Welcome, everyone, to Friday Fragments. This is where I join in on three Friday blog memes. The first is First Line Friday, hosted by Carrie over at Reading is my Super Power. For this, you post the first line of the book nearest you. The second is Book Beginnings, which is hosted by Gilion over at Rose City Reader. For this one you share the opening sentence or two of a current, previous, or upcoming read, or any other book you want to highlight. And finally, there’s Friday56, hosted by Anne at My Head is Full of Books. For this you pick any book you want and post a (non-spoiler!) snippet from page 56, or 56% for digital books. I always have multiple books on the go, though, so I’m going to add a personal rule for myself: I have to use a different book for each of the three memes; no doubling up.

---

First Line Friday

Bram stares at the door.

This is a blank paragraph inserted for alignment.

The prequel to Dracula, inspired by notes and texts left behind by the author of the classic novel, Dracul is a supernatural thriller that reveals not only Dracula’s true origins but Bram Stoker’s—and the tale of the enigmatic woman who connects them.

It is 1868, and a twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here…

A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents’ Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen Crone. When a string of strange deaths occur in a nearby town, Bram and his sister Matilda detect a pattern of bizarre behavior by Ellen—a mystery that deepens chillingly until Ellen vanishes suddenly from their lives. Years later, Matilda returns from studying in Paris to tell Bram the news that she has seen Ellen—and that the nightmare they’ve thought long ended is only beginning.

(description from The StoryGraph)

---

Book Beginnings

May 2004: a horn blasts into the night, a car alarm screams.

This is a blank paragraph inserted for alignment.

Sixteen-year-old Vicente and two of his high school friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister in cold blood. Through a Capote-like reconstruction of this seemingly inexplicable triple murder, Sandra Rodriguez Nieto paints a haunting and unforgettable portrait of the most violent city on Earth, with an in-depth investigation into the thought process of the three boys, the city of Juarez and the drug cartels that wage war in its streets…

(description from The Storygraph)

---

Friday56

“So you care for Heidi?”

“Yes I do. But right now I care for her safety even more.”

This is a blank paragraph inserted for alignment.

Like frogs in a simmering cauldron, We The People stare dumbly into our smartphones as autocrats slowly turn up the heat. The Music Makers tells the story of how the end result – dictatorship – smothered the lives of ordinary East Berliners and how they struggled be free of it.

The story unfolds as Greta, a civics teacher known for her eccentricities, spots a man playing an old-fashioned barrel organ on a busy street. She becomes enthralled as passers-by pause and gather. Soon they are filling the street and singing old German songs – a refreshing respite from their gruelling lives in a Grim, grey city brooded over by the notorious Stasi secret police.

Before long a cluster of amateur music makers is drawing dozens of picnickers on Sunday afternoons. But soon Stasi and KGB agents filter among them. And in time we see past lives exposed, their secrets bared, their souls tortured.

These and other undercurrents of dictatorship ignite events that lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The music makers are but bit players in this cataclysmic drama, but their story shows how precious democracy is and how crucial it is for “ordinary people” to uphold it.

(description from The Storygraph)

---

---

© Adele Walker October 2025