"Liberal Arts"

David McGlynn is the author of the novel Everything We Could Do, the story collection The End of the Straight and Narrow, and the memoirs A Door in the Ocean and One Day You’ll Thank Me. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar, and has been reviewed on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air. He teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

McGlynn applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Liberal Arts, and shared the following:

Most of page 69 is occupied by a single paragraph from the October chapter:

The summer before he left for college, Danny went through his parents’ files, found the name of the adoption agency, and filed a request for his birth parents to release their contact information. He listed the college as his mailing address, certain the process would take months, but when he opened his mailbox in the campus center in September, the affidavit was there. Names, phone numbers, email. He found them on Facebook in five minutes. His birth mom and dad were both from Wauwatosa, as was he. They lived five miles from his house and were married to each other. They had two other kids, a boy and a girl, Danny’s full siblings. His mom managed an office for a chiropractor and his dad worked for Briggs and Stratton, the same brand of engine on the lawn mower in his garage at home. It didn’t mean anything, or shouldn’t have, but it did. He’d always assumed his parents had disappeared after his birth, his mom taking the bus to the hospital to give birth, then, afterward, into oblivion. His dad going out of state for college, or into the army, or to a fishing boat in Alaska. Instead an entire family remained intact.

The chapter's title is "The Next Sidney Crosby." The central character is named Danny and he's a junior at the college where the novel takes place. He's surprised to learn that a romantic encounter his first year of college not only led to a child, but that the child is no longer in the mother's custody. Before the toddler can go to foster care, a social worker informs Danny that he has the right to confirm his paternity and take custody of his son. Danny is, unsurprisingly, totally shocked. But there's a twist: Danny was himself adopted, by parents who lived in the same town near Milwaukee as his birth parents. So his debate about whether or not to assume responsibility for his own son is colored by his own history.

The passage is a great snapshot of the novel as a whole because it showcases a central feature present in each character. Every person in the novel -- every last one of them -- has a secret history, a past they either guard or feel uncertain about. Despite all the ways that small liberal-arts colleges are seen as bastions of privilege, they remain microcosms of complex human beings who come from not only the region surrounding the college, but from around the globe. The "bubble" of the liberal-arts college is, in fact, a junction point for the entire world -- full of diverse experiences, backgrounds, ambitions, and impossible expectations. Danny's story of looking for his birth parents is an encapsulation of that very phenomenon.

Visit David McGlynn's website.

Writers Read: David McGlynn (September 2025).

Q&A with David McGlynn.

The Page 69 Test: Everything We Could Do.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Your Boyfriend Needs an Exorcist"

Justine Pucella Winans (they/she) is a critically acclaimed and award-winning author of queer fiction. They have written a variety of funny and/or scary books across age ranges, including a Stonewall Honor title, a Lammy Award Finalist, an Indies Introduce pick, and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, alongside multiple starred reviews. When not writing, she can be found taking too many photos of her cats, training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, actively avoiding real life scary situations, and working on their true goal of becoming a Pokémon trainer.

Winans applied the Page 69 Test to their new novel, Your Boyfriend Needs an Exorcist, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Your Boyfriend Needs an Exorcist follows 15-year-old Schuyler Thompson, a ghost possessing the body of 17-year-old Enzo Altamura, in school for the first time since her before her death--quite some time before.

Really, I'm completely overwhelmed. It's total sensory overload. The school is almost exactly the same as I remember it in some ways, like the general layout, shitty lighting, lack of windows in the hallway, and noise levels, but there's also so much that's different.

I don't have textbooks, I have e-textbooks on an assigned tablet that is indeed in my backpack. I'm not used to reading on a screen, and it takes me too long to figure out how to turn down the brightness setting so I can skim the last chapter my math book is open to.

Damn, I barely remember anything I learned when I was alive. Even if I did, I'm not sure it's the same math I had been learning. It feels different, almost entirely new. Can math change? I died at the end of sophomore year and Enzo is a senior, so this is too advanced for me, regardless. I almost wish Vinny hadn't been lying about helping me with schoolwork. I'll definitely need it.

"You need to copy answers?" one of the dudes next to me asks.

"Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks..." I trail off awkwardly. I don't know the names of any of Enzo's friends. It's not like they ever came over to Wren's place, and none of the contacts in his phone had pictures attached. "Bro."

"No problem, bro."

Well, at least that worked.

While I don't think page 69 gives a complete sense of the book as a whole, I think it gives an excellent sense of the voice and character, and the humor (and maybe unfortunate nature) of our protagonist's situation. Through this glimpse into Schuyler's story, we get a sense that she is a fish-out-of-water in a lot of ways. We can gather that she has died, has been dead for sometime, and is somehow thrust back into high school life in someone else's body, through this small struggle to stay afloat in her math class. I think this does set up the basic concept of the book, showing that while it is in a Young Adult contemporary setting, there is at least something supernatural going on!

The parts that can't be gleaned from page 69 alone are some of the book's dark, horror elements. There is a lot of comedy in this book, and I think this page gives a glimpse of that potential, but without saying any spoilers, things definitely take a turn into bloody, body horror territory. For better or worse, this page alone may not prepare readers for the gore and difficult subjects that arise through Schuyler's accidental possession of Enzo. (I did write an author's note at the beginning of the book for that reason!)

However, as a reader, sometimes I find that the character voice is what matters most when it comes to giving a book a chance. Maybe this school-set page doesn't get into the scariest parts of the book, or even the silliest parts of the book, but I do think (and hope) it does a great job of introducing readers to Schuyler, and the general conflict she faces due to the premise. It sets up the story to be a kind of supernatural Freaky Friday, which isn't totally off base! There is definitely more depth to Schuyler and her struggles throughout the book, but this is a great little glimpse into the general concept and characterization. I find it to be a successful Page 69 Test and hope readers feel the same way!

Visit Justine Pucella Winans's website.

Q&A with Justine Pucella Winans.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Beneath the Edelweiss"

Elizabeth Noel has called many places home, including the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. She holds an MEd from the University of Exeter and an MLitt from the University of Saint Andrews and has taught at various universities in the UAE. Long-listed for both the Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose Competition and the Anthology Short Story Competition, Noel has published various short works. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two daughters, on the land of the Gayemagal people within the Eora Nation.

As a child, Noel made regular visits to see her Austrian grandmother, or Omi, who encouraged her to chew on fennel seeds, sip herbal teas, and rub strange-smelling creams onto her skin. The city of Vienna, Melk Abbey, and the mountains and glass-topped lakes of Carinthia captured her heart. Her new novel, Beneath the Edelweiss, is the result of years of questioning what happened to her grandparents and great-grandparents, piecing together a narrative of Carinthia’s complex and tragic past.

Noel applied the Page 69 Test to Beneath the Edelweiss with the following results:

From page 69:

Oma is setting Mitzi up for failure, disappointment, probably humiliation. Maud knows even if Oma doesn’t that Mitzi will never be a mountain herbalist. Too many people think she is cursed even if she does have a pretty face. Maud sighs. She has to stop calling her a troll. And of course, if Mitzi doesn’t become an herbalist and learn to trade, the farm will end up in too much debt. Maud looks at Devello and Katarina. Can bees and cheese save them all?

Oma and Katarina walk toward the house. Maud swings herself over the horse and down to the ground. “My legs are going numb from sitting up there.”

Devello tries to kiss her, but she pushes him away. “Not in front of them.”

“Old women talking. They’ll occupy each other for hours.” He rearranges his trousers. Pulling at what lies beneath. “Bring the horse to the field with me. We’ll slip into the barn.”

“There isn’t time. They’ll come looking for us. And it isn’t winter anymore. We have farmhands.”

“The old beehives then? I’d lay you down right now if I could.”

“Devello!” Maud says, and Katarina and Oma look back.

He waves a hand at the women, and they carry on up the sloping field.

“They’re too busy getting acquainted to care what we do anymore.”

Maud sees the longing in his eyes and is amused by it. “Alright, but I want you to tell me about the Gypsy, the one who died in the war.”

Browsers opening the book to page 69 would meet Maud who is not the main protagonist of the book. However, she is talking about the heroine, Mitzi, and her concerns for her future and the future of their farm which is threatened by foreclosure. I think readers get a good sense of tone, a glimpse of the landscape and some of the superstitions that drift like low cloud among the alpine culture. As it is the end of a chapter, it is also a shorter page than normal, but it might be enough for a quick sale at a bookstore!

The person Maud wants to know more about is a man who fought in the first world war with Devello. He was a Sinti Roma who saw light around the head of anyone who was about to die. Maud is curious because she is considering sneaking out and speaking to a Sinti woman who she met in the woodland moments earlier. The woman offered to tell Maud’s fortune in exchange for payment. As Maud is pregnant and fears beyond all else dying in childbirth, she desires to know if the woman can see the light of death around her head like the soldier in the war. The woman does not have this gift, but she has others, and through the woman, Maud discovers far more than she bargains for.

Visit Elizabeth Noel's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Noel.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Noel.

--Marshal Zeringue

"In This Life or Another"

Melissa Payne is the bestselling author of seven novels, including The Wild Road Home and In This Life or Another. After an early career raising money for nonprofit organizations, Payne began dreaming about becoming a published author and wrote her first novel. Her stories feature small mountain towns with characters searching for redemption, love, and second chances. They have been three-time Colorado Book Award finalists and three-time Colorado Authors League winners for mainstream fiction. Payne lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with her husband and three children, a friendly mutt, a very loud cat, and the occasional bear.

Payne applied the Page 69 Test to In This Life or Another and shared the following:

From page 69:

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your father told me what you said.”

His shoulders bow like someone dropped a million-pound weight on him.

“I didn’t mean it.”

Her voice is softer when she says, “Of course you didn’t.” He turns to face her. “But Dad—”

“Has his own path. One day, you might understand him better. But for now, sweetheart, be you and follow your heart. If Gus wanted anything, it’s that.”

Rusty has the sudden urge to hug his mother. He approaches her, arms out, a lump in his throat, but his arms pass through the air, and he’s in the Salt Lick, hugging himself.

At first read, I thought this was a failed test. It’s short, hardly says anything at all and misses huge moments of the story that would be a better window into the book. However, sometimes the smallest moments pack the most powerful punch and upon a second read, I realized that this small interaction between a young Rusty and his mother is a glimpse not only of the guilt and frustration he carries with him regarding his father but also of lost moments with his mother, like a hug that doesn’t happen.

This flashback is one of the signposts that shapes Rusty’s story. In In This Life or Another, Rusty is stuck in a liminal realm between life and death where he has the chance to experience a different version of his life and review the life he’s lived. When Rusty was only two, his older brother died saving him from a deadly house fire that ended up taking his life. And on the eve of his sixtieth birthday, Rusty believes he hasn’t lived up to his father’s expectations or his brother’s sacrifice. He’s struggling to find meaning and purpose and wonders what his life might have looked like if he’d make different choices. It’s in this liminal space where Rusty, with the help of his spirit guide and pet turtle, Ike, examines his past and a life that never existed to answer the question at the heart of his journey: has he lived a meaningful life?

Despite its length, page 69 of In This Life or Another teases the reader with its themes and storyline without hitting anyone over the head with it and for that I think it passes the test with flying colors.

Visit Melissa Payne's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Melissa Payne & Max.

My Book, The Movie: The Secrets of Lost Stones.

The Page 69 Test: The Secrets of Lost Stones.

Q&A with Melissa Payne.

The Page 69 Test: The Night of Many Endings.

My Book, The Movie: The Night of Many Endings.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sutra Americana"

Monona Wali is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and filmmaker. Her debut novel, My Blue Skin Lover, won the 2015 Independent Book Publishers Gold Award for Multicultural Fiction. Many of her stories and essays have been published in literary journals including Air/Light, Folio Literary Journal, Juked, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Santa Monica Review. One received Special Mention in the 2025 Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Wali applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Sutra Americana, and reported the following:

Page 69 lands the reader early in “Frieda’s Kiss” — chapter seven of the book. In it, Anu, the youngest of three daughters is being deposited at college by her parents, both academics themselves. This is in the mid-seventies. She asks for money to help her cover her expenses. She knows both her sisters received a check for $500 when they started their freshman year. She gets $250. She supposes the rest will come second semester. As she watches her parents drive off, she is hit with unexpected homesickness: “her throat ached and her heart actually hurt. That surprised her—the actual physical pain in her chest.” She confronts being alone for the first time in her life:

There were a couple lengthy days spent trying to make friends. Anu sat under one of the sycamore trees on the college green and filled her cheap notebook with free verse. She had started writing poetry in high school. Black crows, massacred villages, burnt terrain, napalmed souls. She had read “The Bell Jar” and felt that Sylvia Plath understood a woman’s struggle. She watched bare-chested boys flick Frisbees back and forth and wondered if she could fall in love with one of them. She wanted to kiss a boy badly; she had not done that yet.

At bottom of the page, Anu meets the woman who will change her life. “It was on the first day of Intro to Poetry class that she met Frieda Deakins, who wasted no time admiring the hand-knit scarf Anu was wearing. “I love those colors! Are you from India?” she asked. Thus begins Anu journey to self-discovery.

A reader opening the book to page 69 would get a good taste of the family dynamics that are so central to this book. This is a polyphonic novel that spans five decades, and Anu is just one of five central characters who have a voice in this book, so a reader would get a peek into at least one of the main characters as a young woman on the cusp of discovering important things about herself. Most importantly, the reader would get a sense of the style and voice of the novel.

Page 69 is definitely a microcosm of the whole novel — almost every page digs into the dynamics of this immigrant family as they negotiate their identities in the American landscape. While the family is very bonded, each chapter reveals the threads that threaten to unravel that bond – for example – why does Anu get $250 less than her sisters? What uncomfortable truths will come her way as soon as she steps foot outside the shelter of her family? What is she to do with her Indian identity when she has worked so hard to assimilate into American life? As we move from family member to family member, we are carried deeply into the ways they love and hurt each other and ultimately face a choice to stay bonded or move apart.

Visit Monona Wali's website.

Q&A with Monona Wali.

--Marshal Zeringue

"House Haunters"

KC Jones is a screenwriter-turned-novelist currently living in western Washington. When not writing, he can be found watching movies, playing video and board games, or enjoying nature—whenever it isn’t raining.

He graduated from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas with a degree in film production. His first published novel, Black Tide, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a first novel.

Jones applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, House Haunters, with the following results:

"This time Grace screams."

Page 69 opens Chapter 8, which takes place inside an empty, purportedly haunted house just moments after something has fallen to the floor upstairs, sending a shudder through the dark space and, to her dismay, startling a scream out of Grace. She’s there filming one of Frank's investigations as a screen test to satisfy the whims of her best friend, who believes this home-inspector-turned-ghost-hunter could be the subject of a hit reality TV show. As initially skeptical and disinterested as Grace is, she can’t help being drawn in by Frank’s deadpan professionalism toward “possessions, poltergeists, and other latent defects,” and the odd noises in the house are beginning to get to her, as much as she tries to tell herself it’s all just her imagination. Which brings us to this page.

I'd say that yes, page 69 is a pretty good example of what a reader will find throughout the book. A little spooky, a little funny; Grace is ever trying to reconcile her stubborn disbelief in the supernatural with what her senses and the house itself seem to be telling her, while Frank remains frustratingly stoic, marching fearlessly toward the things going bump in the night while Fish Stick, his sidekick corgi, trundles along reluctantly at his side. It's a perfect, bite-sized preview of things to come.

Visit KC Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: White Line Fever.

Q&A with KC Jones.

Writers Read: KC Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

"That May Not Mean What You Think"

Elizabeth Crane is the author of several collections of short stories, including Turf, When the Messenger is Hot, All this Heavenly Glory, and You Must Be This Happy to Enter, a memoir, This Story Will Change, as well as two novels, We Only Know So Much and The History of Great Things.

Crane applied the Page 69 Test to her latest story collection, That May Not Mean What You Think, and shared the following:

Page 69 of That May Not Mean What You Think comes in on page three of a story called "The Long Trial," but I'm gonna say on a couple of the more important fronts, this page should give you a good sense of whether or not you're interested in reading more. It's very reflective of my prose style, which typically plays with form and style, and you can gather quickly that the content of the story relates to the title, and that it is a trial of someone who has harassed... a lot of women. On this page, the reader is introduced to some of the members of the court and some of the people in attendance, all of the above having had some experience with harassment.

The court interpreter was a trans woman who had stories that would break you. The court interpreter had been harassed every goddamn day since she was in first grade and went to school wearing purple nail polish. Her stories did not get better from there.

The court security guard was a woman who had never been an actress but was alive in the world.

The court zombie was not alive in the world but had once been a living woman who felt bad about her appearance, even though she had never been an actress. An HR guy once told her to undo a couple of buttons on her blouse to make up the difference for what she didn't have up top. You can imagine she didn't feel better about her appearance once she was undead.

I think even these three short paragraphs from page 69 offer some humor, which can definitely be found throughout the book.

Visit Elizabeth Crane's website.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Crane (April 2008).

The Page 69 Test: We Only Know So Much.

My Book, The Movie: We Only Know So Much.

Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth Crane & Percy.

Q&A with Elizabeth Crane.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Crane.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Operation Icebreaker"

Humphrey Hawksley has reported on key trends, events and conflicts from all over the world.

His work as a BBC foreign correspondent has taken him to crises on every continent.

Hawksley applied the Page 69 Test to his new Rake Ozenna thriller, Operation Icebreaker, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Further up the food chain, there would be friction as the American military tried to protect its own against the softer Europeans. By the rule book, NATO banned the use of information from killing or torture, no exceptions. In the field, things were murkier.

Page 69 of Operation Icebreaker is a slice of backstory showing the violent evil of key antagonist, Dave Hanning, and of Rake’s own juggling of moral choices and military rules in order to save lives.

While Rake doesn’t even recognise Hanning in their next encounter, Hanning has allowed his resentment to fester and consume. He never forgives Rake for exposing his methods, and the two meet for a showdown on the frozen wastelands of Arctic Greenland. Page 69 lays down a marker of two men drawing their own red lines of what is right and wrong. One is a villain, the other a hero.

Visit Humphrey Hawksley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The History Book.

My Book, The Movie: Security Breach.

My Book, The Movie: Man on Ice.

Writers Read: Humphrey Hawksley (May 2018).

The Page 69 Test: Man on Ice.

The Page 69 Test: Man on Fire.

My Book, The Movie: Operation Icebreaker.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Looks Perfect"

Jessica Siskin earned her MFA from the New School. She is the founder of Misterkrisp, a popular Instagram-based food art business specializing in custom Rice Krispies Treats and social media content. She is the author of Treat Yourself!, a cookbook featuring her inventive food art. Looks Perfect, her debut novel, is about a buzzy fashion designer whose relationship is crumbling just as her business explodes. Her Substack, Cool Takes, tackles Internet culture, beauty standards, where to get the best snacks, and whatever else feels topical. Siskin lives in New York City.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Looks Perfect with the following results:

Page 69 of Looks Perfect is toward the beginning of my protagonist, Stella Lerner’s description of her romantic history and how she ended up at the crossroads she currently faces amidst tension with her boyfriend, Alex. She talks about how she’d had her whole life planned out with her High School boyfriend when he broke up with her after they went to college, and she learned for the first time that she wasn’t fully in control of her romantic future, that a relationship requires the full cooperation of two different people.

If someone were to open Looks Perfect to page 69, they’d get a very good idea of the book as a whole. While it’s part of a tangent that visits Stella’s past and doesn’t exist in the present where the book’s narrative takes place, it gives a really clear glimpse into how Stella moves through the world, what’s important to her, her vulnerability, and her sense of humor. It contains one of my favorite jokes in the book, when Stella describes her boyfriend breaking up with her and backing out of her room “as if retreating respectfully from the Western Wall in Jerusalem,” a reference to the tradition of not facing one’s back to the holy site while departing, so visitors leave by walking backwards. I think this joke reflects the way Stella uses humor to process tough emotions, not as a way to deflect or distance herself from pain but to actually linger there a bit longer. Page 69 is, in a way, Stella’s “villain origin story” (as the kids say) in that her worldview around romantic relationships was born on this page, and that worldview is guiding the fear she’s feeling as her current relationship is evolving in a way that doesn’t match her vision for the future. Stella is a dreamer and storyteller, which really comes across on page 69 and throughout the book, and in the relationship detailed on this page as well as throughout the book, she finds herself torn between a story she’s curated in her head and the reality in front of her. Reconciling these and learning to detach from her desire to control, and to instead allow things to unfold, is really at the heart of Stella’s story arc.

Visit Jessica Siskin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue