Samella Florida

“It was Merlin’s first time in the Reform Club but he could see instantly it was cast in a similar mould to the various other London gentlemen’s clubs he had been obliged to visit before in the course of his duties. He had never been able to understand the attraction of these gloomy places, where upper-class, middle-aged and elderly men hid themselves away behind rustling newspapers or dozed in dark rooms full of heavy leather armchairs splattered with cigarette ash and drink stains.”
― Mark Ellis, The French Spy

“This evening I spied her in the back orchard. I decided to sacrifice one of my better old shirts and carried it out to her. The weather’s been warm of late. Buds on the apple trees are ready to burst. Usually by this time of the year, at that time of day, the back orchard is full of screaming children. Damut’s boys were the only two. They were on the terrace below her, running through the slanted sunlight, chasing each other around tree trunks. She stood above them, like a merlin watching rabbits play.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“Inseparable as sibs—strained as a couple.”
― Andri E. Elia, Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel

“He turned and smiled resolvedly at her.  He knew no one else would ever understand that for Arvellen, sex only had to do with friendship and of pleasing one another, and nothing at all to do with what she considered to be the silly confines of love or marriage.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing