"House of Hearts"

Skyla Arndt has always loved the creepy, crawly side of life. When she was younger, she thought that love might translate to hunting Bigfoot, but luckily for him, writing proved easier. These days, you can catch her writing stories by candlelight, splurging on candles for her office, and continuing to keep an eye out for Bigfoot (because you never know). She lives with her husband and three cats by the perpetually frozen Great Lakes.

Arndt applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, House of Hearts, and reported the following:

From page 69:

She’s a stray gust of wind down the corridor, her body so paper thin that she breezes forward without the slightest sound. I’m hypnotized by the arch of her heels and the sway of her tiptoes inches off the floor.

We enter a deserted parlor room, and the candles flicker upon our arrival. Velvet curtains billow down from the ceiling and sensuously frame a matching set of oxblood leather armchairs.

Beyond them, a fireplace sits untouched, the logs blackened behind an iron grate. Oleander Lockwell hangs like an omnipresent god above the mantle. In this painting, the gray strands from Sutherland Hall have won the battle; they dominate his hair and the fringes of his beard. He’s stern-faced and harsh in the low lighting, painted in the violent strokes of a hurried artist who couldn’t get away fast enough.

Emoree doesn’t spare the man a parting glance. Her attention is reserved for an object on an end table, her finger tracing a careful pattern in the air as she studies it. She breaks away the moment I get close and I can’t help it, my curiosity gets the best of me. I pick up what turns out to be a wooden labyrinth, a perfect miniature of the hedge maze outside. I brush my thumb across the careful ridges and chart the same path she did, starting in the clearing in the center to the exit, but I feel no residual warmth in her wake.

I don’t feel any warmth at all.

The body heat in the ballroom is a distant memory. What I’m left with is an icy pocket of frigid air. My breath clouds the late summer air, and I marvel at the ghost of it leaving my lips. It shouldn’t be this cold in here, but then again, Emoree shouldn’t be here.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect! I was 99% sure that I would randomly flip to this page and have nothing to show for it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only is this one of my favorite scenes in the book, but the passage perfectly encapsulates the heart of House of Hearts (pun intended). House of Hearts centers around a girl enrolling in a private academy to follow in the footsteps of her dead best friend–and on page 69, you see my MC, Violet, literally following her dead BFF’s footsteps. Only a couple pages prior, Violet Harper had been dancing in the school masquerade ball when she spotted a horrifyingly familiar face in the crowd: the unmasked, spitting image of her friend, Emoree. Readers jumping to this spot in the book will find Violet trailing after Emoree’s ghost as if spellbound.

Beyond that, I think it gives a great sense for the type of atmosphere you will find in the book. What says spooky dark academia more than a ghost leading you out of a haunted ballroom into an abandoned study?

Visit Skyla Arndt's website.

Writers Read: Skyla Arndt.

Q&A with Skyla Arndt.

My Book, The Movie: House of Hearts.

--Marshal Zeringue

"For No Mortal Creature"

Keshe Chow (she/her) is a Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy, romance, and speculative fiction. Born in Malaysia, Chow moved to Australia when she was two years old. Her debut novel, The Girl with No Reflection, won the 2022 Victorian Premier's Literature Awards Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript and was shortlisted in the 2025 ABIA awards. Her new YA fantasy is For No Mortal Creature. Currently she resides in Naarm (Melbourne) with her husband, two kids, one cat, and way too many house plants.

Chow applied the Page 69 Test to For No Mortal Creature and shared the following:

From page 69:

He shot me a wary look, and I stared back, belligerent. What was he doing here? Why had he interrupted the physician? I was still trying to untangle his motives, when I was startled by a choked-off cry. This was followed by a strange gurgling noise. Something heavy landed on my legs.

Prince Essien’s eyes flared wide, and slowly, he turned his head. I raised my head, too. Only to see Larch slumped face down across my legs, blood soaking into the eiderdown, and—

Lin, standing behind him, holding that curved, bright-blue blade.

For a moment, I could only stare at his spectral body in shock. Then, the prince’s mouth dropped open, and I quaked. Scrambling up, the pulse in my ears thundering, I shoved the deadweight of Larch’s body off me. The corpse slid sideways and landed on the floor with an unceremonious thud.

“Careful, girl,” growled a voice, and I startled to see Larch’s ghost staring down at his dead body, frowning. He raised his gaze, piercing me with his disapproval. “You should respect the dead!”

Not stopping to answer him, I swung my legs off the bed and jumped to my feet. Essien Lancaster was staring down at the body of the now-dead physician. The prince’s face was puce, the muscles in his neck corded with tension. He’d lost the usual easy grace of his stance and was trembling with shock.

Lin’s face, on the other hand, was impassive. Almost smirking. I took in the entire scene within a mere fraction of a second. And then I noticed Lin, with the tiniest, most minute of movements, adjusting the grip of his knife. So subtly no one would notice.

No one but me, who knew him well. Or had known him well, once.

He drew back his arm to slash at the prince. For some reason, something within me snapped.

I think that this does capture many of the major elements of For No Mortal Creature. Namely, that there is death and evidence of Lin as being a morally gray character capable of murder. We have evidence of a ghost—that of the murdered man’s, who speaks directly to the main character and asks her to respect his corpse.

However, the aspect that this excerpt does not highlight is the romance that features in the book. The angst-filled romances between the main character, Jia Yi, and the ex-lover who betrayed her, Lin, are a huge driver of the story. Similarly, a burgeoning and tenuous alliance between Jia Yi and Prince Essien is also a significant part of the plot.

Lastly, this excerpt doesn’t highlight the main motivator for Jia Yi, the main character. The biggest thing driving her throughout the entire book is her desperation to save her dying grandmother, who isn’t mentioned on this page.

For No Mortal Creature is a dark, gothic young adult fantasy about a world where ghosts can die and become ghosts of ghosts. Jia Yi, a girl who possesses the gift of resurrection, must delve into the many layers of the afterlife to save her grandmother. However, to succeed, she must team up with her two mortal (and immortal) enemies: the ghost of Lin, the boy who once betrayed her; and the cold, enigmatic Prince Essien Lancaster.

Visit Keshe Chow's website.

Q&A with Keshe Chow.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Call of the Camino"

Suzanne Redfearn is the #1 Amazon and USA Today bestselling author of eight novels: Call of the Camino, Two Good Men, Where Butterflies Wander, Moment In Time, Hadley & Grace, In an Instant, No Ordinary Life, and Hush Little Baby. Her books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and have been recognized by RT Reviews, Target Recommends, Goodreads, Publisher’s Marketplace, and Kirkus Reviews. She has been awarded Best New Fiction from Best Book Awards and has been a Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist.

Born and raised on the east coast, Redfearn moved to California when she was fifteen. Currently, she lives in Laguna Beach with her husband where they own Lumberyard Restaurant. In addition to being an author, Redfearn is an architect specializing in residential and commercial design. When not writing, she enjoys doing anything and everything with her family—skiing, golf, tennis, pickleball, hiking, board games, and watching reality TV. She is an avid baseball fan. Her team is the Angels.

Redfearn applied the Page 69 Test to Call of the Camino with the following results:

I have always loved this test for how well it works. For whatever reason, page sixty-nine always seems to be highly indicative of what is at the heart of the story, and applying the Page 69 Test to Call of the Camino was no exception.

On page sixty-nine, Isabelle, one of the two protagonists, meets the love of her life, Peter, who she doesn’t know is the love of her life at the time, but their friendship and eventual romance is what will drive her storyline from that point forward. She also happens to meet him in a cathedral, where she is praying for the loss of two friends, and her relationship with her faith is also central to her journey.

Opening the book to page sixty-nine would give a reader a good sense of one of the underlying, driving forces of one of the two storylines. But since Call of the Camino is about two journeys along the path of St. James, it only gives a glimpse at half the book. It also does not show any of the Camino de Santiago, which is the backbone of the story. I think a reader might mistakenly believe, based on that single page, that the story is a romance and not the story of two women’s transformative journeys along an ancient, legendary trail told a generation apart.

Call of the Camino was inspired by my own experience walking the Camino de Santiago, a five-hundred-mile pilgrimage across Spain, and the characters were inspired by the amazing people I met along the way.

Visit Suzanne Redfearn's website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Coffee with a Canine: Suzanne Redfearn and Cooper.

My Book, The Movie: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: Hush Little Baby.

The Page 69 Test: No Ordinary Life.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2016).

My Book, The Movie: No Ordinary Life.

My Book, The Movie: In an Instant.

The Page 69 Test: In an Instant.

Q&A with Suzanne Redfearn.

My Book, The Movie: Hadley and Grace.

The Page 69 Test: Hadley & Grace.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (March 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Moment in Time.

My Book, The Movie: Moment in Time.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (February 2024).

Writers Read: S. E. Redfearn (October 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Two Good Men.

Writers Read: Suzanne Redfearn (October 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Call of the Camino.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Silent Creek"

Tony Wirt was born in Lake Mills, IA, and got his first taste of publication in first grade, when his essay on Airplane II: The Sequel appeared in the Lake Mills Elementary School’s Creative Courier.

He's a graduate of the University of Iowa and spent nine years doing media relations in the Hawkeye Athletic Department. He's also been a sportswriter, movie ticket taker and Dairy Queen ice cream slinger who can still do the little curly thing on top of a soft serve cone.

He currently lives in Rochester, MN, with his wife and two daughters.

Wirt applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Silent Creek, and reported the following:

Page 69 is the final page of chapter ten, a scene I really liked writing. There isn’t much action or suspense, so I wouldn’t say it’s a great example of what a reader would be in for, but I’d like to think it really fleshes out our characters.

It’s a scene in the gym where Jim is helping Kelli, the coach of their high school’s girls team, prep for the upcoming basketabll season, but Kyle shows up as a bit of a third wheel. He’s been hounding Jim to come on as his assistant coach for the boys team, something he has absolutely no interest in doing.

While It may not be a great example of the book, as a character building chapter it does a good job. The scene is a great example of the tug of war going on inside Jim’s head ever since he returned home. Kyle represents everything Jim wants to leave behind, while Kelli represents the future he’s always wanted. It also shows the pressure that Jim is feeling to be everything his hometown wants him to be. This struggle is what guides Jim’s actions for the whole book—for better or worse.

Visit Tony Wirt's website.

The Page 69 Test: Pike Island.

Q&A with Tony Wirt.

My Book, The Movie: Pike Island.

My Book, The Movie: Silent Creek.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Resurrectionist"

Kathleen S. Allen is a young adult writer of gothic horror, historical, fantasy, and speculative fiction. She has published poems, short stories, novellas, and novels. She prefers dark to light, salty to sweet, and tea to coffee. She is a fan of K-Pop, classic rock, and British detective shows. She loves gray, foggy, cool, rainy days; unfortunately she lives in Los Angeles which is usually sunny and warm.

Allen applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Resurrectionist, and shared the following:

On page 69 Dilly is interacting with a visiting professor, Victor Clerval who is an Anatomist based out of Scotland. Dilly finds out he knew her recently deceased father and is eager to learn more of what he knows about her father’s research. She also hopes to secure him as a sponsor to medical college since she is financially unable to pay for it. He considers it and tells her to use his name as a reference for applying to medical colleges. She is thrilled to being one step closer to her dream of becoming a surgeon like her father. Except his caveat is she must first find a college who will admit her and that is a daunting task since so few (if any) medical colleges admit women to study medicine with the idea of becoming a physician and none will admit a woman who wants to be a surgeon. But Dilly is determined to pursue her dream.

In part this page introduces the main character as someone with determination and scientific knowledge but it doesn’t address the resurrectionist part which is the crux of the book. This page shows Dilly to be serious about the medical profession, however it might lead to the browser to think the book was only about a Victorian young lady (although her age isn’t mentioned on this page) who is trying to become a surgeon. So, no, the Page 69 Test doesn’t work for The Resurrectionist.

The Resurrectionist is a young adult gothic horror reimagining of Frankenstein taking place in 1888 Victorian England. It’s about a seventeen-year-old young woman who dreams of following in her recently deceased father’s footsteps to become a surgeon. But aspiring to be a physician or even a surgeon is frowned upon in 1888. Victorian women are seen as inappropriate and unladylike to even want any career instead of being a wife and mother. Dilly defies societal rules throughout, breaking one after another until she only follows her own rules. Along the way she’s caught up in a tangled web of graverobbing, dead bodies, murder and scientific experiments gone horribly wrong.

Visit Kathleen S. Allen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Curse of the Savoy"

Ron Base is a former newspaper and magazine journalist and movie critic. His works include twenty novels, two novellas and four non-fiction books. Base lives in Milton, Ontario. Prudence Emery worked as the press and public relations officer at the Savoy Hotel, and later as a publicist on more than a hundred film productions. She is also the author of the bestselling memoir Nanaimo Girl (2020).

Base tasked DCI Lightfoot from their Priscilla Tempest mystery series to apply the Page 69 Test to the latest installment, Curse of the Savoy, with the following results:

Detective Chief Inspector Robert Lightfoot of Scotland Yard here. I play a supporting role in the four Priscilla Tempest novels, usually accusing Miss Tempest of some misdeed or other.

I’ve been asked to take charge of the Page 69 Test investigation, the mystery surrounding it, particularly since it has been revealed that the originator of the test is none other than that famed Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan. Mr. Ron Base, the co-author of the novels, reports to me that he once spent an evening with Mr. McLuhan listening to his thoughts on media theory. He is still scratching his head.

Finding my way to page 69 of Curse of the Savoy, the latest novel in the series, I soon discover that I am not mentioned. More’s the pity. I’m quite an interesting chap.

On page 69, the book’s heroine, Miss Tempest, is preoccupied with the recent murder of a well-known young British diplomat, a cad of the first order. I am the lead detective on that case and since Miss Tempest found the body, I regard her as a person of interest and highly suspicious.

Miss Tempest heads the press office at London’s iconic Savoy Hotel and is a member of the Gossip’s Bridle Club whose other members consist of three of London’s most famous theatrical figures—the renowned playwright Noël Coward and the actors Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud.

On page 69, the club has convened to discuss the gossip of the day—who is failing in a dreadful play, who is sleeping with whom, and, on this occasion, who might have murdered the diplomat.

My examination concludes that the page in question succeeds by throwing the reader into the heart of the novel’s mystery and provides insight into the character of our plucky heroine. Miss Tempest is young, lovely, prone to attracting the wrong men, and getting herself into the sort of trouble that convinces me she is up to no good.

I was pleased to see that the page also touches upon the plot that drives the novel—a mysterious curse involving a black cat, a dinner party hosted by the legendary filmmaker Orson Welles, and the movie star Cary Grant, who, it seems, is attracted to Miss Tempest.

Ah, but the mystery …What is it about the magic of page 69 that draws in readers?

That investigation is ongoing.

Visit Ron Base's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"I Am You"

Victoria Redel is a first-generation American author of four books of poetry and six books of fiction. Her newest novel is I Am You. Redel’s work has been widely anthologized, awarded, and translated in ten languages. Her debut novel, Loverboy (2001) was adapted for feature film directed by Kevin Bacon. Redel’s short stories, poetry and essays have appeared in Granta, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Bomb, One Story, Salmagundi, O, and NOON among many others. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center. Redel is a professor in the graduate and undergraduate Creative Writing programs at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York and Utah.

She applied the Page 69 Test to I Am You with the following results:

I love the Page 69 Test because I’m a full-throttle believer that a potential reader should be able to open to any page in a novel and begin to tease out the threads that weave through the novel. So, I confess I was relieved to see that page 69 of I Am You stays true to my belief.

At the top of page 69, a scene where Gerta, a maid and narrator of the novel, which takes place in the 1600s, has revealed to Maria, her master and a masterful painter, that she has, in secret, taught herself to paint. She shows her new skill by boldly painting directly on a still-life of Maria’s. But true to Maria’s nature, she hardly flinches, instead moving forward as if this is not a revelation but an inevitability. Gerta reflects, “Her reaction was as I’d hoped. Pragmatic. She needed an apprentice. And she knew it. If she was annoyed by anything that morning, it was only that she hadn’t realized before me that I’d become her apprentice. Though, of course, that’s eventually what she told the others. That she’d taught her maid. That she’d done what no one else had done before and turned a servant girl into a painter.”

Over the course of page 69, a browser would encounter a few of the essential threads in the novel—the power current between the two women that keeps shifting throughout the book and the role of secrets. That secret, that Gerta is Maria’s assistant, also leads to greater intimacy between the two women, and a new facet of their relationship begins to emerge as Gerta emerges as a painter in her own right. The two women at that point in the novel have forged a union determined to increase Maria’s position in the male-dominated art world of the 17th century.

Visit Victoria Redel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Before Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Man in the Stone Cottage"

Before turning to novel writing, Stephanie Cowell was an opera singer, balladeer, founded an outdoor arts series in New York City's Bryant Park, a Renaissance festival, a chamber opera company and many other things. She has lived in New York City all her life, indeed in the same apartment building for fifty-two years in the neighborhood (and sometimes down the block) where they filmed You've Got Mail. Cowell has loved England and Europe all her life and traveled there almost every year.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Man in the Stone Cottage, and reported the following:

Page 69 is one of those important scenes in a novel which I’d call place markers or linking scenes. It is from Charlotte’s point-of-view. It is a long shot which shows us the Brontë family at a celebratory Christmas dinner such as most families have. They speak of politics, the neighbors, they gossip and exchange small gifts and eat good food. Towards the bottom of the page, Charlotte draws back a little to observe how happy they are and then ruminates how to make enough money to keep them all in the house together, well-fed and contented. It then moves from the long shot to the closeup. By the following page, she is once more making determined plans.

Actually, I think page 69 and the family dinner scene is perfect to introduce the book. The moments of happy family are what they all yearn for (though the brother Branwell will wreck his part of it) and have too seldom.

For those who do not know the story of the real little Brontë family in 1844 Victorian England, they are living in a Yorkshire parsonage of the church where the father is the curate (priest-in-charge). Though there are three sisters and one wayward brother at the table, they feel the presence of their mother and two other sisters who died as children. Charlotte as the eldest was charged to keeping them altogether. But though she will of course within three years write Jane Eyre and make more money than she ever dreamed, happy scenes like this will not often come again. Grave sickness will end these dinners. And Emily while writing Wuthering Heights. will become more remote, involved with a man in a stone cottage on the moor who no one else has ever seen.

Visit Stephanie Cowell's website.

The Page 69 Test: Claude & Camille.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Book of Guilt"

Catherine Chidgey’s novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times and a Best Book in the LA Times. Chidgey has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize. Her novel Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her novels The Wish Child and The Axeman’s Carnival both won the Acorn Prize for Fiction, New Zealand’s most prestigious literary award. She lives in Cambridge, New Zealand, and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.

Chidgey applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Book of Guilt, and shared the following:

From page 99:

‘No matter, no matter,’ said the Minister as Mother Morning blushed right through her face powder to the roots of her hair.

‘How was your journey down?’ asked Mother Afternoon. ‘Really rather pleasant, once we left the A4,’ said the Minister.

‘Ah, the A4,’ said Mother Afternoon, as if she travelled it regularly and knew its shortcomings.

‘Dreadful congestion around Chiswick,’ said Dr Roach. ‘You should ask the Prime Minister to do something about it.’

I thought he was joking, but his face was stony.

The Minister said, ‘Roading is on her radar, certainly. I’m so sorry I was late.’

‘Quite all right,’ said Mother Morning, waving an airy hand.

‘You could have driven down together,’ said William. ‘That would have saved time.’

‘Mm,’ said the Minister.

Mother Afternoon nodded towards the dainty sandwiches on the tiered cake stand and said, ‘They picked the watercress themselves, our boys.’

‘They’re most resourceful,’ added Mother Morning, handing a side plate to the Minister. ‘Fondant fancy?’

Only Mother Night was silent. I kept glancing at her, and I couldn’t shake the thought that she wanted to burst into tears – but perhaps that was just because I wasn’t used to seeing her in the daytime and understanding the way her face moved and changed in natural light.

The Minister ate one fondant fancy and half a sandwich. Mother Afternoon tried to persuade her to try the Dundee cake – she’d made special patterns with the almonds on top, and I knew she was disappointed to see it untouched – but the Minister insisted she couldn’t manage another bite, delicious as it looked. Being in the public eye, she said, she had to watch her figure. She held her hand over her side plate as if to deflect anyone attempting to slip her a piece of Dundee cake. ‘She’s in the newspaper,’ Mother Morning told Mother Afternoon.

Page 69 is pivotal to The Book of Guilt: this is the moment when the Minister of Loneliness visits a mysterious home for boys that she is charged with shutting down. The scene includes most of the major players – it’s narrated by Vincent, one of three identical triplet brothers who have grown up in the home, and readers get a good idea of how uncomfortable the boys’ carers – Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night – feel in the company of the Minister, who is just about to break the bad news. At this point, it’s all awkward small talk, but Dr Roach, who oversees the Sycamore Homes, is ‘stony’ – he knows what’s on the horizon.

This page gives just a hint of the unease that characterises the book – Mother Night’s silence suggests all is not well, as does Vincent’s slight confusion about her – but I think readers who consume the full novel will notice much more the pervasive sense that something is wrong, and the way it gradually intensifies as the story progresses. I loved turning the tension up and up, and I hope readers relish this aspect of the novel.

Mother Morning’s line ‘Fondant fancy?’ still makes me laugh, and is a small gesture towards the humour in the book. I hear my own mother in her voice – pretending at sophistication, offering some dreadful 1970s confection to a guest she wanted to impress.

Follow Catherine Chidgey on Facebook and Instagram.

Q&A with Catherine Chidgey.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Bitter Wind"

James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle World War II series, historical mysteries set within the Allied High Command during the Second World War. The series began with Billy Boyle, which takes place in England and Norway in 1942.

Benn applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Bitter Wind, the twentieth installment of the Billy Boyle series, with the following results:

From page 69:

“Did you check the carbon paper?” Diana said. “You never know.”

No, you never do. I remembered a clue once being found on carbon paper, but I think that was in a movie. Real life is never that easy, but I pulled out the dark, flimsy sheets to check them. The request for the Mandrel jammer was right on top, a worn, well-used sheet that had seen its final roll around the platen. Even so, I could make out the salutation to the 101 Squadron supply officer. The sheet under that was the memo to Brockman’s commanding officer at the 36th, the unit’s name clearly visible on the fresh page.

“Wait a minute,” I said, and set the sheets down side by side. “Brockman typed this one yesterday, using a new piece of carbon paper. He typed the supply request the day before, using a sheet that was on its last legs.”

“Very economical of him,” Diana said as she waited for me to make my point.

“This is how they came out of the tray,” I said, and placed the well-used sheet on top.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “It’s in the wrong order. Someone went through the carbon papers to see what the major had typed. Someone who got here before us.”

“Which means Brockman took both the original and carbon copy with him, which is why our intruder was reduced to riffling through the carbon paper,” I said.

“Or Major Brockman made a simple mistake,” Diana said with a sigh. “Out of character, but still possible. This is thin gruel, Billy.”

At first glance, this passage may look like thin gruel indeed for establishing the value of the Page 69 Test. It’s a bit dry and workmanlike, with a previously defined technical term laid out here much like a puzzling tidbit.

But then again, a murder investigation is full of tedious factchecking and the meticulous sifting of potential clues. And that’s exactly what’s going on here. Major Brockman is the murder victim—the first, that is—found early in the book. The Mandrel jammer is a piece of top secret electronic countermeasures hardware, designed to overwhelm German early warning radar systems. Brockman’s body was found with highly classified documents concerning electronic countermeasures used by the Royal Air Force in his pocket; documents that should never have left the base.

Which brings Billy and Diana sifting through routine paperwork in order to be certain all of the electronic warfare components are exactly where they should be. Dull, boring, and inconclusive, like much of real life.

So the test works well enough. The theoretical browser will know there’s already been a murder and that our detectives are searching for clues in a realistic fashion. Plus, there’s the added nostalgic sensation of handling carbon paper for those of an age to remember.

But there’s one last section of page 69 worth a mention:

“If we didn’t find him with his head bashed in, I’d agree it was just a mistake. But you’re right, it’s not much,” I said. “This must have something to do with what Conan Doyle had you investigating.”

Conan Doyle? If our browser has paid attention to the very end of the page, that name is sure to attract attention. This is a mystery, after all. The Conan Doyle in question is Squadron Officer Jean Conan Doyle, daughter of Sir Arthur, and in real life an intelligence officer with the Royal Air Force during World War II, and she plays an active role in this novel.

The Page 69 Test: passed, with flying colors.

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

The Page 69 Test: Evil for Evil.

The Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone.

My Book, The Movie: Death's Door.

The Page 69 Test: The White Ghost.

The Page 69 Test: Blue Madonna.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2016).

Q&A with James R. Benn.

The Page 69 Test: Proud Sorrows.

The Page 69 Test: The Phantom Patrol.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2024).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Literati"

USA Today bestselling author Susan Coll is the author of eight novels, including The Literati, Real Life & Other Fictions, and Bookish People. Her other books include The Stager, Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and Karlmarx.com.

Coll applied the Page 69 Test to The Literati and reported the following:

On page 69 of The Literati, Clemi – the 26-year-old protagonist who has just begun a new job as the programs director of a troubled literary nonprofit --- is working with Skylar, the intern, to try to guess the passwords for the nonprofit’s bank accounts so that they can pay the caterer for the forthcoming awards gala. Once they succeed, the two-step verification number is sent to the landline, which serves as an example of how antiquated the systems are at WLNP---Washington Literary Nonprofit. The two women then discover that the accounts they have managed to access have essentially been drained.

Page 69 is dialogue driven, so it doesn’t provide much context, and yet it is a surprisingly useful microcosm of the book. The page captures the comically dysfunctional state of WLNP, and it also has Clemi sneezing, which is a nod to her cat allergies and another of the novel’s plot points.

As a bonus, the page opens with the sentence, “OMG, Bob’s your uncle,” which was a line that I wanted to work into the novel. Around the time that I was writing this book I heard someone use this phrase. I was unfamiliar with it at the time, but it is apparently a British expression that means something along the lines of “and there you have it.” Or in the book, I’ve just successfully just hacked my way into the bank account.

Visit Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

The Page 69 Test: Real Life and Other Fictions.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Room of Lost Steps"

Simon Tolkien is the grandson of JRR Tolkien and a director of the Tolkien Estate. He is also series consultant for the Amazon series, The Rings of Power. He studied Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford and went on to become a London barrister specializing in criminal defense. He left the law to become a writer in 2001 and has published five novels which mine the history of the first half of the last century to explore dark subjects – capital punishment, the Holocaust, the London Blitz and the Battle of the Somme. The epic coming-of-age story of Theo Sterling, set in 1930s New York, England and Spain, is being published in two volumes, The Palace at the End of the Sea and The Room of Lost Steps.

Tolkien applied the Page 69 Test to The Room of Lost Steps and shared the following:

From page 69:

Theo ate hunks of bread with olive oil and pieces of uncooked ham, washed down with water in a goatskin bag. Even before he’d finished, he felt his strength returning, and the men clapped him on the back. Friends now, when they would have shot him in cold blood at a nod from their leader five minutes before. They called the short man Ascaso, and Theo sensed that they would lay down their lives without hesitation if he gave them the word.

In a pew at the back, the wounded man had stopped crying out, and Theo wondered whether he was dead.

Ascaso was over by the main door of the church, which he had half opened to look out. He was smoking a cigarette, and the golden sunlight wreathed with the blue smoke to illuminate his diminutive figure as if he were an actor on a stage. The gunfire, muffled before, was now louder than ever.

Suddenly he shouted twice, calling out a name that sounded like Oliver, and ran out.

“Who’s that?” Theo asked.

“Juan García Oliver. He leads the other group,” said one of the men. “They crossed Chinatown farther up, so perhaps they didn’t lose so many when they came out. If we join together, then maybe it will be enough.” But he looked like he had no faith in what he was saying. A hundred men would be no match for machine guns protected by the walls of the barricade.

A couple of minutes later, Ascaso came back into the church. “Time to go,” he said. “We have a plan.”

He walked to the end of the church and leaned down over the man in the back pew, verifying that he’d died. He closed the man’s eyes and took his pistol and handed it to Theo with an ammunition clip. “Let’s hope you can shoot as well as you can run,” he said.

On the way out of the church, he flicked his burning cigarette into the font and laughed when he saw Theo flinch.

“This church is beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

Theo nodded, uncertain of the right response.

“It’s the oldest in Barcelona. A thirteenth-century Romanesque jewel, but tomorrow it will burn. All of them will. You’ll see.”

Page 69 of The Room of Lost Steps, reproduced above, conveys the tension of a short still interval between two episodes of street fighting on the first day of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona. The arresting image of the anarchist leader, Francisco Ascaso, standing in the doorway of the Sant Pau del Camp Church, wreathed in smoke and illuminated by sunlight, conveys the appeal that anarchism held for the hero of the novel, Theo Sterling, but Ascaso’s casual disrespect for the font and promise that the church will burn reveal his ruthlessness, intensified in Theo’s mind by the fact that Ascaso understands that it is unique and beautiful, “a thirteenth-century Romanesque jewel.”

Attraction and repulsion: the contradictory effect that anarchism has on Theo is a central theme of the novel. He admires the anarchists’ courageous resistance to fascism, but he distrusts the violent destruction that they espouse, and this ambivalence leads to an inability to believe and commit that undermines his relationship with the anarchist girl he loves, Maria Alvarez.

The Room of Lost Steps completes Theo’s coming-of-age journey that began in The Palace at the End of the Sea. His participation in the fighting in Barcelona cements his hatred of fascism, and convinces him that he can help to change the world. He volunteers to fight with the International Brigades and so completes the journey from illusion to disillusion that is the overarching thematic arc of the two novels. Page 69 describes an episode that is an essential step along that road and so passes Marshall McLuhan’s test with flying colors.

Visit Simon Tolkien's website.

Q&A with Simon Tolkien.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fiend"

Alma Katsu's novels include Red London, The Fervor, Red Widow, and The Deep. Prior to the publication of her first novel, she had a thirty-five-year long career as a senior intelligence analyst for several U.S. agencies, including the CIA and NSA, as well as RAND. Katsu is a graduate of the master's writing program at the Johns Hopkins University and received her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University. She lives in West Virginia with her husband and is a contributing reviewer for the Washington Post.

Katsu applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Fiend, with the following results:

From page 69:

Maybe Zef assumed Dardan would keep the other boys in line. But Dardan wasn’t a leader, not of this pack. He was just one of the boys at the periphery. Grateful to be part of the tribe. Conner Garrison—a god on the lacrosse field, the one the girls could not refuse—was the undisputed star of that little universe.

Dardan always burns with shame to remember that part.

He’s always felt guilty for what happened. He knows Zef is to blame for many things, but Conner Garrison’s death is not one of them.

Dardan’s shoulders slump. “I’m sorry but you just have to accept it for what it was: a freak accident. We were night skiing. We shouldn’t have been. We didn’t know the trails well enough. We were stupid. Egging each other one. Conner lost control.”

Garrison is almost trembling with rage. Dardan knows he wants to push back: Conner was an expert skier. There’s no way he would’ve done something so foolhardy. And lose control? He’d practically grown up with skis strapped to his feet.

But Andy Garrison wasn’t there. Dardan was. And he’s plunged back to that night. Following Conner’s screams though the trees and over boulders to the bottom of a sheer drop. Kneeling in the bloodied snow, not knowing what to do, fearing it was hopeless anyway. Headlamp sputtering in and out, running out of juice. Praying while he waited for the medics to show up. Conner unresponsive by the time he heard the medevac copper landing in the distance.

There is something else, too. Something Dardan has admitted to no one else save his father.

Page 69 is not a good example of the book as a whole; that is, it doesn’t reflect all the themes and key issues in the book, but it does give the reader insight into one important part of the story, that of Dardan, one of the major characters.

Here, Dardan is looking back at an incident that happened when he was 17. He’s 28 now and being groomed to take over his family’s empire. From this one scene, you get a sense of the many pressures facing Dardan—his strong, exacting father, the pressure that comes with being part of an extremely wealthy family—as well as a sense of Dardan’s character and, most importantly, his limitations.

Crisis is a good test of character. Being the only person on the scene of a deadly accident, the victim ostensibly a good friend (or maybe more of a frenemy) lets us see exactly what kind of person Dardan is. Most importantly, we know a challenge lies ahead of him and we see through this scene that he is not equal to that challenge. Like his frenemy Conner, he’s going to be crushed—we just don’t know yet how.

Visit Alma Katsu's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Taker.

My Book, The Movie: The Hunger.

The Page 69 Test: The Hunger.

Writers Read: Alma Katsu (March 2020).

The Page 69 Test: The Deep.

The Page 69 Test: Red Widow.

Q&A with Alma Katsu.

The Page 69 Test: The Fervor.

Writers Read: Alma Katsu (April 2022).

My Book, The Movie: Red London.

The Page 69 Test: Red London.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Everything We Could Do"

David McGlynn's books include the memoirs One Day You'll Thank Me and A Door in the Ocean, and the story collection The End of the Straight and Narrow. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar. He teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

McGlynn applied the Page 69 Test to his debut novel, Everything We Could Do, and reported the following:

Everything We Could Do is largely -- though not entirely -- set in a hospital, specifically in a neonatal intensive care unit that cares for premature and critically ill newborn children. I've been fascinated by the NICU for years: not only was my youngest son a NICU patient, but my wife worked as a NICU social worker for close to a decade. The babies treated in NICUs are quite often unfathomably small and live at what Diana Fei calls "the edge of life": too small to survive without intensive medical intervention. Yet life, it turns out, is a powerful force and medical advancements have learned how to treat, nurture, and incubate many of these tiny human beings until they're strong enough to live in the world. It's harrowing and frightening and redemptive and miraculous all at once.

Page 69 is the opening of Chapter 5. The protagonists of the story, Brooke and Harper Jensen, have been holding vigil beside their preemies' beds for several weeks -- long enough for initial shock to wear off and for them to learn the idiosyncrasies of the place. A mother arrives at the unit with her baby, not for treatment, but to visit the nurses and doctor who cared for him. The nurses, however, don't remember him, at least not at first, and instead pretend to marvel over his size and progress. Harper Jensen sees this artificial display of exuberance as an insult, and then as a sign that the baby must not have been in the unit for very long. On the next page -- page 70 -- the reader learns that's not the case. The baby boy was very premature, and sick, and required an unforeseen surgery to live. But in the months since he's left the NICU, he's grown -- a lot. The nurses don't recognize him not because they're callous or cold, but because he's healthy and thriving.

Everything We Could Do tries to present a realistic view of a world few people ever see or even know about. It was important to me to not turn away from the most difficult experiences, to bear witness to them. But throughout the novel are moments like the one found on page 69, in which rays of light and hope poke through, and the characters get glimpses of possible happy endings. It helps them to keep going, and (I hope) adds a little levity to a deadly serious world.

Visit David McGlynn's website.

Writers Read: David McGlynn.

Q&A with David McGlynn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Mercy of Thin Air"

Ronlyn Domingue's critically acclaimed debut novel, The Mercy of Thin Air, was published in ten languages. It was a fiction finalist for the 2005 Borders Original Voices Award and 2006 SIBA Book Award, a long list nominee for the 2005 James Tiptree, Jr. Award (now known as the Otherwise Award), and a 2010 Costco Pennie’s Pick. The Keeper of Tales Trilogy, which can be read in any order, includes The Mapmaker's War, The Chronicle of Secret Riven, and The Plague Diaries.

Domingue applied the Page 69 Test to The Mercy of Thin Air and shared the following:

From The Mercy of Thin Air, page 69:

Amy didn’t watch the rest of the DVD Chloe had sent her, but I did. There were only a few minutes left. The footage was taken at a party. People waved at the camera and talked to Chloe, the voice behind the lens. The microphone hummed with music and chatter. The shot moved through a dining room next to a narrow kitchen doorway. On the wall behind Amy was a calendar, August 1992. She hugged the dark-haired young man, and he clearly didn’t want them to be interrupted. They shared a strangely intimate moment for such a celebratory atmosphere. He was talking, but his voice did not come through. I strained through the noise and read his lips--It’ll be okay, he said. We’ll have the whole drive up. Sex in at least one strange bed. He nudged her, and she smiled. Thanksgiving will be here before you know it. This is only temporary.

For several days after she hid the disc, the essence of another man billowed intermittently throughout the house. More often, she snapped her head toward doorways and furniture corners with no discernable reason why. Amy was not reacting to me, I knew: there was another reason for her jitters.

Within that time, Amy stopped watching Scott as he slept before she left for work. Then one morning, and another, and each one after, she didn’t kiss him goodbye. The only habit she kept was to keep him warm.

Does the Page 69 Test work for my novel? Absolutely it does on the level of theme—a refusal to confront the past. Amy hides a secret, as well as profound trauma, that will be revealed in the pages that follow. The narrator Razi Nolan—a ghost who wouldn’t call herself a ghost—struggles with similar buried troubles. On top of that, page 69 picks up on other aspects of the story such as heightened senses and matters of intimacy.

So much has changed since the novel was published in 2005—from technology to politics—that I wondered if it would hold up in light of that—and for the story itself. For the book’s twentieth anniversary, a friend invited me to do an interview on his podcast. I had to reread the book for the first time in about 10 years to get ready. In the opening minutes, he quoted several reviews, one I didn’t remember. “In a word: Timeless,” he said. I paused. Yes. Because, at the core, this story is about deep love among friends, family, and partners, The Mercy of Thin Air is truly timeless.

Visit Ronlyn Domingue's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Danger No Problem"

Cindy Fazzi is a Filipino American writer and former Associated Press reporter. She’s the author of the Domingo the Bounty Hunter series. Danger No Problem (book 1), previously titled Multo, was a finalist in the Best Literary category of the 2024 Silver Falchion Award. Book 2 is titled Sunday or the Highway.

Fazzi applied the Page 69 Test to Danger No Problem with the following results:

These are the first three paragraphs of page 69 of Danger No Problem, which follows Domingo, a Filipino American bounty hunter. Page 69 is the start of Chapter 8. It’s one of several chapters that begin with a first-person narrative by Domingo. He’s writing an advice book for people who want to immigrate to the United States based on his experience as an immigrant and his job finding fugitive undocumented immigrants.

THE PRESENT

Assimilation in America: You Are What You Eat

If you are what you eat, you must learn to like what native-born Americans eat. Mac and cheese, hot dogs and hamburgers, pizza, snickerdoodles and cupcakes, mashed potatoes, and lots of cereal. Mind you, I didn’t eat any of these things while growing up in Manila. Mamang still refuses to eat them even after two decades in America. She’s seventy years old; it’s too late to teach her new habits.

In the Philippines, we eat rice at every meal. We’ve thought of all the different ways to eat rice. Garlic rice, steamed rice, chicken rice porridge called arroz caldo, chocolate rice pudding called champorado, a rice cake called bibingka, a rice cake called puto, a rice cake called biko. Do I sound like Bubba talking about shrimp in Forrest Gump? Well, the point is I love rice, but I learned to eat other things here in America.

Unless you’re as old as my mother, your assimilation should include eating like an American. If you want to be accepted, you must embrace the norm. Appreciate the abundance around you. We’re lucky to live in the present America where a halal market sits next to an Italian bistro and an Indian restaurant, where you can buy hard-to-find sauces and spices in a Chinese or Mexican or Filipino store.

The Page 69 Test works in this case. It describes the protagonist, Domingo the bounty hunter, in his own words. In just a few paragraphs, readers learn the following:

• Domingo is from the Philippines; his mother is 70 years old, and she doesn’t like American food;
• He believes that you are what you eat, and therefore, food is an important part of assimilation for immigrants.
• He introduces Filipino cuisine by identifying some popular rice delicacies.
• He’s grateful for the abundance in America, as well as its cultural diversity.

The two-book Domingo the Bounty Hunter series features the first Filipino American and first brown immigrant hero in the bounty hunter trope. Both books tackle ripped-from-the- headlines immigration issues and themes of identity and belongingness.

In Danger No Problem, Domingo is looking for the only quarry that has ever eluded him. He’s chasing an undocumented biracial Filipino woman named Monica Reed for the third time. He has tried to catch Monica for different reasons in a span of almost two decades.

The book pits a dogged bounty hunter against a desperate undocumented woman in hiding. They are compatriots. They are both in the United States in pursuit of the American Dream, but their dreams are on collision course.

As a Filipino American immigrant, the topic of immigration is very close to my heart. I wrote the series to introduce readers to Filipino American characters because there are so few of them in books.

I also want readers to get a glimpse of the common struggles and aspirations of immigrants, whether legal or undocumented. For immigrants of color, regardless of status, it usually boils down to the need for respect and acceptance because they are told in so many ways that they don’t belong here.

Visit Cindy Fazzi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bees in June"

Elizabeth Bass Parman grew up entranced by family stories, such as the time her grandmother woke to find Eleanor Roosevelt making breakfast in her kitchen. She worked for many years as a reading specialist for a non-profit and spends her summers in a cottage by a Canadian lake. She has two grown daughters and lives outside her native Nashville with her husband.

Parman applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Bees in June, and reported the following:

From page 69:

AFTER SHE HAD SET THE LAST PAN ON THE DISH drainer, Rennie wiped her hands, slipped off her shoes, and went outside for her evening check on the peanuts, sunflowers, and pumpkins. The soft grass on her feet always grounded her, no matter how frazzled she felt. She inhaled deeply, drawing into her lungs the air that was full of the promise of summer. Soon enough the heat and humidity would become cloying, but for now she welcomed it like a friend. Her little plot of land shone in the golden-hour light. After resting with her uncle in the bee yard following his fall, she had found the energy to dig the holes for the seeds, with Poe circling his encouragement in the skies above her. She was pleased to have finally put in her garden, feeling like she was slowly syncing back into the rhythm of life.

The tender shoots were about eight inches tall, with the delicate oval leaves of the peanut plants resembling butterfly wings, while the bigger pumpkin leaves looked like green umbrellas protecting the smaller leaves underneath. The sunflowers were leaping skyward, taller than anything else growing. So different in appearance, all the leaves had one thing in common, the primal need to reach skyward, toward the sun.

What it conveys: Bees in June, set in the summer of 1969, is the story of Rennie Hendricks, a woman in an abusive marriage who is rediscovering her own joy and power after suffering a tragic loss. She finds solace in two places, the kitchen and her uncle’s bee yard, both mentioned on this page. Rennie is deeply connected to nature, especially when she is with the bees. This page references the idea of both healing the body by breathing air from beehives, a form of apitherapy and grounding, walking barefoot in grass, to further emphasize the restorative power of nature. She nurtures by providing delicious meals, both for the humans and for Poe, the crow she is growing the food for.

What it misses: Bees in June has a diverse cast of characters, including her invalid uncle Dixon, her cousin May Dean, and, of course the bees, but none of them appear on this page. Uncle Dixon personifies the wisdom of the natural world. “Treasure every bee you see, Rennie.” May Dean, described by Rennie’s husband as a “dim bulb,” is worried about the astronauts landing safely on a crescent moon. “Shouldn’t they go when it’s full, to give them a better chance?” Then there are the bees, who have their own chapters. Acting as a Greek chorus, they are wise and omniscient, but also not above interfering when they feel the humans have strayed from their path. The bees’ conversation about the humans begins the story.

The sooner he gets to Spark, the sooner his shattered heart will begin to knit back together.
What about her heart?
It grows colder every day. If he does not hurry, though, more than her heart is at risk. Her very life depends upon our success.
Is he going to save her?
No, something even better is afoot. She’s about to realize she must save herself.

Page 69 of Bees in June does a good job of communicating the overall feel of the book, but it lacks the engaging secondary characters that add to the flavor of the story.

Visit Elizabeth Bass Parman's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Bass Parman.

The Page 69 Test: The Empress of Cooke County.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cold Island"

Peter Colt is a 1996 graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a BA in Political Science. Colt was a 24-year veteran of the Army Reserve with deployments to Kosovo and Iraq as an Army Civil Affairs officer. He is currently a police officer in Providence, Rhode Island. He is married to his long suffering wife with whom he is raising two sons.

He enjoys, kayaking and camping and tries to get on the local rivers and ponds as often as he reasonably can. Colt is also an avid cook, a hobby which manages to find its way into his novels. He is a proud member of both the Mystery Writers of America and The Pawtuxet Athletic Club.

He is the author of the Tommy Kelly mysteries, Cold Island (2025). He also wrote the Andy Roark series of books, The Off-Islander (2019) and Back Bay Blues (2020) and Death at Fort Devens (2022), The Ambassador (2023), The Judge (2024) and The Banker (2025). He has also published short stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Colt applied the Page 69 Test to Cold Island and shared the following:

Page 69 shows the protagonists of Cold Island, Massachusetts State Police Detective Tommy Kelly and Nantucket Police Department Detective Jo Harris at work. They are in the NPD detective bureau, checking emails, reporting to bosses and waiting for forensic evidence. In short they are doing real and boring police work. It aint like the stuff on TV. It's not glamorous but it is authentic.

If a reader were to open Cold Island to page 69 they wouldn't get a good idea about the story. In fact they might be tempted to put the book back on the shelf and move onto something more interesting. The book is a dark, twisty, cold case story. There is a lot in it to grab a reader's attention but there isn't much of it on page 69. That said, page 69 works in the context of the novel because it is one of the threads that make up the tapestry of the novel. In this case the Page 69 Test doesn't work for my book, but the Page 34 Test would!

Part of the reason why the test doesn't work for Cold Island is that the story is a police procedural, a cold case, that bounces back and forth from 1981 to 2016. The story itself involves a serial killer and the investigation that results from the recovery of one of his victims remains thirty-five years later. The downside of being a cop, writing a police procedural is the temptation, no, the need to portray the police work as just work. Nothing sexy. Just putting the pieces together. In that sense, page 69 is reflective of the novel but that mania for relative accuracy is just one part of the novel.

Visit Peter Colt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Back Bay Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Back Bay Blues.

Q&A with Peter Colt.

The Page 69 Test: Death at Fort Devens.

My Book, The Movie: Death at Fort Devens.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (June 2022).

My Book, The Movie: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Judge.

My Book, The Movie: The Judge.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (May 2024).

Writers Read: Peter Colt (March 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Banker.

The Page 69 Test: The Banker.

--Marshal Zeringue

“What About the Bodies”

Ken Jaworowski is an editor at The New York Times. He graduated from Shippensburg University and the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was an amateur boxer, and has had plays produced in New York and Europe. He lives in New Jersey with his family.

Jaworowski applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, What About the Bodies, and reported the following:

I think I got lucky here: page 69 of What About the Bodies is fairly representative of the thriller's plot, in which good people venture into bad places. On that page, two characters are getting mired in a mess that will put them into debt with a brutal criminal. It’s a harsh moment, and, I hope, a bit of a funny one.

But behind the scene is a serious situation that many, many people are faced with: how to get money in an emergency. Several surveys have found that about half of all Americans wouldn’t be able to secure $1,000 if they needed it immediately. And that’s a reality that too many writers ignore. When I read a novel with a character who impulsively decides to jet across the country or dine in a trendy restaurant without worrying about the cost, I find myself a little put off. Sure, there are plenty of people who can afford expensive things. But there are far, far many more who can’t. And those are the people I like to write and read about.

Visit Ken Jaworowski's website.

Q&A with Ken Jaworowski.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Lonesome Place for Murder"

Nolan Chase lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.

A Lonesome Place for Murder is his second book featuring Ethan Brand. It follows A Lonesome Place for Dying, which earned starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

Chase applied the Page 69 Test to A Lonesome Place for Murder with the following results:

From page 69:

…the remains on the slightly tilted autopsy table, laid out on that stainless steel, affected him more than he’d though. Part of it was the decomposition, the mixture of wax and leather, bone and parchment. Partly it was thinking this was what remained of Tyler Rash. The kid who’d come to live with him for a time. The man who’d intervened and tried to help him.

Something else, too. Ethan had been down in that tunnel. He’d seen the dead man’s resting place, shared it for a brief while. Their lives had intersected over the years—in a way it was like viewing one possible outcome of his own life. If Ty hadn’t come to him that last time…

Ethan left the room.

At heart, A Lonesome Place for Murder is a story about family, loss, and crime. This excerpt from page 69 hits those themes solidly. Tyler Rash might be victim, intended victim, murderer, or something else entirely, but he and Ethan Brand are connected by blood and history. And they’re on a collision course…

Chief Ethan Brand stumbles on an abandoned smuggling tunnel, with a body lying inside. The dead man is somehow connected to Ethan’s childhood friend Tyler Rash. What was Tyler doing in the tunnel, and who wanted to killed him? Ethan and his senior investigator, Brenda Lee Page, have to find answers before the killer finds them.

Visit Nolan Chase's website.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase (May 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

My Book, The Movie: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

My Book, The Movie: A Lonesome Place for Murder.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sweetener"

Marissa Higgins is a lesbian writer. She is the author of the novel A Good Happy Girl.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Sweetener, and shared the following:

I feel like Sweetener exists so I can talk about page 69. It is perfect for my freaky little book. Sweetener comes in at 256 pages, a hair longer than my first freaky novel A Good Happy Girl. Page 69 of Sweetener opens with a split sentence, the tail end of a bigger picture: "and slower if she can help me call anyone, and I shake my head gingerly." Greasy Rebecca (narrator Rebecca) has just walked in front of (and been hit by) a moving car and Charlotte, my neurotic artist dating two Rebeccas concurrently, is trying to get Rebecca to go to the hospital to get checked out. But Charlotte and the Rebeccas are all disturbed, and Charlotte doesn't really want to go to the hospital; she wants to consume both Rebeccas alive. She settles for going into a bakery with possibly-concussed Rebecca instead.

"You're so confused," Charlotte tells Rebecca, who doesn't realize Charlotte's been the one she's meeting from the sugaring app. Why? Rebecca is thrown by Charlotte's big fake belly, which Charlotte holds while speaking

"I saw it happen from inside," Charlotte tells Rebecca. "I've been waiting..."

"For the arches of Heaven," I fill in. "Or the gates of hell?"

The whole book is a slice of these strange women's lives while they're "dyking out." The reader (and myself) are equally disoriented and consumed by what these dykes are willing to do "in plain sight" to get something they want, even if their desires are a mystery to themselves. In the running include having (or stealing) a baby, being a sugar mama, severing or saving a marriage, and fostering a real child. And explicit lesbian sex with a fake pregnancy belly.

"I've got to get going," Rebecca finally tells Charlotte, incorrectly thinking this can't be the woman she's been messaging; that pregnancy belly looks big. Sweetener is the story of women who don't recognize each other or themselves, but they're emotionally the same: three reduces to one, if not literally, thematically. Style is really important to me, and I think this page represents my writing the best; no quotation marks, weird images, language that's motivated by sound and rhythm. Built to annoy most readers and a little reward for people who let my music get into their head.

"I refuse to see a doctor or a nurse or anyone who has any expectation of being paid for their time," Rebecca, who is calling her broke self a sugar mama online, reasons. "I tell myself to look up what to do after you've been hit by. car when I get back to my room; someone else without insurance must have vlogged it."

If you don't like page 69, you probably won't like the rest of the book: my girls are insufferable, like me. But if you get to page 69, you probably are interested or neutral enough to finish reading. I personally think hate or disgust reads are great, and I don't think you have to enjoy a book to love it or be changed by it.

Visit Marissa Higgins's website and follow her on Instagram and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Gone in the Night"

Joanna Schaffhausen wields a mean scalpel, skills she developed in her years studying neuroscience. She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain―how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. Previously, she worked as a scientific editor in the field of drug development. Prior to that, she was an editorial producer for ABC News, writing for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives in the Boston area with her husband, daughter, and an obstreperous basset hound named Winston.

Schaffhausen applied the Page 69 Test to Gone in the Night, the fifth Detective Annalisa Vega novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 finds PI Annalisa Vega puzzling over an anonymous note that proclaims her client, Joe Green, is innocent of murder:

Annalisa reread the note as she walked out. “You know what’s odd?” she remarked to Nick.

“The B at the end. Whoever sent the note went to a lot of trouble to keep their identity hidden, so why write anything at all as a signature?”

“Maybe it’s trying to throw us off. Maybe the B doesn’t mean anything.”

Karma leaned over and peeked at the note as they walked to the main door. “That’s not a B,” she said. “It’s a rune.”

“A what?” Nick stopped walking so Annalisa halted too.

Karma grabbed the note without asking. “I mean, it is kind of a B, like an early B from the ancient Germanic languages. See how it looks like two sideways triangles on top of one another. It’s a Berkanan. It represents rebirth, wisdom, sanctuary, and healing. I’m surprised that Charlotte didn’t tell you this herself.”

“And why is that?” Annalisa asked.

Karma handed the note back to Annalisa with a shrug. “Because she has one tattooed on her leg.”

This half-page is a pretty good sample of what you can expect from the Annalisa Vega novels. Annalisa digs into every tiny detail of her investigations, including wondering about the motive of why someone sending an anonymous note would bother to sign it. Her question leads to an important revelation in this case, which is that the B is not a letter but a rune. Even more crucially, the director of the women’s shelter, Charlotte, has one tattooed on her leg, suggesting a link between her and the person who sent the anonymous note. Charlotte has just finished telling Annalisa she knows nothing about the case, and now Annalisa suspects her of lying.

More generally, the Berkanan represents one of the themes of the book, which is a meditation on whether it’s possible to start over. Can you get a second chance in life? Who deserves one? Annalisa put her brother in prison years ago and the move solidified her moral code at the expense of her personal relationships. The Vegas’ struggle to heal is one of the main currents through all the books, leading to the culmination in this one as Annalisa confronts her brother at last.

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--Marshal Zeringue