Here are some examples of what I mean. Let me know what you think...

Book begins with dialogue:

From A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray.

"Please tell me that's not going to be part of my birthday dinner this evening."

I am staring into the hissing face of a cobra. A surprisingly pink tongue slithers in and out of a cruel mouth while an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindness inclines his head toward my mother and explains in Hindi that cobras make very good eating.

OR

Book begins with foreshadowing:

From Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.

It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird's was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with the dozens of books and papers with which he always traveled.

OR

Book begins with character introduction:

From Rachel and Leah by Orson Scott Card.

Bilhah was not born a slave. Her father was a free man, the son of a free man. He had skill, too. His fingers could fly over the pots of tile and find just the right color and he'd know just what size and shape it needed to be and he could tap just so on the tile and the right piece would chip off and he'd set it into the mortar.

Let me know what you think.

By the way, you left out at least one other possible beginning: the weather report.

quote:

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the weather report.

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Ah yes. There was a time when almost every time I sat down at the typewriter, the first thing I did was describe the sky, the weather, or something of that nature.

Then, when I realised what I was doing, I wrote a piece which began "Why do I always start by describing the sky?"