DEAN KOONTZ

FROM CHAPTER 1:

IT'S ONLY LIFE. WE ALL GET THROUGH IT. Not all of us complete the journey in the same condition. Along the way, some lose their legs or eyes in accidents or altercations, while others skate through the years with nothing worse to worry about than an occasional bad-hair day.

I still possessed both legs and both eyes, and even my hair looked all right when I rose that Wednesday morning in late January. If I returned to bed sixteen hours later, having lost all of my hair but nothing else, I would consider the day a triumph. Even minus a few teeth, I'd call it a triumph…

London. Harper Collins Publishers. 2008. 359p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Billy Hayes with William Hoffer

FROM CHAPTER 1: “Some twelve miles west of Istanbul, beyond the outskirts of the city in the flat farm country near the coast, is Yesilkoy International Airport. Every day at noon Pan American Flight No. 1 arrives from Teheran. It sorts out its incoming and outgoing passengers, then takes off again at one to continue its journey to Frankfort, London, and New York. On October 6, 1970, feeling like an Ian Fleming character, with dark aviator sunglasses over my eyes and my trenchcoat collar pulled up to my ears, I watched Flight No. 1, a Boeing 707, land on the concrete runway. I pulled the brim of my lucky hat low over my eyes and eased up against the wall near the passenger check-in counter. A short pudgy man in his mid-thirties pushed past me…..”

NY. E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1977. 285p.