First Line Fridays: “A Thousand Beginnings and Endings” edited by Ellen Oh & Elsie Chapman

First Line Fridays is a weekly feature hosted by Hording Books.

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It’s a few days before the release of A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. I finished this a book a week ago and I enjoyed it so much! If you haven’t yet read it, here’s a link to my review of the anthology.

Today on FLF I will be featuring the first lines of the 15 stories featured in the collection. I they intrigue you enough to check out the book because, I swear, this is one of the best short story anthology I’ve ever read.

🍂 Forbidden Fruit by Roshani Chokshi

Do not trust the fruit of Maria Makiling.

If you find your pockets full of thorny fruit, throw it out of the window. Do not taste it. Do not stroke the rind and wonder at the impossible pink of its color…not meat pink or tongue pink but that delicate rose of dawn pushing herself from the arms of the night. It is not a color of this world.

🍂 Olivia’s Table by Alyssa Wong

Olivia blew into town with the storm and headed straight for the Grand Silver Hotel. Pots and containers of sauces and marinade clattered in the trunk of her Toyota, packed in with the rest of the groceries she’d brought from Phoenix. 

🍂 Steel Skin by Lori M. Lee

Yer’s father was an android.

🍂 Still Star-crossed by Sona Charaipotra

I knew I shouldn’t have come.

🍂 The Counting of Vermillion Beads by Aliette De Bodard

Seen from afar, the wall fills up Cam and Tam’s world like skin over a healed wound.

🍂 The Land of the Morning Calm by E.C. Myers

It’s been five years since my mother died, but I still use the back door when I come home from school. Mom used it as her office because it was the one place the menfolk wouldn’t disturb her.

🍂 The Smile by Aisha Saeed

The musicians warmed up their strings, tablas, and lutes in the marble dance hall, steps from the room where my maidservant Simran was finishing lacing the bodice of my silk dress. A sheer curtain separated us from view.

🍂 Girls Who Twirl and Other Dangers by Preeti Chhibber

There are three reasons I know fall is awesome: the most anticipated Bollywood movies are always on a fall release schedule, my mom starts practicing her delicious party dishes, and it means it’s time for Navrātri!

🍂 Nothing Into All by Renée Ahdieh

Many years ago, a girl and a boy lived with their parents in a bark-shingled home near a flowing river’s edge. No more than twelve moons separated them in age. The boy was called Chun, and his sister’s name was Charan.

🍂 Spear Carrier by Rahul Kanakia

During my first day I was in shock. A many-armed demon-thing brought me to this huge field that was full of millions of people and alien creatures and tents and structures.

🍂 Code of Honor by Melissa de la Cruz

I almost murdered a girl yesterday.

🍂 Bullet, Butterfly by Elsie Chapman

The latest illness and its slow recovery left them all bored and restless, and Liang ended up losing the bet.

🍂 Daughter of the Sun by Shveta Thakrar

Savitri Mehta’s parents had named her for light. For sunshine and ingots and all things gold. Above all, for the sun god Savitr, or Surya, whose blessing marked Savitri at the moment of her birth: behind her rib cage, she carried not a beating heart but a ball of Surya’s own blazing yellow light.

🍂 The Crimson Cloak by Cindy Pon

All the storytellers get it wrong.

🍂 Eyes Like Candlelight by Julie Kagawa

Takeo stood at the top of the rice terraces watching his mother and sisters wade through the ankle-high water, shoving green rice-seedlings into the mud in neat rows. From his vantage point, he could see the whole village, its thatched-roof huts scattered haphazardly along both sides of the stream that wound lazily through the valley, sheltered on three side by mountains and dark forest pines.

Phew 💦💦💦 That was a long one! But, totally worth it, right? I hope you enjoyed going through all these first lines as I had when I was reading them.

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What’s the first line of your current read? Share it with me!