This month, we’ve got orphans, a biker underground, and much more. To submit a first line, email booklifeeditor@booklife.com.

FireFangled

Rory Surtain

“I was a House of War, waiting to be reborn.”


Helen’s Orphans

Ron Fritsch

“Helen, the queen of Sparta, often came to visit the orphanage I grew up in.”


Murder in Dubrovnik

Zoran Basich

“Marko Bell spent a month working his contacts in the biker underground.”


Through a Forest of Stars

David C. Jeffrey

“If there was a place within the realm of the living where a traveler could pause to behold the stark geography of death, to examine its terrain from behind a transparent veil so thin that the slightest accident—or deliberate act—would tear it asunder and deliver him into that eternal waste land, Aiden Macallan had found it.”


The Tree of Knowledge

Daniel G. Miller

“Wally McCutcheon eased into the creaky chair at the security desk of the Bank of Princeton.”