quickened at the very thought of these accusations, for they were neither fair nor true. How on earth was his government supposed to have stopped that bridge collapsing? It was outrageous for anybody to suggest that they were not spending enough on bridges. The bridge was less than ten years old, and the best experts were at a loss to explain why it had snapped cleanly in two, sending a dozen cars into the watery depths of the river below. And how dared anyone suggest that it was lack of policemen that had resulted in those two very nasty and well-publicised murders? Or that the government should have somehow foreseen the freak hurricane in the West Country that had caused so much damage to both people and property? And was it his fault that one of his Junior Ministers, Herbert Chorley, had chosen this week to act so peculiarly that he was now going to be spending a lot more time with his family?
