What's the 12th line of the 53rd page of the book you're currently reading? (or the couple of sentences either side)

[[deleted user]]

"That's a possibility," the policeman said, "Although we haven't found any droppings, it's certainly a possibility"

The Historian. E Kostova

[Ellie]

When the front door opened, the house exhaled a putrid smell, like a damp tomb

The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

[Hilary]

Hoping you mean the 53rd page, from Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter

Once they sat down, villagers tucked in with a vengeance, all the keener as the new facilities had been set up with funds, food and furniture taken from the village.

[[deleted user]]

Ooops! I do indeed.

[Laurel]

'Now, apparently, Budd had made such a success that he required a partner to cope with the flood of patients.'
Daniel Stashower - Teller of Tales: The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Are we making up our own story???

[[deleted user]]

sounds a bit like the Unconsoled so far!

[Laurel]

You know I did think the same thing....maybe this is how he gets his crazy ideas ;)

[[deleted user]]

"Speak up, please. How do you mean differently? Ropes? Vaulting poles?"
Picnic at Hanging Rock- Joan Lindsay

[MaureenAnn]

"She also noticed how coldly her father at last responded to Vronsky's bow..."
Anna Karenina

[Laurel]

"Neither of us could hear much of anything for a while after we left his house"
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

[[deleted user]]

Here are we having a Practice of Courtesy in honour of Our Lady and Monica hasn't even the common politeness to Our Lady to know what the great grace of the Immaculate Conception, her proudest title, means.

Frost in May- Antonia White

[[deleted user]]

"Lets get outta here. You stupid or somethin'? We gotta run." Of course he was right.

I Am Not Sydney Poitier - Percival Everett.

[[deleted user]]

"I see"

Smileys People - John Le Carre

[Ellie]

Tanneke chuckled. "Sometimes I think she's filling the house with children because she can't fill it with servants as she'd like"

Girl with a Pearl Earring

[Ellie]

How many have you had? Stepfathers?

Dolly - Susan Hill

[[deleted user]]

"High bloody time." He displayed that mixture of sentiment and coarseness, soppiness and vulgarity, mawkishness and brutality so common amongst my compatriots

Your Face Tomorrow Vol 1 - Javier Marias

[Tracey]

He woke her and told her he had been tied up, and probably would be for the rest of the week.

Die Trying (Jack Reacher 2) - Lee Child

[Sarah]

The ancient landed aristocracy, which had always had the upper hand in the country, felt its privileges threatened, and new wealth became a social stigma.

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende.

[[deleted user]]

Kina shells should be boiled for soup and fed to first-time mothers to stop the bleeding.

Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones

[[deleted user]]

Griselda knew what the offer cost him and generously declined to take advantage of it- stipulating only for a few minutes more repose before encasing her weary feet again in boots.

William- An Englishman Cicely Hamilton.

[[deleted user]]

The death of the ambitious Agamemnon, the furies of Orestes and the whole tragic tale of the family of the Atreids, persecuted by heaven, inspire in me a terror that modern events would be quite unable to arouse.

A Journey Around My Room - Xavier De Maistre

[Hilary]

Suddenly I was aware (x) how much money I had expended on women in restaurants and (y) how little joy had been afforded and (z) that I was too old and tired to be on the pull.

The Thought Gang - Tibor Fischer

[[deleted user]]

Obituary-sniggering goes on for another nine minutes, fifty-three seconds, then we roll out on to the road.

The Collector Collector - Tibor Fischer

[Hilary]

And again the slow smile spread over her face, the smile that never lightened the dullness of her narrow black eyes, and after a long time she said,
"Last year this time I was a slave in that house."

The Good Earth - Pearl S Buck

[[deleted user]]

MR COGBURN: Something like that.

True Grit Charles Portis

[[deleted user]]

But his father, who doubtless saw a symbolic value in the separation of the two Oxford criminals, would not have tolerated it, and as the first quarter's allowance was due on the first of September it was better to be patient.

Ariel - A Shelley Romance Andre Maurois

[Angela]

"You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass"

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

[Ellie]

'You know nothing, sir. My servants were perfectly honest and my finances quite secure, thank you!'

The Strangler Vine, MJ Carter

[Sarah]

"Meanwhile she kept a watchful eye on her brother's proceedings."

Deerbrook - Harriet Martineau

[[deleted user]]

A few cabbages and tufts of curly kale stood lopsided in the fields, their outer leaves burnt by the frost.

The Leper's Companions - Julia Blackburn

[Hilary]

I read through my letter, without permitting the truth-telling inhabitant of my mind to comment on the words written by the liar who also lodges there, preferring as I do that these two remain distant but courteous neighbours.

Restoration by Rose Tremaine

[[deleted user]]

I like that - can almost imagine Mr Pepy's writing that !!!!!

[Hilary]

There are some really great phrases in it. I'm very impressed with how she has developed the character, I feel as though I actually know him - Merivel that is!

[[deleted user]]

My saddle shall be adorned with priceless jewels, and as I ride through the city to the Viziers house, with slaves before me and servants behind me, men will bow reverently as I pass by them, greeting and blessing me.
The Thousand and One Nights

[[deleted user]]

"Stanley and Charlotte saw each other every week of their lives. And she had sinned, Frances"
"0h-sinned."
"Sinned"

Crusoe's,s Daughter - Jane Gardam

[Howard]

"I don't know why I'm rushing you so, but I'm trying to teach you crapheads to march."
Leon Uris, Battle Cry

[[deleted user]]

The two men continued their conversation outside on the street, first they went in the direction of Prenzlauer Allee for a while, and then Enno wanted to go back the other way, because it occurred to him that it might be better to try his luck with an old flame of his who went by the name of Tutti.
Alone in Berlin - Hans Fallada

[Howard]

He spoke a mixture of bad Hebrew and worse Yiddish with an upper-class British accent. Like the British officers he emulated, he had a cool, detached, and imperturbable manner.

Nelson DeMille, By the Rivers of Babylon

[Howard]

"I cannot see the barn. I said, I dont know how to worry. I don't know how to cry. I tried, but I can't. After a while the sound of the saw comes around, coming dark along the ground in the dust-dark."

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

[Howard]

"A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of 'politically equal,' or that free had once meant 'intellectually free,' than, for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to queen and rook."

Steven Pinker The Language Instinct (quoting George Orwell in an appendix to Nineteen Eighty-four.)

[[deleted user]]

Whenever I spied her in the distance, I hurtled down side streets, fell into doorways , hid under my hat if there was nothing else.
Grey Souls - Phillippe Claudel

[Howard]

I had switched the binoculars on, and a trickle of greenish light came from the eyepieces.

Neil Gaiman Smoke and Mirrors