This month, we’ve got orphans, a biker underground, and much more. To submit a first line, email booklifeeditor@booklife.com.
FireFangled
Rory Surtain
“I was a House of War, waiting to be reborn.”
Helen’s Orphans
Ron Fritsch
“Helen, the queen of Sparta, often came to visit the orphanage I grew up in.”
Murder in Dubrovnik
Zoran Basich
“Marko Bell spent a month working his contacts in the biker underground.”
Through a Forest of Stars
David C. Jeffrey
“If there was a place within the realm of the living where a traveler could pause to behold the stark geography of death, to examine its terrain from behind a transparent veil so thin that the slightest accident—or deliberate act—would tear it asunder and deliver him into that eternal waste land, Aiden Macallan had found it.”
The Tree of Knowledge
Daniel G. Miller
“Wally McCutcheon eased into the creaky chair at the security desk of the Bank of Princeton.”