First liners

Borrowing a meme from other journals, here's my shot at the "first lines of your favourite books" games. I've picked two dozen titles from my shelves, not entirely at random, and supplied you with the first line (sometimes more). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify as many of the books as possible.

To help you: They're all works of fiction, and if part of a series, I've chosen the first (by some reasonable definition) book in the series. They're all by different authors and are in alphabetical order by author (hey, the came off the shelves like that!) Prologues etc may or may not have been skipped, depending on which line I think is easier to identify.

1. The primroses were over. Towards the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog's mercury and oak-tree roots.
2. His name was Gall Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before.
3. It has been said that every great man deserves a biographer. I have therefore taken it upon myself to keep a private record of my employer's activities during his career in the Space Legion.
4. The naked child ran out of the hide-covered lean-to towards the rocky beach at the bend in the small river.
5. This is the good part. Hassan Sulari loves this one. When the magnetic catapult on the mothership throws his little spaceplane forward and he kicks in the scramjet, somewhere over Afghanistan, he'll sail up and away into a high suborbital trajectory over the Pole.
6. "I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.
7. They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia.
8. Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe.
9. The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make landfall in three days they would all be dead.
10. This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis.
11. These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket.
12. The storm had broken. Pug danced along the edge of the rocks, his feet finding scant purchase as he made his way among the tide pools.
13. Space outside the attack cruiser Beezling tore open in five places.
14. There's not much call for private detectives in Fulham.
15. A squat grey building of only thirty-four storeys. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
16. Matthias cut a comical little figure as he wobbled his way along the cloisters, with his large sandals flip-flopping and his tail peeping from beneath the baggy folds of an over-sizes novice's habit.
17. In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.
18. Having no personal commitment to either of the new consuls, Gaius Julius Caesar and his sons simply tacked themselves onto the procession which started nearest to their own house, the procession of the senior consul, Marcus Minucius Rufus.
19. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
20. After making sure that the shopping for Auntie Bina and his folded jacket were safely stowed in the saddle bag, Pidge wheeled his bike through the crowded streets.
21. "That is my decision. We need not discuss it," said the man at the desk.
22. Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for that part of the summer holidays.
23. Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
24. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. </ul>

    Good luck, people. Answers when I get back from MacT00bage.