"The Wonder of Us"

Kim Culbertson is the award-winning author of the YA novels Songs for a Teenage Nomad, Instructions for a Broken Heart, Catch a Falling Star, The Possibility of Now, and The Wonder of Us.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Wonder of Us and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Been meaning to ask you, why the Seven Ancient Wonders?”

Like Will is used to being asked how tall he is, this is one of the questions I get asked the most. Maybe it’s a strange sort of hobby, loving the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, if you’re not a seventy-year-old archaeologist or something. Of course, people always forget that the seventy-year-old archaeologist first fell in love with the ancient world at some point in her life…

Northern California girls Abby and Riya have been friends since preschool, but when Riya moves to Berlin for her junior year of high school, their friendship starts to fall apart. In an attempt to save it, Riya sends Abby an invitation to explore Europe with her, to create some new Wonders, other than those ancient ones Abby spends all her time studying. In The Wonder of Us, my third novel with Scholastic, I wanted to explore the sometimes challenging nature of evolving friendships. So often, our first loves outside our families are with friends and this felt like an interesting and important topic to me. I taught high school for 18 years and watched how complex childhood friendships could be when they hit the teen years. And I love to travel, especially because travel reframes things for me in my own life. So, I thought setting this story of these two girls against the backdrop of their hometown and then six European cities would allow the best sort of road trip exploration to happen.

Visit Kim Culbertson's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kim Culbertson and Maya.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dreamfall"

Amy Plum is the author of Die For Me, a YA series set in Paris. The first three books—Die For Me, Until I Die, and If I Should Die—are international bestsellers, and have been translated into thirteen languages. The fourth and fifth books are digital novellas, entitled Die For Her and Die Once More, and they are followed by a sixth digital compendium Inside the World of Die For Me. Plum’s newest series is a duology: After the End and Until the Beginning.

Plum applied the Page 69 Test to the newly released first book of her YA horror duology, Dreamfall, and reported the following:

From page 69:

CHAPTER 10

JAIME

Trial subject two is named Fergus Willson. He’s eighteen. Freshman at a local community college. His file looks a lot more medical than Catalina’s, stuffed with charts and readouts and prescriptions dating back years. He’s diagnosed as having narcolepsy with cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucinations, sleep paralysis, excessive daytime sleepiness, and night terrors.

I’ve heard of narcolepsy, of course, but don’t know a couple of the other terms. I open up the search engine on the fancy computer and type in cataplexy. Three hundred eighty-four thousand results. Scanning a few, I see that it is a condition that about seventy percent of narcoleptics suffer where they experience sudden muscle weakness triggered by emotions. I’ve seen something about this before on a documentary—if they guy laughed, cried, or was frightened, he just collapsed wherever he was, sometimes injuring himself pretty badly.

For the Page 69 test, I dipped back into Dreamfall to find out what actually takes place in that section of the book. And, although it is somewhat representative of the set-up of the book, it’s not where the action takes place.

Page 69 is from Jaime’s point of view. Jaime is a medical student who is witnessing the experiment that is at the base of Dreamfall: a cutting-edge technique that is supposed to shock the brain of the seven teenage insomniac subjects into regular REM/NREM sleep cycles. Jaime is there when the experiment goes wrong, throwing the subjects into a coma. And this makes Jaime want to know more about the subjects…as people, not just as bodies lying in a laboratory. Interspersed between the nightmare actions scenes, Jaime helps us get to know the subjects one-by-one by reading their folders in the test file.
So although page 69 helps the reader know more about one of the test subjects, I wouldn’t say it’s representative of the book. (It won’t give you nightmares!) Enjoy!

Visit Amy Plum's website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Coffee with a Canine: Amy Plum and Ella.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Before We Sleep"

Jeffrey Lent was born in Vermont and grew up there and in western New York State. He studied literature and psychology at Franconia College in New Hampshire and SUNY Purchase. His first novel, In the Fall, was a national bestseller. His other novels include Lost Nation, A Peculiar Grace, After You've Gone, and A Slant of Light, which was a finalist for the New England Book Award and a Washington Post Best Book of 2015.

Lent applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Before We Sleep, and reported the following:

Page 69:

her teeth and ate it down before the warmth of the day could smear her fingers. Then drank the cold Coke and felt ready all over again. Even, perhaps, more so than ever.

The day was still clear and growing hot but as she passed into Machias she felt herself grow cool, slightly remote, calculating. As if what lay ahead would be happening only to some unknown version of herself. She drove through the town, peering at street signs and doubled back and stopped at an ice cream stand and asked the girl directions to Cannon Street and made her repeat them and got back in the truck and turned back once again. She went two blocks and pulled a right and went two more blocks and turned left and glided along, the radio now on but the music low, a thrum in the background.

Cannon Street was only a few blocks long and dead-ended at a low fence beyond which stretched the ball fields of a school, the long low two-story pale brick building of the school out ahead in the heat-haze, a school recently built. She sat parked for a moment trying to take it all in. The houses just passed were mostly familiar to her, old two-over-four houses that had been expanded over the years, most white with green or black trim and shutters, a couple painted yellow with cream trim. But there stood a difference between these houses and those from home and it came to her: it was the expanse of sky, the lack of hills. She was upon a tableland, close to the ocean. She wiped sweat from her brow and reversed in a three-point tight turn and went back down the street. Now peering close, seeking numbers on doors, above doors, some houses lacking them altogether or hidden from her sight. Where she could spot them. Then saw 64 on the left-hand side and changed her focus to the other side and slid along a block easily and then slowed and nudged the truck almost against the curb, peering into the shade of the trees, the halos of sunlight. She passed a man out mowing his lawn in green workpants and a white T-shirt and behind him saw the oval plaque that read 47.

Before We Sleep alternates chapters, for the most part, between a mother and daughter, telling the story of a family in post-World War II America. The daughter's chapters all take place in June of 1967, as she's enroute to try and learn the identity of the man she believes may be her biological father. Katey Snow is seventeen and is coming out of rural Vermont into the suddenly charged and changing world around her, but which so far she's mostly glimpsed through television and magazine coverage of events distant for her. The most palpable thread of that change that's reached her so far is music, which again, largely enters her through radio. Like most teenagers at the time she only owned a handful of records, so radio is the medium of change for her, literally change coming through the air. I think that's an important image to hold here, to understand Katey and her background. It's challenging to write about the 1960's because that era now exists largely in a cliched collective conscience, so I worked very hard to have Katey be open but naive, thrilled and a bit frightened also, not only of what she discovers externally along the way but how she works through these processes internally.

At first glance page 69 seems to hold little of this larger theme. She's arrived in Machias, Maine, and is seeking the last known address she has for the man she's trying to track down. All she knows about him is that he was an old army buddy of her father, who came to visit the spring before she was born. At this point in the novel the reader also doesn't know the story of what took place during that visit. But there are a couple of key points on this page.

The first and most obvious is that she has the radio of the pickup on. It's turned low, described as a thrum. She could've just turned it off, but doesn't; the music is there, running through her. In the way of teenagers everywhere it helps keep her in place as it helps drive her forward. Now, a bit of an aside here. 1967 was an extraordinarily explosive year for music. The number of breakout and ambitious and different, even difficult number of bands and albums that appeared that year was indeed a pinnacle, a banner year that has yet to be repeated. It's intriguing to compare a list of the top 100 albums from 1966 and 1967. '66 was interesting, very much a mixed bag of rock and roll, jazz, soft pop, and folk music. 1967 was, to use a phrase from the times, balls-to-the-wall rock and roll. And this was the critical time and defining aura that Katey was moving through.

Beyond that, on page 69, Katey's in a strange place. She's in the neighborhood, tracking down the house. But she's also keenly aware of what also isn't there. She's in Maine, close to the ocean and the land is mostly flat and the sky is large and close. She comes from a place where hills and mountains define the landscape, the horizon. She's nervous about what may be a pending encounter with what she's seeking and this simple fact of geography adds to her nervousness. I hope this shows not only her youth and vulnerability but also her growing awareness of self, of who she is, partly because of where and how she grew up. We are all products not only of family and education but of environment, and a wholly new environment can be provoking and exhilarating- it can also be daunting.

But the single most important aspect of page 69 lies in the first two sentences of the first full paragraph: ...she felt herself grow cool, slightly remote, calculating. As if what lay ahead would be happening only to some unknown version of herself. Pretty much literally this is the first time in her life that she's entering a situation where almost everything is unknown to her, and one that holds potentially high stakes for her. She has no idea what to expect and yet also feels she can handle whatever comes her way- she even knows she can present herself as she chooses and this factor gives her advantage, even though it's unclear to her yet how or what that advantage will be. Katey is learning parts of her own strengths that she might've glimpsed before, but never felt as keenly as she does in this strange and important moment of her life.

Finally, because it is only page 69 there's a whole lot of story still untold, unknown not only to the readers but the characters themselves. As the writer, one of the things I love most about first draft is taking the nuggets of ideas for the story and then learning who these people are and what they actually get up to as the book moves through me and onto the page. I work from only a two or three page rough outline, more of a sketch of ideas, so first draft is an act of discovery. Everything after that is refining and clarifying. But by the time one gets to page 69 a pretty clear sense of the unfolding story is well in place.

Visit Jeffrey Lent's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Lightwood"

Steph Post is the author of A Tree Born Crooked (2014) and Lightwood (2017) as well as a short story writer, reader, teacher and dog lover (among many other things...).

She applied the Page 69 Test to Lightwood and reported the following:

I would have to say that page 69 is not indicative of Lightwood as a whole, but I’m glad for the chance to focus on this page, because it spotlights one of the characters of the novel who is much-loved by many, but often overlooked in reviews and promotions: Brother Felton.

When he was a child, he had kept the snakes and lizards in wooden crates inside his lean-to clubhouse made from squares of plywood and a plastic tarp. He didn’t have to worry about anyone messing with them because he was the only member of the club. He kept his turtles in a rusted bucket outside of the lean-to and they were his favorite. He named each one after an angel from the Bible.

Brother Felton, the hapless, pathetic nephew of Lightwood’s most insidious villain, Sister Tulah, is the focus of this chapter and in this scene we learn about Felton’s childhood as an orphan being raised by his malicious and megalomania aunt. Felton, unwittingly, is the catalyst for much of the drama in the novel and although he is intrinsically entangled with Sister Tulah’s criminal agenda, Felton is one of the few characters in Lightwood who often elicits pity in readers. Although he is a middle-aged adult, Brother Felton remains the gawky, unpopular loner, sitting by himself at the lunch table in the corner, desperately wishing he could hang out with the cool kids.

Fortunately, Brother Felton is far from being a static character and I believe readers will be very surprised to see his turn of fate and fortune as the Lightwood series continues.

Visit Steph Post's website.

Writers Read: Steph Post.

My Book, The Movie: Lightwood.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Becoming Bonnie"

Jenni L. Walsh spent her early years chasing around cats, dogs, and chickens in Philadelphia's countryside, before dividing time between a soccer field and a classroom at Villanova University. She put her marketing degree to good use as an advertising copywriter, zip-code hopping with her husband to DC, NYC, NJ, and not surprisingly, back to Philly. There, Walsh's passion for words continued, adding author to her resume.

Becoming Bonnie, her debut novel, tells the untold story of how church-going Bonnelyn Parker becomes half of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde duo during the 1920s. The sequel Being Bonnie will be released in the summer of 2018.

Walsh applied the Page 69 Test to Becoming Bonnie and reported the following:

From page 69:

That bootleg run is coming soon. Who knows when Mary will tap me on the shoulder? For the past few days, I’ve been trying to keep myself distracted, falling into a routine: work at Doc’s, work on the house, work at Doc’s, work on the house. In between, worry wedges itself in.

Becoming Bonnie is the untold story of how Bonnelyn Parker becomes half of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde duo. The summer of 1927 might be the height of the Roaring Twenties, but Bonnelyn is more likely to belt out a church hymn than sling drinks at an illicit juice joint. But when financial woes jeopardize her ambitions, Bonnelyn finds salvation in an unlikely place: Dallas's newest speakeasy, Doc's. That is, until her life --- like her country --- is headed for a crash. Bonnie Parker is about to meet Clyde Barrow.

Page 69 above is an example of “becoming” that is shown throughout my coming-of-age story. As an author, I kept putting Bonnie in situations where she’d have to make decisions, and develop further as a character, even if that meant the loosening of her morals. Of course, along the way, she stumbles, fumbles, and wrestles with her decisions, along with the outcome of those decisions. Here, Bonnie succumbs to working at a speakeasy, only for the ante to be upped when Bonnie agrees to go on a bootleg run for Doc’s. This scene is ultimately representative of the overall storyline, where the ante is continuously upped for Bonnie, especially after she meets Clyde Barrow.

Visit Jenni L. Walsh's website.

Writers Read: Jenni L. Walsh.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Flamingo Road"

Sasscer Hill was an amateur steeplechase jockey, as well as a horse owner who bred, raised, and rode race horses for thirty years in Maryland. Her first published novel, Full Mortality, was nominated for both the Agatha and Macavity Best First Mystery Awards. Born in Washington, D.C., Hill earned a BA in English Literature from Franklin and Marshall College.

Hill applied the Page 69 Test to her new mystery-suspense novel, Flamingo Road, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Patrick,” I said. “I have to head north tomorrow.”

“What?” he asked.

Jilly’s eyes widened. “No, you can’t.”

“I have to. I’ve been offered a new job.”

“Can’t it wait?” Patrick sounded almost desperate.

“I’m sorry, but it can’t.” I glanced at Jilly.

She narrowed her eyes and glared at me.

“But I’ll be back in about two weeks.”

“Two weeks? I don’t believe you. You’re just like Mom. You won’t come back.” She pushed back from the table so violently her chair crashed to the floor. She kicked it three feet across the tile and ran from the room.

“That went well,” I said, reaching for my fortune cookie.

“How can you joke about this?”

“Would you rather see me cry?” I broke open the cookie and read the little slip of paper.

“A journey awaits you. Beware of Danger.”

“Lovely,” I said, and bit into the cookie.

Page sixty-nine reveals that Flamingo Road is about much more than just horse racing. Family issues often take center stage. Since Fia’s mother walked out on her and her brother, Patrick, ten years earlier, the siblings have been estranged, to say the least. Until this trip to Florida, Fia has only met her niece Jilly once, years earlier. History has repeated itself, as Patrick’s wife has abandoned him, leaving him to handle their difficult daughter, Jilly. The relationships become even more tense as these characters are drawn into a web of crime and violence in South Florida.

Visit Sasscer Hill's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Scattering"

Kimberly McCreight is the New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia, which was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Alex Awards and was called Entertainment Weekly’s Favorite Book of the Year. Reconstructing Amelia has been optioned for film by HBO and Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. McCreight’s second adult novel, Where They Found Her, was a USA Today bestseller and a Kirkus Best Mystery of the Year. The Outliers, the first book in her teen trilogy, also a New York Times bestseller, has been optioned for film by Lionsgate, Mandeville, and Reese Witherspoon’s Pacific Standard. The second book in the trilogy, The Scattering, is now out from HarperCollins.

McCreight applied the Page 69 Test to The Scattering and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Someone has to go after him. Do you have a boat or scuba people or something?”

“We can talk about that after you step over here, miss.” When I look quickly again, I see the female officer has curly hair pulled back in a ponytail. And she’s waving me toward her. “Take a step or two away from the edge, hon. Toward me.”

The way she says “hon” has a warm ring to it, but she’s nervous. I can feel it. As I turn back to the water, I see her look down at my shoeless, possibly bloody feet. I get it: I look unhinged. But she is trying to be patient, to give me the benefit of the doubt. Her partner, on the other hand—young and jumpy and overmuscular—seems like he is going to pounce. They are focused only on me. They don’t understand what’s going on. They’ve been misinformed.

“You’re wasting time! It’s not me, it’s my friend! He jumped!” I shout back at them. “He is going to die down there if you don’t hurry!”

“We want to help you,” the female officer says. She is calmer now, like she’s hit her stride. “But we can’t until you step away from the railing.”

Help you. They are still not listening. I am just going to have to make them.

“If you want me away from the railing, then send somebody down there!” I scream, jabbing a finger toward the water.

I whip around and lean way back on purpose over the railing. The female officer stops, but her partner is still inching toward me, off to the side.

Page 69 of The Scattering drops you in the middle of Wylie’s frantic race to save a despondent Jasper. Or so she thinks. As has been the case for Wylie since the start of her journey in The Outliers, things for her are never as simple as they seem.

But Wylie is right about Jasper struggling. Ever since they returned from the abandoned summer camp in Maine (where they were being held at the end of Book 1 of The Outliers trilogy) Jasper has been battling overwhelming grief and guilt. Meanwhile, Wylie has been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to make sense of what it means for her to be an Outlier.

In this particular scene on page 69, Wylie believes—quite correctly—that Jasper is in danger, and once again she finds herself cornered physically and completely misunderstood by the well-meaning people around her. People who think they are “helping her,” even though they are doing just the opposite.

In that sense, page 69 of The Scattering is very representative of the rest of the book because it encapsulates Wylie’s struggle in Book 2: now that she knows she has this Heightened Emotional Perception, she must learn how to follow her own instincts in the face of those who refuse to understand. But this scene marks only the very beginning of Wylie’s fight in The Scattering. It is also a good demonstration of the fast-paced action in the story, which is ultimately very much grounded in an emotional journey.

As bad as things seem at this moment on page 69 for Wylie, though, things are about to get much, much worse. You’ll have to read on to see if Wylie is able to figure a way out this time.

Visit Kimberly McCreight's website.

The Page 69 Test: Reconstructing Amelia.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Every Other Wednesday"

Susan Kietzman is a Connecticut native. She has a bachelor's degree in English from Connecticut College and a master's degree in journalism from Boston University. She has worked in both magazine and newspaper publishing, and currently focuses on writing fiction.

Kietzman applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Every Other Wednesday, and reported the following:

Page 69 in Every Other Wednesday is blank, a chapter break. And while I am tempted to write about this nothingness, which is actually germane to the novel, I instead flip back to page 66.

Ellie speared a piece of broccoli with her fork. “How is that going? Are you as sore as you were in the beginning?”

“Not as sore, but sore nonetheless. It’s not easy taking up running again – which is essentially what I’m doing – in your fifties.”

“It’s not easy taking up anything in your fifties,” said Joan. “You’re lucky you have a place to work if you want. Can you imagine the looks I’d get if I walked into William Chester High School this afternoon and asked them for a job teaching Calculus?”

“You want to teach Calculus?” asked Alice. “I flunked Calculus. You can start with me.”

“I can talk to Chris,” said Ellie. “He can find out what positions might be opening next semester or next fall.”

Joan picked up another piece of sushi and swirled it in her soy sauce. “I’ll let you know,” she said. “I’m not ready to talk to anyone yet, but I want to do something.”

Ellie, Alice, and Joan are three recent empty-nesters, who meet for lunch on every other Wednesday to support one another in their individual quests for redefinition. They each have spent more than two decades focused on the needs of their children – and their husbands – and are now free to pursue their own goals. Alice turns to running, chasing the seven-minute mile pace she ran in her twenties. Because she cannot talk her husband, an avid runner, into accompanying her on the town’s wooded trails, she runs alone. Ellie, a part-time bookkeeper, pushes aside her shyness as a means to promote and grow her business. She is at first unaware that she, too, is growing and changing. And Joan, a college scholar turned housewife, questions whether joining the work force in her fifties, which she considers laughable, is even possible.

The male version of mid-life crisis often involves expensive cars and young girlfriends. The female version is different, focused not on looking backward but on looking forward, on achieving unexpressed or unexamined goals. How does a woman who has devoted so many years to the necessities of family life decipher her own personal or professional aspirations? College-aged children and working husbands may offer support to their middle-aged mothers and wives, but they don’t understand the doubts and fears of these women attempting to join a game that’s half over. The only people who understand are those facing similar obstacles. Ellie, Alice, and Joan navigate the uncertainties together in the hopes that three heads are better than one.

Visit Susan Kietzman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Baker's Secret"

As a journalist and novelist, Stephen P. Kiernan has published nearly four million words. His newspaper work has garnered more than forty awards — including the George Polk Award and the Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment.

Kiernan applied the Page 69 Test to his newly released novel, The Baker's Secret, and reported the following:

From page 69:

The horse whimpered and shook. DuFour marched off, stopping a few hundred steps away before returning to stand beside Neptune. She had closed her eyes, holding her broken leg bent at the knee.

As the sun set, still DuFour had not acted. When night fell and no one could see, he took his broken umbrella and went home, returning at dawn to find the horse still there, of course, still suffering, of course. Traffic along that hedgerow was nil, such that no one came along to share DuFour's hesitation, to buck up his courage or help him to do the job.

Neptune had drawn up within herself, silent and unmoving, as fixed as a commandment, and DuFour began to hate the horse for its predicament. The torment continued for two full days, the veterinarian's assistant keeping vigil without taking action, until the blue bicycle returned.

"Where have you been?" DuFour demanded as the veterinarian pedaled up the lane. "It has been an agony here."

"Did I not leave you with my gun?" Guillaume replied.

"Here it is, the vile thing." DuFour held out the pistol. "I did not know what to do. You told me not to treat anything."

Guillaume ran his gaze along the horse, her lowered head, the broken leg now drawn high against her haunch. He murmured to her, then turned to speak through clenched teeth. "You are no longer my apprentice."

He took the satchel of medicines away from DuFour's feet. "Your empathy for a creature in pain should have overcome my orders."

"I did what you told me. I did what you said."

"Neptune," Guillaume called loudly, the huge horse lifting her head out of a fog of pain. "I am sorry you suffered so long."

He pressed the pistol to the horse's ear and fired. She collapsed knees-first, then fell on her side with a sigh. DuFour stood there, not making a sound.

"You are in exile from me," Guillaume said, pressing two fingers under Neptune's jaw to confirm that there was no pulse. "Never come near me, never speak to me." He stood to his full height. "You have one last task, though. Go fetch Odette, and tell her to bring butchering tools. We shall all have meat tonight."

This passage on page 69 establishes an animosity between these men that will have much larger implications later. The voice is true to the rest of the narrative. And the hunger of the people -- severe enough that they would eat horse meat -- is symbolic of other hungers they will experience. Not all of them will be physical, but again Guillaume will work to keep them fed.

Learn more about the book and author at Stephen Kiernan's website.

Writers Read: Stephen P. Kiernan.

My Book, The Movie: The Baker's Secret.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Pearl Thief"

Elizabeth Wein was born in New York City, grew up abroad, and currently lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. She is an avid flyer of small planes. She also holds a PhD in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include the acclaimed Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire, and Black Dove, White Raven.

Wein applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Pearl Thief, and reported the following:

I’ve been reminded lately that my books are driven by character and setting. There’s plenty of plot, too, but the character and setting drive the plot for me. If you’re looking for non-stop action, I am not going to deliver that. But I guarantee you that my slow-burning twisted strands will come together in an explosion of conflict by the end of the book.

Page 69 of The Pearl Thief, my most recent young adult novel and my first mystery, puts you right in the middle of the long fuse. The characters and setting on Page 69 offer up only themselves; it’s not obvious what the chemical change they’re heading for is going to be. But all the elements for the future explosion are there, hiding in plain sight.

The narrator Julie, and Mary, the keeper of a small Scottish library in 1938, are the only two characters present on Page 69. Yet in casual conversation there they mention no less than four other characters, all who will later become potential suspects in the titular pearl theft, one who is already presumed dead, and three who may be possible murderers.

The scene is in the Inverfearnie Library, one of the key settings for the novel – in fact, it’s the place where the plot’s action will come to its climax. This early on, the reader gets a full library tour, entering via the “heavy oak front door,” being led by the librarian “up the winding staircase,” and emerging in the “Upper Reading Room.”

Here, Julie looks around and describes what she sees.

It was exactly as I’d left it the day I arrived at Strathfearn, with the great chestnut library table covered with artifacts. There were the spear tips spread all over the place; there was the beautiful black wooden cup in its silver filigree setting.

The idle reader applying the Page 69 test won’t know it, but the black cup is the receptacle that once held the missing pearls stolen by the thief in the title. The librarian doesn’t know it, either. But Julie does, and she starts asking leading questions to try to find out what happened:

“Who moved the collection here?” I asked. “Did you help?”

“Dr. Housman packed the boxes. I believe the chief contractor came along to keep an eye on the workers who brought them here.”

“Did they bring all of it? Is this the whole thing, the whole of the Murray archeological collection?” I was still thinking about the pearls that no one remembered.

Eventually, in peril and in this very room, Julie will find out what happened to those pearls. The black wooden cup will be her salvation.

Visit Elizabeth Wein's website.

The Page 69 Test: Black Dove, White Raven.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Best of Adam Sharp"

Graeme Simsion is a former IT consultant and the author of two nonfiction books on database design who decided, at the age of fifty, to turn his hand to fiction. His first novel, The Rosie Project, sold more than a million copies in over forty countries around the world and translation rights have been sold in over thirty-five languages. It was followed by a highly acclaimed sequel, The Rosie Effect.

Simsion applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Best of Adam Sharp, and reported the following:

It’s 1989, and Adam Sharp, a 26-year-old Englishman on a working vacation in Melbourne, Australia, has begun a relationship with Angelina, an actor recently separated from her husband, Richard.

From the middle of page 69:

One night, quite late, after we had spent the earlier part of the evening in my loft, Angelina took me to a Chinese restaurant upstairs in one of the city’s laneways. It was an institution, a dive, crowded and noisy and about as far away as possible from the white-tableclothed is-the-blackened-lobster-to-sir’s-liking places I imagined her going with Richard.

We had a table by the door and the waiter had just poured our wine into teacups when a blond woman and her besuited escort, brown paper BYO bag in hand, arrived at the top of the staircase.

I saw him before Angelina did and automatically stood up, so quickly that I knocked the table over. Teacups and wine hit the floor, and the restaurant went quiet.
.
We were only a few yards apart. I was looking at Richard and he was looking at Angelina. No more than a couple of seconds passed before he spun on his heel and dragged his lady out with him. I had met her before, though it took a moment to see past the comfortable jeans and loose long-sleeved T-shirt: Angelina’s colleague at Mornington Police, Constable Danni.

Yes, it’s representative. The Best of Adam Sharp is built around love triangles, which, in my experience, bring out the best—and worst—in people. As an author, that’s a great setup for exploring character. I’ve tried to make all of the players relatable and motivated, a bit flawed and a bit heroic. Real people.

Much of the story was inspired by real-life incidents. Not all involved me, but this one did. More than thirty years ago, I was having dinner in a restaurant a little like the one describe above and my date’s ex—whom I knew—walked in. He wasn’t with a colleague of hers, and no tables were knocked over, but it was a tense moment, and I had no trouble recalling the feeling.

As I wrote the scene, I had a song in my head—Bob Dylan’s Joey, in which a gangster is ambushed in a clam bar in Little Italy, New York, and pushes the table over to protect his family. That too, is representative. Adam Sharp is a book with a soundtrack—largely popular music from the 60s and 70s—and, for me, most scenes had a musical accompaniment. Many of the songs are on the page and in the play list at the end, so readers can share some of that extra dimension.

Finally, there’s a bit history in the passage. The fashion for blackened everything, the restaurant without a liquor license serving wine in teacups, wearing a suit to dinner! Adam Sharp, with its story of a love re-kindled two decades later, is ultimately about how we deal with the past.

Learn more about the book and author at Graeme Simsion's website and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Rosie Project.

The Page 69 Test: The Rosie Project.

The Page 69 Test: The Rosie Effect.

--Marshal Zeringue

"My Husband's Wife"

Jane Corry is a writer and journalist and has spent time as the writer in residence of a high-security prison for men–an experience that helped inspire My Husband’s Wife, her suspense debut.

Corry applied the Page 69 Test to My Husband’s Wife and reported the following:

I have to say that this is a brilliant idea of yours! I hadn’t realised until I read my own page 69 of My Husband’s Wife that it is really vital. It shows how characters can jump to the wrong (or right) conclusions. This is imperative to my plot which has lots of twists and turns. The page also highlights a relationship between Lily and someone who becomes more important in her life than she realises. In fact, I hadn’t realised when I wrote that scene, that the person involved (I won’t say who!) assumes a vital role. Somehow, he wormed his way into my affections until I just had to give him a bigger part!

When I re-read page 69, it brought a lump to my throat because it reveals the vulnerable side to Lily. She is convinced that her new husband doesn’t really love her and still has feelings for a woman he used to date. My heart goes out to her. In fact, I want to tell her to run away now and find someone who isn’t going to hurt her. But if she did that, it would make a different novel….

I’m now going to pay particular attention to page 69 in every book I read and write!

Learn more about My Husband's Wife. Follow Jane Corry on Twitter and Facebook.

My Book, The Movie: My Husband's Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue