Cindy B.

“Then men were not dependent upon women after all, as she had thought—women were dependent upon men. Boys were frail, boys cried, boys were tender, boys were helpless. Mary Anne knew this, because she was the eldest girl among her three young brothers, and the baby Isobel did not count at all. Men also were frail, men also cried, men also were tender, men also were helpless. Mary Anne knew this because her stepfather, Bob Farquhar, was all of these things in turn. Yet men went to work. Men made the money—or frittered it away, like her stepfather, so that there was never enough to buy clothes for the children, and her mother scraped and saved and stitched by candlelight, and often looked tired and worn. Somewhere there was injustice. Somewhere the balance had gone. “When I’m grown up I shall marry a rich man,” she said.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Mary Anne

“According to my Glendale high school days, the road along the ocean that stretched from San Diego to San Francisco was staked out in the 1780’s or so by the Spanish. The Spanish were afraid the French or Russians would claim the land along the coast first. France had picked up a big chunk of land between the Mississipi and the Rocky Mountains. Russia was coming south across the Berring Sea and down the coast from what would eventually be Alaska. The first big push to stake out the royal road stopped at what became Los Angeles. The whole point of the road was to set up a link between the Franciscan missions in California.”
― Stuart M. Kaminsky, Murder On The Yellow Brick Road

“Being invisible had its advantages.”
― DiAnn Mills, High Treason

“From Chapter 1:

Isabel went into the kitchen. Their butterball of a beagle wagged his tail and peered up at her with his soulful brown eyes. He was eager to get his reward for looking cute as a button, and he knew she was a pushover.”
― Ed Lynskey, To Dye For