The sample for Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (Kindle price: $9.32) pulls you into the story right away, and only leaves off after the story has motion. Like The Book Thief and The Graveyard Book, this is a story that starts with death-- in this case, the protagonist's death, which leads immediately into a body-less, sense-less state. It would have been easy and fairly logical to end the sample after that sense-less state is introduced, but thankfully, the editors/formatters had the ability to select a larger sample, and the sample ends only after the story has been set in motion. The conflict isn't established yet, but we have a sense of the protagonist, and you can tell this is a story that's going somewhere.

I will probably buy the ebook. I interviewed Niven over a year ago at a science fiction convention shortly before Inferno came out, and it sounded exciting at the time, so I can't say definitively that the Kindle Sample has "sold" the book for me. But it's certainly put it higher in my consciousness and given me a look at what I'm missing by not having read the book already.