This summer, rather than casting our eye across the shelves like we usually do, we thought, why not go inward? We asked a handful of authors with novels out this summer to share a piece of their work with us. Nine brave souls kindly obliged. In the spirit of adventure, we closed our eyes, stuck out our index fingers, and pressed down on a page, hoping for the best. The passages that came of this exercise rest on details a grin, a freak wave, a bite on the arm that at times read more like poetry than prose. From Dan Brown to Tao Lin, ahead find nine excerpts that ask you to go right ahead and sink your teeth in.

This story appears in the special Summer Issue of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, in the iTunes App store , available Friday, May 24.