I cannot wait to return back from my business trip and dive into this one. It's part of the Beacon Hill Mystery series, and I haven't read this sort before, but I think I might like it, just based on the first few paragraphs of the book. What do you think?

Boston: The January thaw, 1892. A watery gloom hung over the city like a shroud.

Day after day of heavy, relentless rain had threatened to submerge the new-filled Back Bay, and the miniature lagoon in the Public Garden had overflowed its banks. On Beacon Hill, streams of water pounded the brick sidewalks and cascaded down the narrow streets, splashing women's voluminous skirts, splattering horses with mud up to their blinkers. People clung to their firesides, waiting for winter to return.

In the South End, Officer Joseph Flynn of the Boston police was making his rounds. he had been on the force for less than a year, and he was eager to do well in this job which until recently would not have been given to an Irishman like himself. When he saw the shape on the ground halfway down the alley behind West Brookline Street, he paused. Because it was night, and very dark in that district, he could not immediately tell what the shape was. A heap of refuse, he thought, or a pile of rags. Or, at worst, some drunken tramp from the nearby railroad yards.

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly featured hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share your selection from the book you're reading.

[A little long on the entry this time around for First Chapter, First Paragraph, but I am confident that this will intrigue you to consider reading this new Stephen King venture. If you are new to Stephen King (as I am in the past couple of months), I think you will enjoy this intro to his writing].

I have never been what you'd call a crying man.

My ex-wife said that my "nonexistent emotional gradient" was the main reason she was leaving me (as if the guy she met in her AA meetings was beside the point). Christy said she supposed she could forgive me not crying at her father's funeral; I had only known him for six years and couldn't understand what a wonderful, giving man he had been (a Mustang convertible as a high school graduation present, for instance). But then, when I didn't cry at my own parents' funerals - they died just two years apart, Dad of stomach cancer and Mom of a thunderclap heart attack while walking on a Florida beach - she began to understand the nonexistent gradient thing. I was "unable to feel my feelings," in AA-speak.

"I have never seen you shed tears," she said, speaking in the flat tones people use when they are expressing the absolute final deal-breaker in a relationship. "Even when you told me I had to go to rehab or you were leaving." This conversation happened about six weeks before she packed her things, drove them across town, and moved in with Mel Thompson. "Boy meets girl on the AA campus" - that's another saying they have in those meetings.

I didn't cry when I saw her off. I didn't cry when I went back inside the little house with the great big mortgage, either. The house where no baby had come, or now ever would. I just lay down on the bed that now belonged to me alone, and put my arm over my eyes, and mourned.

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly feature hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share your selection from the book you're reading.

I'm considering reading this one. This was published in 1997 and I always enjoyed the premise of the 1998 movie, What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams, Annabella Sciorra, and Cuba Gooding, Jr., but I particularly loved the beautiful visual effects within the film. What do you think? Have you read this one?

"Begin at the beginning" is the phrase. I cannot do that. I begin at the end - the conclusion of my life on earth. I present it to you as it happened - and what happened afterward.

A note about the text. You have to read my writing, Robert. This account may seem unlike it. The reason - I am limited by my transcriber. My thoughts must travel through her mind. I cannot surmount that. All the grains will not pass through the filter. Understand if I appear to oversimplify. Especially at first.

Both of us are doing the best we can.

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly feature hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share your selection from the book you're reading.

After deciding he would get nothing of interest from the two old men who comprised the entire staff of The Weekly Islander, the feature writer from the Boston Globe took a look at his watch, remarked that he could just make the one-thirty ferry back to the mainland if he hurried, thanked them for their time, dropped some money on the tablecloth, weighted it down with the salt shaker so the stiffish onshore breeze wouldn't blow it away, and hurried down the stone steps from The Grey Gull's patio dining area toward Bay Street and the little town below. Other than a few cursory gleeps at her breasts, he hardly noticed the young woman sitting between the two old men at all.

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly feature hosted byBibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share your selection from the book you're reading.

The rocks glow red above the sea, embers of the day's heat below our balcony at the Hötel Marie.

Down here, on the southern rim of the country, out of the mistral's slipstream, the evening drops as viscous liquid: slow and heavy and silent. When we first arrived, the stifling sultriness made sleep impossible; night closed in like the lid of a tomb.

Now, in the few hours I do sleep, I dream of all we have left behind: the hamlet on the hill and the whispering trees. Then, with a start, I'm awake again, remembering.

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly feature hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. To participate, share your selection from the book you're reading.

This is my first time participating in Bibliophile by the Sea's First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intro. I'm reading A Clash Of Kings, the second book in George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones series (my review of A Game of Thrones coming soon).

There is some fantasy which is why I initially shied away from it, but as I read it now, I am learning that while it's there, it is nowhere near what I expected, nor is it unnerving in the least. It is a medieval saga through and through, sprinkled with wonderful fantastical elements. Take a look at the first two paragraphs of A Clash of Kings...

The comet's tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky.

The maester stood on the windswept balcony outside his chambers. It was here the ravens came, after long flight. Their droppings speckled the gargoyles that rose twelve feet tall on either side of him, a hellhound and a wyvern, two of the thousand that brooded over the walls of the ancient fortress. When first he came to Dragonestone, the army of stone grotesques had made him uneasy, but as the years passed he had grown used to them. Now he thought of them as old friends The three of them watched the sky together with foreboding.

While George RR Martin takes liberties in the spelling of names, words, etc. (i.e., "Maester" instead of "Master), it just flows. I love every second of this. And am so mad at myself that it's taken me this long to pick this series up.

Happy Reading,
Natalie, the Coffee and a Book Chick