"Cover Me in Darkness"

Eileen Rendahl is the national-bestselling and award-winning author of the Messenger series and four Chick Lit novels. Her alter ego, Eileen Carr, writes romantic suspense. Her other alter ego, Kristi Abbott, writes cozy mysteries.

Rendahl applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Cover Me in Darkness, and reported the following:

Here is the entirety of page 69 of Cover Me in Darkness. It’s the start of chapter eight so it’s a short page, but very representative of the book as a whole in theme and tone.

The words sounded ridiculous, melodramatic, delusional. I couldn’t not say them, though. I had to tell someone. I had to get help.

Sam looked down at my hand in his and then back up again. “Amanda, are you sure? Couldn’t this have been an accident? A slip-up in the lab? Carelessness of some kind by someone?”

I slid my hand out of his grasp. I’d known he would probably react that way. Any sane person would. It still disappointed me. Emotions were so irrational; no wonder I preferred numbers. “Of course it could be. And whoever pushed me out into traffic this morning might have just been clumsy, and whoever broke into the trunk of my car might have just been playing a prank.”

My heroine, Amanda, spends a good deal of the book doubting herself, doubting her own perceptions, and doubting the people around her. In this scene, she’s talking to her late mother’s psychiatrist. At this point, he’s the only person she knows that shares her suspicion there was something not quite right about her mother’s suicide. He’s her only ally, and yet he’s not sure whether he believes her when she finally tells him that she thinks someone might be trying to kill her, too.

She’s very alone, but before she can sway someone to her way of thinking, Amanda has to decide that she believes what she’s saying herself.

Visit Eileen Rendahl's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Denny’s Law"

Elizabeth Gunn is from Minnesota but has lived everywhere else since graduation from college. She married during a season of work in Yellowstone Park and raised her children in Helena, Montana. After selling the inn-keeping business they built there, Gunn and her husband traveled extensively, aboard a sailboat in Mexico, in an RV all over North America, and by bus tours throughout Europe when they lived in Barcelona, Spain, for a year.

Gunn applied the Page 69 Test to her latest Sarah Burke novel, Denny's Law, and reported the following:

Like all police detectives, Sarah Burke follows wherever the evidence leads and has no two days alike. On page 69 of Denny’s Law, she and her team are hearing a ballistics report from the Firearms and Toolmarks scientist at her crime lab, who believes that God is in the details:

Banjo pushed his wire-rims onto his forehead and pursed his whole face into a pained squint… “My man at the store wouldn’t give me a phone number till he checked with the buyer. But the buyer, on the other hand, was so eager to talk about this gun that he called me.

“Norman Wasserman, that’s his name. He’s still a hobby shooter but he doesn’t have a Masterpiece any more—the one you found was stolen from him on New Year’s Day, 1995, while he and his family were skiing in Vermont. The thieves took many other items of value but the one he remembers with the most regret was the loss of his best guns out of a locked case in his study…kind of a man cave with two toy train sets and a big pool table. He says he’s got a steel door and frame on it now and a deadbolt lock; nobody’s ever getting in there again till he lets them in.”

All the men in the room, Sarah could see, were leaning toward Banjo with shining eyes. Any minute now they’re all going to drool, she thought.

Visit Elizabeth Gunn's website.

My Book, The Movie: Denny's Law.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Edit"

J. Sydney Jones is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels of the critically acclaimed Viennese Mystery series, The Empty Mirror, Requiem in Vienna, The Silence, The Keeper of Hands, A Matter of Breeding, and The Third Place. He lived for many years in Vienna and has written several other books about the city, including the narrative history, Hitler in Vienna: 1907-1913, the popular walking guide, Viennawalks, and the thriller, Time of the Wolf. Jones is also the author of the stand-alone thrillers and suspense novels Ruin Value: A Mystery of the Third Reich (2013), The German Agent (2014), Basic Law: A Mystery of Cold War Europe (2015), and The Edit (2016). He has lived and worked as a correspondent and freelance writer in Paris, Florence, Molyvos, and Donegal, and currently resides with his wife and son on the coast of Central California.

Jones applied the Page 69 Test to The Edit and reported the following:

From page 69:

Wednesday.

I cannot bring myself to deal with the Irish yet. I sit at my trestle table watching the jungle outside my windows, but I feel cut off from it. It is merely a surrealist painting.

This disconnected feeling has not overcome me for several decades, and of course it is Miss O’Brien’s doing. Why did she have to enter my serenity and destroy it with her snooping? Why did she have to spread her chaos into my well-ordered existence? My white-stucco home with its red-tile roof no longer feels like a fortress; the refectory table and priceless ladder-back chairs in the dining room no longer look as substantial as they once did. The two leather armchairs in front of my huge stucco fireplace no longer seem snug.

I have just returned from leaving food inside the door to the guest room on the second floor, and barely escaped with my life, for the Irish was waiting for me behind the door with a priceless copy of the Bible in her hands, which I leave in that room for the contemplative. To use such a sacred book as a weapon! The woman is insane. She would have struck me with it, too, if I had not instinctively sensed the danger and drawn back just as the book swept by my face. Miss O’Brien, thrown off balance by the force of the intended blow, tottered drunkenly past me, the Bible still gripped maniacally in her hands. I was able to wrestle it out of her clutches—no telling what she would have done with the lovely old thing—and shut the door against the tattoo that her fists beat on the wood as I left.

Clearly, I must find an alternate form of accommodation for her: She is much too loud and violent to be held in a conventional room. Fortunately, there are heavy metal shuttersoutside her windows, which I closed last night, locking them from the outside. The door to the room is a massive construction of oak planks held together by wrought-iron flanges. She is secure enough for the time being, but over the long haul?

The Edit is a novel about memory and the banality of evil. Senor X makes his living in the 1990s running a charter fishing boat in a nameless Central American country. But he is much more than a simple boat captain, as Irish-American journalist Kate O’Brien discovers to her peril. When the two meet, Senor X is in the midst of writing his memoirs, revealing himself as a high-ranking Nazi war criminal still on the run. When she accidentally reads some of this memoir and is discovered by Senor X doing so, O’Brien becomes his captive until he determines what must be done with her.

This excerpt takes place just following that dramatic incident, and Senor X realizes that he cannot simply keep O’Brien hidden away in a spare, upstairs bedroom. Instead, he soundproofs his basement as preparation for O’Brien’s new lodgings—a miniature concentration camp of his very own making. What he does not reckon on is the strength and spirit of his captive. Battling for her sanity and life, O’Brien makes a devil’s bargain: her cooperation in return for allowing her to edit Senor X’s memoirs. As a Kirkus Reviews critic noted of this novel, “Their relationship becomes a provocative test of wills, raising a disturbing question: which is the captive?” The critic concluded: “Jones brings deliciously dark humor to his psychological thriller, a worthy cousin to John Fowles’ classic The Collector.”

Learn more about the book and author at J. Sydney Jones's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dark Stars"

CS Quinn is a bestselling author and journalist for The Times, The Guardian and The Mirror, alongside many magazines. Prior to journalism and fiction, her background in historic research won prestigious postgraduate funding from the British Art Council.

Combining historical research with far-flung travel experiences helped her create The Thief Taker series.

Quinn applied the Page 69 Test to Dark Stars, the third book in the series, and reported the following:

On page 69 we’re getting to know scary Judge Walters, who enjoys publicly drowning pirates at Wapping Docks. I guess this page fairly represents the menacing b-story, but there’s a fair bit more colour (I’d like to think) and thrills happening in the main story with hero Charlie and heroine Lily.

Visit C. S. Quinn’s website.

My Book, The Movie: Dark Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

"After the Crown"

K.B. Wagers lives and runs in the shadow of Pikes Peak. She loves flipping tires and lifting heavy things. She's especially proud of her second-degree black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu and her three Tough Mudder completions. When not writing she can be found wrangling cats with her husband, or trying to keep up with her teenage son.

Wagers applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, After the Crown, and reported the following:

In After the Crown we see Hail settling into her role as empress (a job she never wanted) and page 69 puts us smack in the middle of a meeting of the matriarch council where they’re discussing various issues the empire is facing. The need for an heir to the throne has been raised and Hail reacts in a manner that no one is expecting.

“We’re done here. Alice is my heir; if anyone would like to formally dispute that, let Matriarch Desai know.” I waved a hand. “Now get out.”

Everyone left except for Alice and Clara.

“I’m going to be sick,” Alice murmured.

“Not on the carpet.” I grinned at her. “Don’t worry—you’ll get used to the idea.”

“Majesty, the fallout from this—”

“We’ll handle it, Clara. Alice can do the job if something happens to me. That’s the important part of this, if I recall.”

“At least until Your Majesty has a child.”

I cleared my throat and forced a smile in Clara’s direction. “Of course.”

You are going to have to tell someone about that one of these days, Hail, the voice in my head cheerfully reminded me.

I snarled silently at it as I left the room.

Hail’s choice demonstrates her ability to plan ahead, as this is something she knew was coming long before anyone else did, as well as her ability to read people. Her solution—naming Alice Gohil—is more long term than anyone realizes. I tried to keep Hail’s inability from having children from being the central focus of the plot, tricky when you’re talking about a lineage-based ruling system! This scene provided us with the perfect opportunity to show Hail stepping up to the plate in terms of ruling and gives us a hint of how things are changing in the empire of Indrana.

Visit K.B. Wagers's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Walk Into Silence"

Susan McBride is the USA Today bestselling author of the Debutante Dropout Mysteries and the River Road Mysteries. She has won a Lefty Award, been twice nominated for the Anthony Award, and received the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Amateur Sleuth.

McBride applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Walk Into Silence, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Boys already walked the perimeter of both houses and beat the bushes before you even got here. I knocked on a few doors myself. None of the neighbors saw squat.”

She walked beside him, back to the driveway where Lisa Barton stood. The woman turned up her coat collar, tucking hands in her pockets. She looked a bit like an actress from one of those Hitchcock movies Hank liked to talk about with her blonde hair, calf-length coat, and high heels. Though she was a little rough around the edges to be Grace Kelly.

“Did you find her?” she asked as they approached.

“Naw,” Hank said, “just a cat.”

He gave Jo a glance that made her cheeks warm. She touched her shoulder where the animal had hit her, feeling stupid.

“Poor Jenny. She should’ve gotten help,” Lisa murmured, brow cinched. “If she’d done what was best for her, this wouldn’t be happening.”

“Back to the scarf,” Jo said. “Mrs. Dielman told her husband she’d lost it.”

Lisa sighed. “Jenny seemed to have problems remembering a lot of things lately. The other day, she locked herself out. Thank goodness, I had a spare key.”

“So maybe she was flaky,” Jo replied. “But that doesn’t explain why she’d disappear for twenty-four hours without calling her husband, then show up here and vandalize your property, Ms. Barton.”

“Who else could it be?” Lisa crossed her arms tightly. “Who else would want to send me a message?”

“What message?” Jo felt like she was missing something. “You think Jenny had a grudge against you?”

“I’d say so, yeah.” The woman shook tousled bangs from her eyes and looked dead-on at Jo. “I’m pretty sure she imagined I was having an affair with Patrick.”

As Walk Into Silence is about a missing woman, Jenny Dielman, there are a lot of questions in the book: who was Jenny really, was she losing her mind, did she leave on her own or was she harmed, were those around her trustworthy? So I think the scene on page 69 gives a decent sense of the investigation that Jo Larsen leads into Jenny’s disappearance. In this chapter, the next-door neighbor has asserted that Jenny vandalized her house. But was it really Jenny? Is anything the neighbor has to say about Jenny worth believing? What is the truth and who is telling it? Those are things Jo asks herself and must find out before she can figure out what happened to Jenny and why.

Learn more about the book and author at Susan McBride's website.

My Book, The Movie: Walk Into Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bronx Requiem"

John Clarkson is the author of several thrillers and crime novels published in the late 90's, and the early 00's. During the day, he ran a boutique advertising firm, then a private marketing and advertising consulting firm. He has worked directly with corporate clients such as NewPower, Chase Manhattan and E*Trade Financial where he helped create the notorious E*Trade Baby.

Clarkson applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Bronx Requiem, and reported the following:

This is a cool premise for a blog question. Page 69 in Bronx Requiem happens to be the beginning of Chapter 10. The type layout makes this a half-page, so I have only half of what might normally be in play to represent the book. Fine by me! I believe most readers decide whether or not to read a book in the first paragraph. I know there are agents out there who say they only need the first ten words or so to decide if they want to keep reading. It’s tough out there.

A little background: Bronx Requiem is the second book of a new series featuring protagonist James Beck, a fairly normal guy, who is unjustly incarcerated. He spends eight years in the searing hell of N.Y. State maximum security prisons before he wins his release. It changes him profoundly, and like most ex-cons, innocent or guilty, makes him an outcast. Beck leaves prison determined to be the man he wants to be, living by his own moral code, sticking to a tight-knit group of outcasts – ex-cons like himself. He rejects what he considers the fake morality of society. He refuses to be oppressed by law enforcement, or anybody for that matter. Fortunately, Beck is smart enough and resourceful enough to pull this off.

Of course, not a single word about any of that is mentioned overtly in the Beck novels. We get to sit back and watch this “philosophy” unfold.

In Bronx Requiem, one of Beck’s closest friends, a man who helped him survive prison, has just been released on parole. Before Beck can help him build a new life outside, he’s murdered. On page 69, Beck and his guys arrive at the Bronx housing project where they will begin finding out who killed their friend, Packy Johnson. One of Beck’s guys, Demarco Jones, does most of the talking, providing background and history on the housing project, but underlying the back and forth we see that Demarco is also trying to control Beck. To stop him from rushing into the project. In between the lines, we see the danger around the corner. I think every scene in a crime thriller should either advance the plot or reveal character. Page 69 does both.

Visit John Clakson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Art of Confidence"

Wendy Lee is the author of the novels The Art of Confidence, Across a Green Ocean, and Happy Family. Happy Family was named one of the top ten debut novels of 2008 by Booklist and awarded an honorable mention from the Association of Asian American Studies.

A graduate of Stanford University and New York University’s Creative Writing Program, Lee has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Corporation of Yaddo. She spent more than a decade in the publishing industry as an editor at HarperCollins Publishers and Lantern Books in Brooklyn, where she co-edited the anthology Defiant Daughters: 21 Women on Art, Activism, Animals, and the Sexual Politics of Meat. She has also worked as an English teacher in China, taught writing at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and served as a mentor with Girls Write Now.

Lee applied the Page 69 Test to The Art of Confidence and reported the following:

The Art of Confidence is about a forged painting and the five people involved in its creation and sale. One of the characters is Harold Yu, the Taiwanese businessman who buys the painting as an investment but is inexplicably drawn to it, even though he has no understanding of art.

On Page 69, Harold has just returned home to Taipei from a trip to New York where he first learned about the painting. He’s married to a woman named Vicki, who comes from a powerful family in Taiwan; together they have a young son named Adrian.

The worst thing anyone could say to Vicki was that she was Chinese instead of Taiwanese, despite—or because of—the fact that her grandfather had come to Taiwan from the mainland in 1949 as part of the nationalist government. In college, as she liked to remind people, she’d been the first runner-up to Miss Taipei.

Meanwhile, Harold thought it was important that his son have some exposure to the mainland, where much of his business had shifted over the past ten years. Someday, when Adrian was old enough to take over the company, as Harold had when his father died, it would be useful not to consider himself so different from the people across the Taiwan Straits.

Up to the point of buying the painting, Harold has lived according to the parameters set by other people. Vicki, as the first part of the passage above indicates, is a bit of a snob, and Harold has always felt inferior to her. He’s let her dictate where they live and how they bring up their son. Now, with their marriage on the rocks, he decides to buy the painting, in part, to impress her. It’s a romantic and completely useless gesture, but it paves way for further self-introspection.

The forged painting unlocks certain parts in each character’s personality, but for Harold, it really becomes the catalyst for him to re-examine his marriage and determine what he really wants out of life.

Visit Wendy Lee's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Across a Green Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: Across a Green Ocean.

Writers Read: Wendy Lee.

My Book, The Movie: The Art of Confidence.

--Marshal Zeringue

"To Capture What We Cannot Keep"

Beatrice Colin was born in London and lives in Glasgow, Scotland. A former arts and features journalist, she also writes novels for adults, children, short stories, radio plays for the BBC. She has spoken at numerous book festivals, taught at Arvon and was a judge and mentor for the Scottish Boom Trust's New Writers Award.

Colin was also once a singer in the band, April Showers, whose single, "Abandon Ship," reached the number 144 in the charts.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, To Capture What We Cannot Keep, and reported the following:

Emile Nouguier, an engineer who was one of two who designed the Eiffel Tower that was built between 1887-8, is having dinner with his mother in her apartment. She wants him to take over the family business - a glass factory - marry a suitable wife, produce heirs and provide for a host of elderly aunts and distant relations. In this scene the divisions between the sexes are laid out – he eats pudding and she watches him – and we see the kind of pressure he is under.

Unless they were very wealthy and able to be independent, women acted as supporting structures to their husbands. But men also were constrained by convention. Cait Wallace, the other narrative voice in the book, is not suitable wife material for a man like Emile Nouguier and he knows it. On this page, the central conflict that drives the book is laid out. Emile cannot marry for himself; he must marry for the benefit of other. He can’t face it and escapes the apartment, desperate for fresh air.

Visit Beatrice Colin's website.

My Book, The Movie: To Capture What We Cannot Keep.

Writers Read: Beatrice Colin.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Nature of a Pirate"

A.M. Dellamonica's books include Indigo Springs, which won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and Child of a Hidden Sea and A Daughter of No Nation of the Stormwrack series.

She applied the Page 69 Test to the third Stormwrack novel, The Nature of a Pirate, and reported the following:

On Page 69 of The Nature of a Pirate, Sophie Hansa sees her parents for the first time in months.

I refer to the Hidden Sea Tales books as "Narnia for environmentalists." On this particular page, its chapter's closer, Sophie returns to San Francisco after months on the magical world of Stormwrack.

This series is breaking a lot of portal fantasy rules. Traditionally, going home is the last thing that happens. You have a self-contained adventure in Oz, it ends, and you get to compartmentalize it into its pocket-dimension and return to home, hearth, and family. You have seen wonders, and you may even be the wiser for it... but your real life is here on Earth. Resuming it constitutes your happily ever after.

I think that was something that worked out pretty well in 20th-century stories. Ordinary people from our world visited secret magical realms; they took temporary vacations from their lives. What Sophie returns to, on page 69 of The Nature of a Pirate, is the news that her family home has been broken into twice, and in the course of investigating those B&E incidents, police have noticed that the Hansa family is missing a daughter.

We don't currently live in a world where compartmentalizing is easy, or it's a snap to vanish for weeks on end. Sophie's problem is complicated by the fact that her parents have no idea where she has been--even if they wanted to lie to police, they wouldn't know where to start. She can't let them know, you see, that she went looking for her birth parents. Besides, Stormwrack immigration laws require her to keep the existence of their world a secret from people in the U.S.

Which may be fair, except that it's almost certain that whoever busted into her parents home? Knows all about Stormwrack.

Most of this book takes place on the magical side of my novel's portal. This scene is a sojourn, a quick side-trip from Sophie's larger problems. Someone's sinking ships within the Fleet of Nations, for example, and a condemned human smuggler wants Sophie to save him from execution. But The Nature of a Pirate is, in part, the story of a person with a foot in two worlds, someone who may eventually have to commit to a future here, with all our technological marvels, or the faraway, inconsistent and sometimes devastating power of enchantment.

Visit A.M. Dellamonica's website.

The Page 69 Test: Child of a Hidden Sea.

My Book, The Movie: Child of a Hidden Sea.

The Page 69 Test: A Daughter of No Nation.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Chasing Shadows"

New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper is a former high-school and college English teacher. Winner of the 2005 Mary Higgins Clark Award for her outstanding novel, Dark Angel, Harper is the author of numerous romantic suspense novels, historical novels, and a series of historical mysteries.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Chasing Shadows, and reported the following:

On page 69 of my new psychological suspense novel, Chasing Shadows, the two main characters who will carry the series are still getting to know each other as they drive toward St. Augustine, Florida. Nick is a criminal lawyer who has hired forensic psychologist Claire to help him with a case close to his heart. Because his father committed suicide, (Nick believes he was murdered and hopes to prove it) he takes cases through his secretive South Shores endeavors, where the death is undetermined. An old friend of his needs help, and he’s on the way.

So on page 69, besides Nick’s filling Claire in more on the case, a murder or suicide in a Civil War era mansion which is reputed to be haunted, the two of them are already in trouble. Nick notices in the rearview mirror that a person in a mask and a hoodie driving behind them is coming too close. It’s the second hint they that someone wants them to steer clear of this case, and things get worse from there. Earlier, a bullet that killed another man might have been meant for Nick—or Claire.

One things I established before page 69 is that a forensic psychologist does not dissect dead bodies, but rather only the clues the dead leave behind by interviewing friends, family—and dangerous foes. The tag line for Chasing Shadows and the series is “The dead still talk if you know how to listen.” And Claire does.

Visit Karen Harper's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Broken Bonds.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Lone Wolf"

Sara Driscoll is the joint pseudonym of Jen J. Danna and Ann Vanderlaan.

They applied the Page 69 Test to Lone Wolf, the first book in their FBI K-9s mysteries series--starring search-and-resuce team Meg Jennings and her black lab, Hawk--and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Next!” The voice was flat, dull, worn down by weeks of nearly there tax deadline hysteria.

The line shuffled forward again. Naomi nudged the diaper bag at her feet, pushing it ahead of them as they crept forward. Only three more people and then it was their turn.

Joe’s whimper accompanied a whole body squirm. She clamped her arms around him, familiar with this move and how he’d nearly managed to slither free a few times before. The pressure of her hold only increased his distress and he started to whine. Heat rose in her face as sideways glances began to slide her way.

What kind of parent are you? Can’t you control that child? Who’s in charge—you or the kid? The crowd’s unvoiced thoughts rang in her head.

“Ignore them. Ignoooooooore them...” she singsonged to herself, bouncing him again. It’s too early, naysayers advised, but she knew the reason he’d been up half the night was his one-year molars coming in. Her normally placid baby was riding a razor’s edge of exhaustion right now.

And, as a result, so was she. Never a good combination.

Page 69 of Lone Wolf lands the reader in scene many of us have been unlucky enough to be in ourselves—waiting in what feels like an unending line in a government office. In this case, it’s an IRS office on the day before taxes are due, and a young mother is in line with her squirmy, overtired baby because she needs assistance filing her deceased father’s final tax return.

Lone Wolf is the story of a rogue bomber who is taking out specific targets, and the IRS office is on his list. In fact, as this scene unfolds, the bomb is already on its way, heading toward the IRS office while people stand in line, not realizing their lives are hanging in the balance. While the overwhelming majority of the book is about the FBI’s efforts to find and stop the bomber and this scene doesn’t highlight FBI handler Meg Jennings and her search-and-rescue black Lab, Hawk, it does shine a light on the victims. And truth to be told, it’s the loss of the victims that drives the story. So while page 69 might not show the protagonists, it delivers on something more important—the reason the protagonists work so hard to find justice for innocents caught up in something far beyond their control.

As to what happens to Naomi and her young son when the bomber strikes, well… you’ll just have to read on from page 69 to find out.

Learn more about Lone Wolf: An FBI K-9 Novel.

--Marshal Zeringue