Tag: first chapters

“I wanted him to understand my life—that I’d been caught in the local pattern and found the safest way forward, but if I’d lived somewhere else I’d be someone else and still could.”

“We know each other, Kev. From way back. And I didn’t want to bring you here like this.”

Emily Gould | Friendship | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | July 2014 | 8 minutes (1,893 words)   Below is the opening chapter of Friendship, the new novel by Emily Gould, who we’ve featured often on Longreads in the past. Thanks to Gould and FSG for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book […]

Stephen Rodrick | The Magical Stranger | 2014 | 11 minutes (2,779 words) Below is the first chapter from The Magical Stranger, Stephen Rodrick’s memoir about his father, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick. Our thanks to Rodrick for sharing it with the Longreads community.

“What had driven us apart? What was so important that it had turned us into strangers, even today?”

Edwin Lefèvre | Reminiscences of a Stock Operator | 1923   Our latest Longreads First Chapter comes recommended by Michelle Legro: Long before the “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort made his first million or snorted his first line of cocaine, turn-of-the-century trader Jesse Livermore, the “Great Bear of Wall Street,” accumulated over $100 million short-selling stocks before […]

How to spend your entire income building a car to travel 100 miles on a gallon of gas.

This week’s Longreads Member Pick is by David Kushner, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone whose work has been featured on Longreads often in the past. He has just published The Bones of Marianna, a new story from The Atavist, and we’re thrilled to give the ebook to Longreads Members. Kushner explains: Almost everyone who hears the shocking story […]

Elliott Holt | The Penguin Press | 2013 | 12 minutes (2,854 words)   Our latest First Chapter is from Elliott Holt’s novel, You Are One of Them. Thanks to Holt and The Penguin Press for sharing it with the Longreads community. * * * Prologue In Moscow I was always cold. I suppose that’s what […]

Janet Fitch | White Oleander, Little, Brown and Company | 1999 | 19 minutes (4,640 words)   Our latest first chapter comes from Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick, who has chosen Janet Fitch’s 1999 novel White Oleander. If you want to recommend a First Chapter, let us know and we’ll feature you and your pick: hello@longreads.com.

“He viewed money as energy, the energy that makes concrete things happen out of worthy ideas.”

“Who should get to keep a child: the parents who nurse and tend him, or the parents who brought him into the world?”

Conservation, domestication and the future of the animal kingdom.

Rose George | Metropolitan Books | August 2013 | 17 minutes (4,213 words)   The following is the opening chapter of Rose George’s new book, Ninety Percent of Everything. Our thanks to the author for sharing it with the Longreads community. * * * Friday. No sensible sailor goes to sea on the day of the Crucifixion or […]