Extracts

I kiss my wife on the lips. Her breath smells of last night’s toothpaste mixed with sleep.

Waste not, want not.

I was born dead.

‘Better go on the uphill side of those boulders.’ Ben Coles’ father pointed. ‘Safest way.’

THREE AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER

Economics is mass psychology.

When he’s fifteen, he and his mother move to a new town and he starts at a new school. It’s not an easy age to do that – the social order of the school is already well established and he has some difficulty making friends.

I almost expected to see my doppelgänger sprinting across town pursued by a mob, but I guess things didn’t work that way. — RANSOM RIGGS, MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN

On the way to Averley, Martha was aware of the distance between her and her mother.

It’s been a while since I wrote, I know that. I’m ever so sorry.

Try a clue from Minute Cryptic.

The day before we kill Meredith Graffam is calm and blue.

Off the field, through the tunnel, and into the All Blacks’ shed at the Parc Olympique Lyonnais in France. It was here that one of the most momentous occasions of my career would take place.

Blood drips into my right eye. Once. Twice. It’s blinding and searing at the same time.

Dead gray skin, rotted away to show off the stringy sinews of muscle below. Sunken, rubbery sockets around sparkling hazel eyes. Those were actually hers, though; they moved as she studied herself.

It happened to people, this longing, emerging from an unknown void, grabbing the soul with a firm hand, the urge to simply let go and sink to the depths of the ocean.