Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third.

(Jodi Picoult, Second Glance, 2003)
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I was six years old the first time I disappeared.

(aus: Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts, 2005)

On the second Thursday of the month, Mrs. Dombrowski brings her dead husband to our therapy group.

(Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller, 2013)

1. Satz des Prologs:

The old woman fills her lungs with the crisp autumn air, throws open her arms and exhales a flawless top C.

1. Satz des ersten Kapitels:

Today's pool temperature is 6.3; a little warmer than a mortuary, but then I am not quite dead yet.

(aus: Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, 2018)

Now that I'm dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many of my wishes it failed to come true. I know only a few factoids that I didn't know before. Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.

(Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad, 2005)

Charles Bramwell Brockley was travelling alone and without a ticket on the 14.42 from London Bridge to Brighton. The Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin in which he was travelling teetered precariously on the edge of the seat as the train juddered to a halt at Haywards Heath. But just as it toppled forward towards the carriage floor it was gathered up by a safe pair of hands.

(Ruth Hogan, The Keeper of Lost Things, 2016)
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My right-hand neighbor thinks I'm crazy, so she brings me cheese.

(aus: Kathy Reichs, Two Nights, 2017)