First Lines

[Tiamaria]

Please help. Author and titles please.
" Ignoring the pouring rain, he came out of the house, and then turned to check that the front door had closed properly behind him"
" Demon bones and the scribblings of madmen"
" The dark wood was green and gold, green where the oak trees stood crowded together with misshapen twisted trunks, red gold where the great smooth beeches lifted their branching arms to the sky"
" As usual, there were five of them on the village green, waiting for the school bus."

I have tried really hard with these but I'm all googled out.

[HGKinsey]

The last one is from a Joanna Trollope novel. I'm pretty certain it's the start of the "The Rector's Wife", but failing that it's from  "The Choir": you'll need to check it out.

[HGKinsey]

Apparently you can email the first lines to the following website and they try to come up with an answer. I don't know how good it is but it came up on a Google search.

http://people.cornell.edu/pages/jad22/

[Tiamaria]

Thanks for the info. I will check them out.