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The Barracks Thief

Tobias Wolff

‘What sort of a man would turn his back on his own kind?’

Money

Martin Amis

‘How did I get like this? It can’t just be the booze and all the junk food I put away. I must have been booked in for this a long time ago.’

Blow Your House Down

Pat Barker

‘There was a moment of complete silence, one of those inexplicable, simultaneous pauses in conversation that come over groups of people in a crowded room.’

Emma Bovary’s Eyes

Julian Barnes

‘Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are brown: reliability and ordinariness. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler.‘

Foreign Buddies

Ursula Bentley

‘She had to explain this, and the thought crossed her mind to dwell on this personal note, to put out a feeler to test Christina's reaction to the idea of sexual experiment.’

Extracts From The Journal Of Flying Officer J

William Boyd

‘The squadron left today for the city. The mess cold and sad, Verschoyle, with uncharacteristic generosity, said I could keep the monoplane.’

Rose on the broken

Maggie Gee

‘They're only wild flowers. I wish I could buy you real roses. But to her they became the real roses, frail petals, each centre a sun. And they smelled of sun and beginnings, as clear and thin as the water.’

Obsessions

Alan Judd

‘She responded to him with a mixture of haughty refusal and a suggestive acknowledgement, a grudging yielding which was what the play demanded.’

Trout Day By Pumpkin Light

Adam Mars-Jones

‘He is as old as sin, if sin is twenty-six.’

The Fortune-Teller

Shiva Naipaul

‘While she may have given up counting those broken vows, she had not given up making them.’

Ol’ Black Rock

Philip Norman

‘But here, on a three-legged stool in Tennessee, the tape recorder faltered, as if at the behest of draughts, as if called on to register psychic disturbance.’

The Miraculous Cairn

Christopher Priest

‘The island of Seevl lies like a dark shadow over my memories of childhood.’

The Golden Bough

Salman Rushdie

‘The same face. At every interview the same bland features. It could not be – but it was.’

The Five Of Us

Lisa St Aubin de Terán

‘The freezing of the money signalled the beginning of virtual penury. It also signalled the beginning of our fame.’