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The Last Place on Earth

Tracy Kidder

‘The living-room windows begin to reflect the lights on the plastic Christmas tree, and the view through those windows is fading, the woods growing thicker, the birches glowing in the dusk.’

Little America

T. Coraghessan Boyle

‘All he wanted was a quarter, fifty cents, a dollar maybe. The guy was a soft touch, absolutely–the softest.’

L,U,C,I,E

Nadine Gordimer

‘I correct the spelling because I’m a lawyer and I’m accustomed to precision in language; in legal documents the displacement of a comma can change the intention expressed in a sentence and lead to new litigation.’

Memorial

Tobias Wolff

‘B.D. carried certain objects.’

Under Ice

Iain Banks

‘Andy runs out across the ice.‘

The Brass Bar

Louis de Bernières

‘In the late seventies I was desperately attempting to avoid having a career by doing what I supposed were 'real' jobs.‘

Born Again

Anne Billson

‘I had no time for vices.‘

Listed for Trial

Tibor Fischer

‘He didn't like attending County Hall.‘

Lessons in Inhaling

Esther Freud

‘Lisa was meeting her father for supper.‘

Sharps and Flats

Alan Hollinghurst

‘The first boy I was in love with was called Mark Lyle.‘

The Gourmet

Kazuo Ishiguro

‘And I am informed it is a very reliable ghost, as ghosts go.‘

Failing to Fall

A.L. Kennedy

‘This is the one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear: it will happen.‘

Reference Points

Philip Kerr

‘It was eating oysters, four hundred of the bivalve sons-of-bitches, that finally killed my father, in a theatre-bar off St Martin's Lane.‘

Letters from Wellfleet

Adam Lively

‘I promised you an account of the town's musical life.‘