There’s something intangible yet immutable about a great opening line. Below are some of our favourite opening lines from contemporary novels, though – of course – a few classics have snuck in too.

The Secret History by 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 our situation.’

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.

– Tracy Hwang, bookseller at Readings Emporium
– Amanda Rayner, bookseller at Readings Carlton

A Start In Life by Anita Brookner

‘Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.’

Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry, she seeks not salvation but enlightenment. Yet in revisiting her past, she wonders if perhaps there might not be a chance for a new start in life…

– Mike Shuttleworth, bookseller at Readings Hawthorn

The Dry Heart by Natalie Ginzburg

‘Tell me the truth, I said. What truth? he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what it was: a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it and himself leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief. I shot him between the eyes.’

This unsentimental story transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don’t more wives kill their husbands?

– Tye Cattanach, bookseller at Readings Carlton
– Baz Ozturk, bookseller at Readings Emporium

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

‘Her name was Jenny Hauser and every Wednesday I put pickles on her pizza.’

Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl, our dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighbourhood. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange and heartbreaking ways.

– Jessica Strong, digital content coordinator

Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

‘I am a woman who wakes up hungry. Tom touched only coffee till noon. You do what you’re capable of at some point, so Tom and I left each other. I wanted breakfast, he wanted liberty, and who could blame either of us.’

Nell Barber is not having a good year. She’s broken up with her boyfriend, Tom. She’s been expelled from her botany PhD program at Columbia following the laboratory death of one of her colleagues. And, most significantly, she may be losing the interest of Professor Joan Kallas.

– Tristen Brudy, bookseller at Readings Carlton

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima

‘“Sleep well, dear.” Noboru’s mother closed his bedroom door and locked it. What would she do if there were a fire? Let him out first thing – she had promised herself that. But what if the wooden door warped in the heat or paint clogged the keyhole? The window? There was a gravel path below; besides, the second floor of this gangling house was hopelessly high.’

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call ‘objectivity’.

– Molly Smith, bookseller at Readings Emporium

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

‘First the coloursThen the humans.That’s usually how I see things.Or at least, how I try.Here is a small fact: You are going to die.’

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery.

– Chris Gordon, programming and events manager

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.’

This is the story of Cassandra, precocious and charming, who begins a journal detailing her life with her bohemian family in a crumbling old castle. On the cusp of adulthood, Cassandra meets the family’s growing challenges of poverty and decay with indefatigable humour and insight. However, her life is turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love.

– Jackie Tang, editor of Readings Monthly

Sula by Toni Morrison

‘In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.’

As girls, Nel and Sula shared each other’s discoveries and dreams in the poor black mid-West of their childhood. Then Sula ran away to live her dreams and Nel got married. Ten years later Sula returns and no one, least of all Nel, trusts her.

– Rosalind McClintock, marketing manager

The Year the Maps Changed by Danielle Binks

‘Maps lie.Or at least they don’t always tell the truth.They’re like humans that way.’

Sorrento, Victoria, 1999. Fred’s family is a mess. Her mother died when she was six and she’s been raised by her Pop and adoptive father, Luca, ever since. But now Pop’s had to go away, and Luca’s girlfriend Anika and her son have moved in. More and more it feels like a land-grab for family and Fred is the one being left off the map.

– Angela Crocombe, online children’s specialist

More Than This by Patrick Ness

‘Here is the boy, drowning.’

A boy called Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he is here? And where is this place?

– Xiao-Xiao Kingham, bookseller at Readings Kids

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

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

When Esther Greenwood wins an internship on a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther’s life begins to slide out of control.

– Jo Di Mattia, bookseller at Readings Carlton

The Hobbit by 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-hold, and that means comfort.’

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey.

– Aurelia Orr, bookseller at Readings Kids

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

‘In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.’

Sophie Hatter catches the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste and is put under a spell. Deciding she has nothing more to lose, she makes her way to the moving castle that hovers on the hills above Market Chipping. But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the souls of young girls…

– Jackie Tang, editor of Readings Monthly

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

‘The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say. About anything.’

Imagine you’re the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think. Imagine you don’t fit in with their plans…Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run…

– Lian Hingee, digital marketing manager

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

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

Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalises society and family alike. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Konstantin Levin, a man striving to find contentment and meaning to his life

– Amanda Rayner, bookseller at Readings Carlton

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion, illustrated by Margaret Bly Graham

‘Harry was a white dog with black spots who liked everything,except…having a bath.’

Harry is a black and white dog who hates having a bath – so when he sees his owner with the dreaded bath, he runs away. But this time – Harry gets so dirty that his owners don’t recognise him anymore.

– Mike Shuttleworth, bookseller at Readings Hawthorn