New beginnings

In Competition No. 3008 you were invited to take the last line of a well-known novel and make it the first line of a short story written in the style of the author in question.
 
There’s room only for me to lament the lack of space for more winners; the judging process was especially painful and protracted this time around. Those that made the final cut appear below and earn £25 each.
 

A way a lone a last a loved a long the bookmaster Jimjoist rolled a virgil sheet from the toplady of a freshly complete queer of peeper into his tripewriter thinking. Aha, my last leaves were sex hundred and twenty-to-eight of the lost left texticle of Finnegan and his atrophied un-apostrophied Wake, selling to the plebiscite not a pennyeach no no but many squid a croppy and hardbound into the burgeon. Come, forethought he, my beloved rubbisher Fable and Feeble and hear you have another only virginally less waiting tomb to piddle. The auld bookrighter shall rejoyce in the republican royalties or horrorarium for a verily expansive shorn-storey instead. By the Drumgoolies he’ll regain the crappywrite and take much prayment for a century-and-a-half of sameoldballs. Misterjuice of Dobberlin demands a fat czechmate from his publicker Faker and Faker and they said yes yes yes
Brian Murdoch/Finnegans Wake 
 
‘For you was a good man, and did good things!’
‘That were before the cattle murrain.’
‘’Twas before Ned Dangerfield learned you gambling.’
‘Or the Great Tempest swept away our haycocks.’
‘Before that drunken postman delivered Seth’s letter of reprieve to the wrong gaol!’
Jed Caundle was in a distinct degree philosophical, according to the principles of certain Eastern sages, who hold that desire is the root of all suffering; for, it seemed to him, everything he wished for, failed in bitterness. With the purple light of an angry dawn in his eyes, he could see no farther through the low window than his late sister’s small flower garden, spangled into ethereal beauty by an early, killing frost.