Guess the opening lines...

Yes! I wanted to do The Secret Garden but the heroine’s name is mentioned in the first para so too obvious.

A Little Princess

Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.
She sat with her feet tucked under her, and leaned against her father, who held her in his arm, as she stared out of the window at the passing people with a queer old-fashioned thoughtfulness in her big eyes.

First Falco novel, which I think is The Silver Pigs.

Yes it is The Silver Pigs.

Mention of the Aventine is the clue for anyone who has read them.

John Boyne .. hearts invisible furies. Brilliant book.

All day it has been windy-strange weather for late July-the wind swirling through the hedges like an invisible flood-tide among seaweed; tugging, compelling them in its own direction, dragging them one way until the patches of elder and privet sagged outward from the tougher stretches of blackthorn on either side. It ripped the purple clematis from its trellis and whirled away twigs and green leaves from the oaks at the bottom of the shrubbery.

It is. As a Wessex girl myself I have a real soft spot for Thomas Hardy.

First Falco novel, which I think is The Silver Pigs.

When the girl came rushing up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes.
It was late summer. Rome frizzled like a pancake on a griddleplate. People unlaced their shoes but had to keep them on; not even an elephant could cross the streets unshod. People flopped on stools in shadowed doorways bare knees apart, naked to the waist – and in the backstreets of the Aventine Sector where I lived, that was just the women.

Did that one and FFTMC at school. I always wondered how it never came out that Elizabeth Jane was younger than she was supposed to be. Didn't she ever have to give her age or date of birth?

Was put off Hardy forever when I read about Jude the Obscure.

yes Mayor of Casterbridge. Elizabeth Jane is not your Elizabeth Jane aarrgrgh

Thomas Hardy. Is it the Mayor of Casterbridge?

"One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their appearance just now"

Yes , Dickson is a great character. As are the Diehards. However, I first read Buchan at an impressionable age (11-14) and Dickson just isn’t as romantic as Sandy.

Yes! (Sorry I haven’t been back, been out for the afternoon and evening)

Yes, Prisoner of Zenda. Rudolf is a bit of a giveaway if you’ve read the book.

Prisoner of Zenda? Based on the name Rudolf.

‘I wonder when in the world you’re going to do anything, Rudolf?’ said my brother’s wife.
‘My dear Rose’ I answered, laying down my egg-spoon, ‘why in the world should I do anything?’

I’ve got no idea but it sounds intriguing.

Now how about this one?

‘I wonder when in the world you’re going to do anything, Rudolf?’ said my brother’s wife.

‘My dear Rose’ I answered, laying down my egg-spoon, ‘why in the world should I do anything?’

When I was about 12 I had a massive crush on Sandy Arbuthnot.

Didn't everyone? 😁

I quite like Huntingtower and Castle Gay, but not House of the Four Winds. I don't enjoy the last three Richard Hannay novels so much.

Is this The Leopard?

@pollyhemlock yes! one of my favourites.

I love Dickson, and the Diehards.

Huntingtower. Enjoyable but I never liked the Dickson McCunn ones quite as much as the Hannay sequence.

Sandy Arbuthnot forsooth!

The girl came into the room with a darting movement like a swallow, looked round her with the same birdlike quickness, and then ran across the polished floor to where a young man sat on a sofa with one leg laid along it.

"I have saved you this dance, Quentin," she said, pronouncing the name with a pretty staccato. "You must be so lonely not dancing, so I will sit with you. What shall we talk about?"

The young man did not answer at once, for his gaze was held by her face. He had never dreamed that the gawky and rather plain little girl whom he had romped with long ago in Paris would grow into such a being. The clean delicate lines of her figure, the exquisite pure colouring of hair and skin, the charming young arrogance of the eyes—this was beauty, he reflected, a miracle, a revelation. Her virginal fineness and her dress, which was the tint of pale fire, gave her the air of a creature of ice and flame.

"About yourself, please, Saskia," he said. "Are you happy now that you are a grown-up lady?"

Greenmantle is absolutely my favourite Buchan. When I was about 12
I had a massive crush on Sandy Arbuthnot.