First Lines: Eva Ibbotson

Kidnapping children is never a good idea; all the same, sometimes it has to be done.

Island of the Aunts

Eva Ibbotson

First Lines: John Irving

Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.

The World According to Garp

John Irving

First Lines: John Irving

The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born - we weren't even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Franny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg.

The Hotel New Hampshire

John Irving

First Lines: John Irving

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving