Friday 56 #123 - House Without Doors by Peter Straub #PeterStraub

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The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your ereader and find any sentence or a few ( no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.

Please join Rose City Reader every Friday to share the first sentence or so of the book you are reading along with you initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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I am always up for a Peter Straub story and Houses Without Doors has plenty of mystery.

We have plenty of death, the supernatural and visions of other lives.

Amazon / Goodreads

My 56

From Blue Rose

The court martial lasted exactly four hours. Big deal, hey?, as we used to say in Palmyra.

(Page 56 in hardcover,1st edition, published in 2003)

Book Beginnings

She saw a young man in a loose black sweater and black trousers come toward her down the street. His dark hair was blowing, and his face seemed to be illuminated by a smile. It was always nice to see someone smiling on the street, she thought – a grace note. When he was nearly abreast of her, she saw that he was grimacing, not smiling, and that his eyes were wet. This was on that day in New York when the sky is gray and the air is gray and cold and people are wearing jackets and sweaters for the first time. she turned around and watched him go past her, wondering what had happened to him. Some sort of strange illumination still clung to the young man, and the woman noticed several other people staring at him.

GOODREADS BLURB: This spectacular collection of 13 dark, haunting tales by bestselling author Straub exposes the terrors that hide beneath the surface of the ordinary world, behind the walls of houses without doors. “Straub at his spellbinding best”.–Publishers Weekly.