First Lines: Sam Thomas

The crowd cried out for the witch’s blood, and the hangman obliged.

The Witch Hunter’s Tale

Sam Thomas

First Lines: John Kennedy Toole

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

First Lines: B. Traven

The bench on which Dobbs was sitting was not so good.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

B. Traven

First Lines: Anne Tyler

In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job.

Noah’s Compass

Anne Tyler

First Lines: Colm Toibin

Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead—familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up.

The Master

Colm Toibin

First Lines: Mark Twain

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

First Lines: J.R.R. Tolkien

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

The Lord of the Rings

J.R.R. Tolkien

First Lines: Booth Tarkington

Major Amberson had "made a fortune" in 1873, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then.

The Magnificent Ambersons

Booth Tarkington

First Lines: Donna Tartt

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of the situation.

The Secret History

Donna Tartt

First Lines: Leo Tolstoy

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

First Lines: Mark Twain

“Tom!"

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

First Lines: Henry David Thoreau

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbour, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

First Lines: J.R.R. Tolkien

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.

The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien

First Lines: Hunter S. Thompsons

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson

First Lines: Anne Tyler

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

Back When We Were Grownups

Anne Tyler

First Lines: Leo Tolstoy

Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist - I really believe he is Antichrist - I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my "faithful slave," as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you - sit down and tell me all the news.

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy