"The Einstein Prophecy"

Robert Masello is an award-winning journalist, television writer (Charmed, Sliders, Poltergeist: the Legacy) and the bestselling author of many novels and nonfiction books, including Blood and Ice, The Medusa Amulet, and The Romanov Cross. His most recent supernatural thriller, The Einstein Prophecy, occupied the # 1 slot in the Amazon Kindle story for much of July. He lives and works in Santa Monica, CA.

Masello applied the Page 69 Test to The Einstein Prophecy and reported the following:

Page 69, in this instance, is pretty short, as it contain only the last words of the chapter. But I think it’s still enough to offer a glimpse into the book.

We find ourselves in the Princeton University Art Museum, where the custodian, working late at night to clean up the conservation room after the installation of a mysterious and ancient sarcophagus, is suddenly attacked by a swarm of bats flying through a broken window. He flees outside, but the bats relentlessly follow.

The bats came down on him like a hard brown rain, wings spread, claws distended, tiny fangs shining . . . Minutes later, their work done, they rose again, and spun off above the treetops of the garden, toward the gleaming white belfry of Nassau Hall, over the top of FitzRandolph Gate, and then down the moonlit, sleeping streets of the town, like heralds proclaiming the arrival of their king.

However short, the page still touches on many of the book’s most significant elements. The story takes place in 1944, when the sarcophagus (or ossuary) is sent to Princeton by the OSS for intense and urgent study. As it happens, Albert Einstein, who fled the Nazis years before, is a resident of the town. At the time, he was on the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study there. How the sarcophagus wound up in Princeton, and what it contains, is at the core of the book, which revolves around the creation of the atomic bomb on one level, and the unending war between good and evil on another. It’s a mix of physics and theology, quantum mechanics and Middle Eastern archaeology, and, I hope, it tells an entertaining (and scary) story at the same time that it touches on some larger questions of morality and the ultimate destiny of humankind.

Learn more about the book and author at Robert Masello's website.

The Page 69 Test: Blood and Ice.

The Page 69 Test: The Medusa Amulet.

--Marshal Zeringue