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.

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First Line Friday

A young queen stands barefoot on a wooden block with her arms outstretched.

This is a blank paragraph inserted for alignment.

In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomach-ache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.

But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.

(description from The StoryGraph)

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Book Beginnings

The room felt suffocating.

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It was just a book she wrote. She never meant to get into this mess—a mess she can’t escape. She never meant to write him. What began as an innocent mistake turned her life upside down, leaving it anything but innocent. Now, Serena Vale must face the consequences of the story she brought to life. A story where fiction collides with reality. A story where her world intersects with the fictional character she created-Blake Kane.

(description from The Storygraph)

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Friday56

“What happened?” I asked.

“A fox, I think. A fox did this. Or maybe a wolf. Something got inside the coops and killed six of the hens last night,” Thornley retorted. “Take a look.”

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)

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© Adele Walker November 2025