Arthur Otinger

“The face that was engulfed in sadness just a few moments ago was now having a diabolical glow.”
― Rebecca Harlem, The Pink Cadillac

“Mary’s hands clenched. She’d been through fire, what with a murder, and white supremacists. And what about Caroline, who had gone undercover to rescue the Scroll’s Key Keeper? Where were the College’s thanks for that?”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“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

“Valerie watched him pull away before turning to go inside. Her feelings
were a painful contradiction. On the one hand, she was deathly afraid
of a man whom she was so attracted to as to barely be able to maintain
control when she was around him, on the other hand, that very attraction
and loss of control signaled what she had longed for her whole life,
someone she could fall irretrievably in love with. She was delicately balanced
on the tightrope of some of her most basic personality traits and
her deepest desires. It was a precarious trap for her, and one she wasn’t
going to be able to easily resolve. Unfortunately, the result for Jeremy
was a seesaw of her reactions to him.
What the hell am I thinking, she asked herself as she slowly closed her
apartment door. For now, her fears were winning the battle against her
heart.”
― Jody Summers, The Mayan Legacy