Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

I slipped through the sleeping house as silently as a needle through lace.

My ceiling was sky and an eyelash of a moon.

I loved his howl, which I could both hear and feel: long and plaintive, woebegone and heartsore, filled with yearning for what used to be and for what would never come again.

He had a hound's sad eyes too -- brown with white showing above the lower lid and bags of skin below.

I soaked away a year of cinders and grime and Mum Olga's orders and Hattie's edicts and Olive's demands.

The Fire Pony by Rodman Philbrick

I make like I'm not nervous, but it's a fib, really, because my stomach is all clenched up and my face hurts from pretending to smile.

That sets him off and the next thing you know -- wham! -- a hoof smashes the gate about head high -- and there's Showdown, with his black eyes blazing like crazy marbles and his nostrils flaring like his tail's on fire.

Joe isn't talking to me, he's talking to himself the way he doees, scuffling around the bunkhouse and running his fingers through his hair and looking like something is about to jump out of a corner and go for him, he's that spooked.You can feel the heat licking at us, it makes my face warm and my eyes hot, and the sparks rise up like lightning bugs, swirling and dancing in the air.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

What a delicious read! I savored it like I savor rhubarb pie.

Baby Kochamma was holding on to the back of the front seat with her arms. When the car moved, her armfat swung like heavy washing in the wind. Now it hung down like a fleshy curtain, blocking Estha from Rahel.

Comrade Pillai's arms were crossed over his chest, and he clasped his own armpits possessively, as though someone had asked to borrow them and he had just refused.

A column of black ants walked across a windowsill, their bottoms tilted upwards, like a line of mincing chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley musical.

The green-for-a-day had seeped from the trees. Dark palm trees were splayed like drooping combs against the monsoon sky. The orange sun slid through their bent, grasping teeth.

The sound of the sun crinking the washing. Crisping white bedsheets. Stiffening starched saris. Off-white and gold.

Estha and Rahel lifted the little boat and carried it to the water. It looked surprised, like a grizzled fish that had surfaced from the deep.

Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant (lighting cigarettes, refilling glasses).

Each of her tight, shining plaits was looped over and tied with ribbons so that they hung down on either side of her face like the outlines of large, drooping ears that hadn't been colored in yet.