First Chapter Excerpts

You can read the first chapter of a book on Mostlyfiction.com to see if you might like to read the book, or if the author's style is easy for you to understand.

Here is the beginning of Fear of the Dark by Walter Mosely

1

I WAS EXPECTING ONE KIND of trouble when another came knocking at my door.

A year or so after I opened my Florence Avenue Used Book Shop, I installed four mirrors; one in the upper-right-hand corner of the door frame, one just outside the lower-left-hand side of the window, and the third, and second-largest, mirror was placed inside the window. So by daylight or lamplight at night, all I had to do was pull back the bottom hem of the inside drape to see who was knocking.

I installed my little spying device because if a man wanted to kill you and you asked “Who is it?” on the other side of a thin plank of wood, all he would have to do is open fire and that would be it. You might as well just throw the door open and say “Here I am. Come shoot me.”

Someone might wonder why the owner of a used-book store would even think about armed assassins coming after him at any time, for any reason. After all, this is America we’re talking about. And not only America but Los Angeles in the midfifties—1956 to be exact.

We aren’t talking about the Wild West or a period of social and political unrest. That was the most serene period of a democratic and peaceful nation. Most Americans at that time only worried about the cost of gas going above twenty-nine cents a gallon.

But most Americans weren’t black and they sure didn’t live in South Central L.A. And even if they were my color and they did live in my neighborhood, their lives would have been different.....

You can also read the first pages of books you might like to buy on the Amazon.com page. Just click to Look Inside and choose, First Pages.