The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

In the gray quiet mornings when the land and the brush and the houses and the trees were silver-grey and black like a photograph negative, he stole toward the barn, past the sleeping stones and the sleeping cypress tree.

The pony's tracks were plain enough, dragging through the frostlike dew on the young grass, tired tracks with little lines between them where the hoofs had dragged.

When the peaks were pink in the morning they invited him among them:  and when the sun had gone over the edge in the evening and the mountains were a purple-like despair, then Jody was afraid of them; then they were so impersonal and aloof that their very imperturbability was a threat.

Montmorency On the Rocks by Eleanor Updale

Detective novel set in turn-of-the century England full of aristocrats, commoners, and street people.  Considers addiction and sins of pride with great aplomb.

The sun seemed to spread cleanliness all around, picking out the detail of the ancient castle hundreds of feet up on its mysterious volcanic cliff.

Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy

More rock had fallen from the rock above, piling between the stems of the thorn-trees like froth among the reeds of a backwater.

Into this great, still lake the jutting ribs of the cave walls ran like buttresses to meet the angle of their own reflections, then on down into the darkness.

The small light of the flame pushed the darkness back, a palpable darkness, deeper even than those dark nights where the black is thick as a wild beast's pelt, and presses in on you like a stifling blanket.

As far as I could see, we were in a small cove sheltered by the wind by a mighty headland close to our left, but the seas, tearing past the end of the headland and curving round to break among the offshore rocks, were huge, and came lashing down on the shingle in torrents of white with a noise like armies clashing together in anger.

The waves must have been rushing up forty feet, and the master waves, the great sevenths, came roaring up like towers and drenched us with salt fully sizty feet above the beach.

The sea soughed and beat below the window, the wind plucked at the wall, and ferns growing there in the crevices rustled and tapped.

The land after the rain smelled rich and soft, ploughing weather, nutting weather, the squirrel-time for winter's coming.

Like Water in Wild Places by Pamela Jooste

Adult book. Kind of magical realism. I loved this passage because often we need to develop eyes to see the beauty in a place.

The farm is called Liefdefontein. Fountain of Love. It stands in the drylands that run close to the border of Namibia. If you don't havve eyes that see, the land looks like nothing. It looks as if its soul has been snatched away from it.

It's flatscape, and sometimes there are small hills and gullies that trap the afternoon shadows and are ice-cold at night. Even in summer, when the rain sings down, the grass clings tight to the ground in small khaki tufts.

Winter, when the frost comes and the ground is bare and the trees pared down, is a the time to hunt. Then the game run looking for water and the landscape is pale and clear. The sun is sharp and you can see for a very long way. Even without telescopic sights, all moving things are easier to see and to track and to hunt down.