In praise of January and new beginnings, workshops this month focus on best opening lines in books. Note the recurring theme; there may be trouble ahead! Here are just a few of my favorites:

“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”

—Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

‘It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York’

—The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)

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

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)

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

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)

“Where’s Papa going with that axe?”

Charlotte’s Web by EB White.

“There is a bullet in my chest, less than a centimeter from my heart.”

A Cold Day in Paradise by Steve Hamilton, 1998.

“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.”

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls