"No Man's Land"

Sara Driscoll is the pen name of Jen J. Danna and Ann Vanderlaan, authors of the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries and the FBI K-9s series.

They applied the Page 69 Test to their latest FBI K-9s novel, No Man's Land, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“If we can match COD on both victims, I’ll be able to make it happen. This may be too soon, though. You know most tox results take four to six weeks to come in,” said Craig.

“Do you think it will be an impediment if we can’t tie together COD?” asked Meg.

“Maybe. Maybe not. There are enough similarities in the unique body dump sites with victims that I can make a case for the potential of a common killer. Let me make some calls.”

Page 69 of No Man's Land finds the FBI’s Human Scent Evidence Team just as they are beginning to realize the case they’re working on may involve serial deaths. It’s representative of the rest of the book in that it’s the gateway for the team taking control of the case.

After unexpectedly finding a body while out enjoying an afternoon of urban exploration—the exploration of abandoned or nearly inaccessible man-made structures, also known as urbex—in Maryland, FBI K-9 handler Meg Jennings and the rest of her team are suspicious of the death, recognizing they’ve found the elderly victim in a challenging location she could not have reached on her own. After looking into past disappearances of older persons, they wonder if they’ve found a victim connected to a much bigger case. But after a second victim goes missing in real time, Meg and her search-and-rescue black Lab, Hawk, and several other team members follow the clues in an attempt to save the victim before it’s too late. The search leads them to the shuttered Pennsylvania industrial facility of Bethlehem Steel, where, sadly, they find another deceased senior.

When Meg presents the situation to her superior, FBI Special Agent-in-charge Craig Beaumont, he takes it upon himself to find a way to not only link the deaths, but to claim jurisdiction of the case due to the murders occurring across state lines. More than that, he will ensure the case becomes his responsibility, allowing his teams to investigate all related disappearances.

It’s clear the victims are alive when they are abandoned in the condemned buildings. Now, if they can put the clues together fast enough, the team might just be able to find the victims in time to save their lives and end this murderer’s gruesome spree.

Learn more about the FBI K-9 Novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Lammisters"

An author and arts journalist, Declan Burke has previously published crime novels, including Slaughter’s Hound and the award-winning Absolute Zero Cool. The Lammisters is a comic novel. Although set in Prohibition-era Hollywood, it is influenced by Irish comic novelists such as Laurence Sterne and Flann O’Brien.

Burke applied the Page 69 Test to The Lammisters and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Lammisters is fairly typical of the novel overall, in large part because it is ridiculous to a fault. The Bartley we meet is Bartley McGuffin, who is the personal secretary to one Sir Archibald l’Estrange-B’stard, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who has journeyed to California in the hope of encountering chorus dolls and movie stars of questionable morals. As we meet him, Bartley has managed to insult Felicia Fortesque, the confidante of Vanessa Hopgood, Hollywood’s most shimmering star; in consequence, Felicia has whipped out her derringer, and is threatening to fatally dispatch Bartley should he utter so much as one single further syllable:

The mind, to paraphrase the immortal Milton, being of its own place, wherein can be devised a hell of heaven, and a heaven of hell, Bartley’s thoughts now wander from his current predicament in a phenomenon that will be familiar to those readers who have found themselves in immediate danger of going the way of a quasi-aristocratic bounder in a Chekhovian third act, i.e., his life flashed before his eyes.

Alas, your humble narrator is obliged to report that said mental two-reeler proved a considerable disappointment to Bartley McGuffin, consisting as it did of a series of sliced drives, duffed niblicks and two-foot putts sent trickling downhill past the hole on the right-hand side. Ironically, the image that jerked Bartley out of his maudlin reverie was that of a ball he had driven straight and true the best part of two hundred and seventy yards down the fairway but which had come to rest nestling in the shadowy recesses of a temporary drain the groundskeeper had neglected to mark GUR. The blend of rage and despair that had accompanied Bartley’s belated understanding that his was a pointless existence lived as a microscopic speck in what was at best a blindly indifferent and at worst mindlessly hostile universe returned now to enflame Bartley’s instinctive fight-or-flight response, and he raised his gaze from the derringer’s pitiless muzzle to meet the equally merciless stare of Felicia Fortesque. And it was now that Bartley McGuffin dug deep, mining a hitherto unsuspected seam of courage, fortitude and grace under pressure, and there found, just when he needed it most, the wherewithal to give vent to a provocatively defiant sniff.

Page 69 combines a number of elements which feature in The Lammisters: most of the characters are devoted to the noble Scottish art, i.e., golf; all of the characters find themselves adrift in a story which has been abandoned by a hapless aspiring author, and are thus living pointless existences in a blindly indifferent universe; and the language employed is exactly what you might expect when a verbose narrator attempts to cobble together a story abandoned by his author, and especially when that narrator seems to know everything that is worth knowing about Western civilisation’s canon of literature – except, that is, how to write a clear, concise sentence.

Learn more about the book and author at Burke's Crime Always Pays blog.

Writers Read: Declan Burke.

My Book, The Movie: The Lammisters.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mercy Road"

Ann Howard Creel writes historical novels about strong female characters facing seemingly impossible obstacles and having to make life-changing decisions. In her novel The River Widow, a former tarot-card reader turned widow and stepmother must escape the clutches of an evil family while also facing the crime she herself has committed. In The Whiskey Sea, a fierce young woman becomes one of the only female rumrunners on the Atlantic Coast during Prohibition. And in While You Were Mine, a New York City nurse must give up the child she has raised as her own during World War II.

Creel applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Mercy Road, and reported the following:

From page 69 (with a few paragraphs before and after included, so that it makes more sense):

The next day, Cass and I took a taxi to automobile supply houses and procured the necessities and tools for all three ambulances. The doctors had trusted us to stock the vehicles and equip them for anything we might encounter on the roads ahead. After we’d dragged back or arranged deliveries for everything we needed, we took a couple of hours to visit Notre-Dame, the gardens of the Tuileries, and Napoleon’s tomb.

Eve had apparently tired of Kitty and Lottie’s company, or maybe she wanted to see more of France’s sights instead of its shops, because she asked if she could join us. A diminutive blond whose freckles covered her face all the way to her hairline, she could’ve passed for a schoolgirl, although she was twenty-three, like me.

As we walked the boulevards and parks, Eve tended to fall a few steps behind us, and I couldn’t figure out if she liked to lag behind or if she lived for the most part in her own world. She had purchased a small Paris guidebook, and she read as she tagged along.

I could’ve remained on the Pont Neuf for hours looking down at the smooth flow of the river that calmed my nerves about the date coming up that night, but we had much still to see, and we also purchased postcards to send home.

We took a taxi to Montmartre, where Papa had told me the artists congregated, but a waiter informed us that the artists’ turf had moved to the cafés of Montparnasse. Therefore we splurged on another taxi and headed to Café de la Rotonde, which according to Eve, Pablo Picasso frequented. There, Eve finally joined the conversation. “Did you know that when the Tuileries gardens first opened to the public, they barred some people? No beggars, lackeys, and soldiers.”

“Heavens,” I said.

“What are lackeys?” asked Cass.

“I think it’s the service class, such as servants and footmen,” Eve answered.

“Footmen?” Cass asked, then chuckled. “Maybe yesterday’s footmen are today’s drivers.”

I laughed. “Yes, perhaps we wouldn’t have been allowed. But I don’t understand banning soldiers.”

Indeed, the American soldier in France commanded a lot of respect. Whereas the French and British soldiers often appeared war-weary, like haggard ghosts of themselves, the American soldier wore a clean uniform and polished boots and smoked prized American-made cigarettes. He knew he would encounter danger, but he kept everything light with jokes and laughter. Other soldiers looked up to him, girls flirted with him, and children followed him around.

That thought swept me away for a while, the American soldier Captain Brohammer on my mind. I had guessed his age to be about thirty-one or thirty-two; he seemed like a youngster to have already reached the rank of captain. His dashing appearance made me think of Swedish warriors, and I could imagine him in a former life slaying dragons and sea serpents with a shining sword. My hands started trembling, and I put them under the table in my lap. I hadn’t gone on a date since high school.

Cass’s groans brought me back to the moment. Eve pointed at her guidebook and told us that France had always been a war zone. She talked about Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, and Joan of Arc. “This part of the country has been the site of sieges, marches, battlegrounds, and the war camps of France’s enemies going back to the beginning of recorded time.”

Cass looked around the café. “Does anyone have some paper?” she asked the air. “I seem to have wandered into a class on French history, but I forgot paper, and I need to take some notes.”

I held my breath, but Eve, a good sport it turned out, only smiled and continued talking.

Cass held up her hands. “Wait a minute. Are you always like this?” she asked Eve.

“Most of the time,” Eve answered.

Turning to me, Cass said, “If we ever have to ride doubled up, she’s going with you.”

I laughed.

Eve wove her hands together on the tabletop and leaned in. To Cass she said, “If you and I ever have to ride doubled up, I’ll do the driving.”

I liked this girl.

Cass gave a little whoop. “Not on your life.”

“I’ll wager I’m better.”

“Behind the wheel?” Cass shook her head. “What foolish fancy.”

“Speaking of fancies, do you race?”

Cass paled, obviously astonished. “Are you challenging me to a race?”

“Now, girls,” I interrupted them, but the smile wouldn’t leave my face. I hadn’t shared a laugh with friends in a long time.

This scene is typical of the lighter tone of the book before these ambulance drivers reach the war zone, and later, the front lines. I hope you enjoy it.

Visit Ann Howard Creel's website.

The Page 69 Test: The River Widow.

My Book, The Movie: Mercy Road.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Don't Tell the Nazis"

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is the acclaimed author of over sixteen picture books and novels. In 2013 she won the Silver Birch Fiction Award for Making Bombs for Hitler and the Red Cedar Award for Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Don't Tell the Nazis, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I stepped from behind the bush and walked toward the voices.

The Germans who weren’t from Germany: Volksdeutsche refugees. A few were tossing loose soil from a mound onto what looked like a freshly turned garden. Other shovels were neatly piled to the side.

Most of the Germans were calmly sorting through mounds of clothing. Shirts here, jackets there, hats there. As a shirt was picked up and shaken out, then folded, I couldn’t see a bullet hole, and there was no blood. All of the clothing seemed undamaged. But where were the Jewish men?

And then I noticed a familiar face—Frau Schneider, but her daughter, Marga, wasn’t with her. Frau Schneider was picking through the clothing along with several men and one other woman. One of the soldiers who had been handing out shovels yesterday stood among them, giving orders. They all seemed so calm, just concentrating on sorting the clothing.

So these people had been sent out here first to dig what looked like a garden ready for planting, and then they were sorting clothing? Very odd. And what would they be planting in the middle of the woods?

This excerpt is a good representation of the growing realization of what the Nazis are really up to. Days before this, the townspeople of Viteretz had been relieved by the arrival of the Germans in June 1941 after living under brutal occupation of the Soviets since September 1939.

They think the war is over.

But this scene shows that is these Nazis are not not the civilized Germans the townspeople were expecting, and that the war is far from over: it has just taken an unimaginably horrific turn.

Visit Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Age of Legends"

James Lovegrove is the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Odin. He was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998 and for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2004, and also reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He is the author of Firefly: Big Damn Hero with Nancy Holder and Firefly: The Magnificent Nine. He lives in south-east England.

Lovegrove applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Age of Legends, and reported the following:

Ironically, page 69 of Age of Legends features a sex scene. I swear I did not plan it that way for the purposes of some metatextual “69” joke. In the original manuscript the scene crosses from page 57 to page 58. The pagination in the published novel is, obviously, different because the typesetting is different.

The sex scene is not gratuitous. Neither is it terribly sexy. It’s certainly not romantic.
The participants are the story’s antagonist Derek Drake, who is the extreme right-wing Prime Minister of a near-future United Kingdom, and a Russian TV journalist, Tatjana. She has just interviewed him for a Russian television news network, and they have then nipped upstairs at 10 Downing Street for some very athletic bedroom-related recreational activity.

Tatjana is, as it happens, a “gift” from her country’s president to Drake, a token of appreciation. Both Drake and President Vasiliev are political hard men and they share similar views on immigrants, gay people, and so forth. One might even suspect, if one was being particularly cynical, that Vasiliev helped Drake get elected.

Drake, it should be noted is married. For the sake of balance, it should also be noted that his wife Harriet isn’t much better when it comes to respecting their nuptial vows. She is conducting an ongoing affair with the head of Drake’s private security force, Major Wynne.

Do I have a very low opinion of politicians? You decide!

Visit James Lovegrove's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Pure Heart"

Rajia Hassib was born and raised in Egypt and moved to the United States when she was twenty-three. She holds an MA in creative writing from Marshall University and her short fiction has appeared in Upstreet, Steam Ticket, and Border Crossing magazines. She lives in West Virginia with her husband and two children.

Hassib novels are In the Language of Miracles and the recently released A Pure Heart.

She applied the Page 69 Test to A Pure Heart and reported the following:

From page 69:

The next morning, Gameela snuck out of the apartment before anyone woke up—an easy feat in a family that slept past ten on weekends. She needed to walk the Cairo streets at the time she loved them most: early on a Friday morning in October, when the summer’s heat had finally subsided, replaced by a crisp breeze just cool enough to sting her nose, when the sprawling city was mostly still sleeping. Stepping out of the apartment building and onto the street and, crossing it, reaching the promenade that bordered the Nile, Gameela felt refreshingly clean, as if she had just stepped out of the sea and under the shade of an umbrella, like she loved to do when they used to vacation in Mersa Matruh years ago. She walked slowly down Saraya El-Gezira Street, occasionally glancing at the Nile below. Watching a boat float down the river, Gameela took a deep breath in and waited for that familiar sensation to fill her, the one that she got whenever she, as a child, strolled by the Nile with her father—the feeling of blissful belonging, an anchored identification with all that surrounded her: not only the running water, but also the Cairo dust that rendered everything a dull shade of gray, the suffocating heat that often prevented her from pursuing this same walk, the chaos of the streets crowded with peddlers and taxicabs and donkey-drawn carts and Mercedeses all maneuvering around each other with skill that decades of coexistence bred.

She could not believe how easily Fayrouz was giving all of this up, how easily she was leaping into a marriage that would inevitably take her away from her country.

She could not believe how easily Fayrouz was giving her family up.

This page is certainly representative of one of A Pure Heart’s main themes: the theme of home, of how attached we get to the physical places we inhabit, and of how some people can transplant themselves through immigration while others can’t. The novel tells the story of two sisters who fall on opposite sides of that spectrum: Gameela, a young woman with a deep sense of national and religious belonging, and Rose, whose name was Fayrouz before she changed it, and who marries an American and immigrates to the United States, a move that damages her relationship with her sister in ways she spends the entire novel trying to unravel.

What this page specifically touches on, though, is how much place affects our sense of belonging. Gameela’s description of her surroundings shows an attachment to them that is so essential to her identity that she cannot understand her sister’s choices outside of the parameters of place: immigration is an uprooting, a tearing away from a physical home and from the family we leave behind there, and for Gameela, this is unthinkable and inexplicable. This section stands in dialogue with several other sections from Rose’s point of view, where we get to see how she builds her own relationship with the new places she calls home, and how she views the places she left behind when she immigrated. Together, these parts pose some of the novel’s central questions: How much of our identity is tied to our home and our country of birth? And what happens when immigration forces us to redefine home?

Visit Rajia Hassib's website.

The Page 69 Test: In the Language of Miracles.

Writers Read: Rajia Hassib.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Starship Alchemon"

Christopher Hinz is the author of seven novels. Liege-Killer won the Compton Crook award for best first novel and was nominated for the John W. Campbell award for best new writer. He has written screenplay adaptations, short stories and a graphic novel, as well as scripting comics for DC and Marvel. His latest publications are the novel Starship Alchemon and the co-written novelette Duchamp Versus Einstein.

Hinz applied the Page 69 Test to Starship Alchemon and reported the following:

Starship Alchemon presents ten intelligences – nine human and one AI – on a mission to investigate an “anomalous biosignature” on a distant planet. Included among the crew are a troubled psychic, a narcissistic researcher and an increasingly unhinged bridge officer.

What could go wrong?

Here is Page 69 in its entirety. The scene occurs between the psychic, LeaMarsa, and the mission’s tech trainee, Alexei, in the Alchemon’s versatile natatorium. Multiple story purposes are served. LeaMarsa’s emotional disconnectedness is spotlighted as are the repercussions of Alexei’s earlier, less-than-subtle sexual advances. The location also serves as our introduction to a locale that all too soon will play a pivotal role in the ship’s troubles.

The male voice emanated from the water and was followed by a loud splash. She ambled back to the rim, stared at the two figures swimming toward her.

Alexei Two Guns hopped from the pool and shook his head, sending a fine spray of water from reddish hair styled unfashionably long like her own. The tech trainee was a bit taller than LeaMarsa. Slim and deeply tanned, he was naked except for a yellow crotchpad.

“We need a third for waterball,” Alexei said, gesturing to Faye in the water. “Come in and get wet.”

“No thanks.”

“Don’t think about it, LeaMarsa. Just do it!”

Alexei was pleasant enough, but she didn’t understand how a person could be so relentlessly exuberant. And since yesterday he seemed to be hanging around her an awful lot, pushing her toward doing physical exercise with him.

Did he want more than that? Sex? She couldn’t be sure. His intentions remained unclear. Odder than that, they seemed to have come out of the blue, as if he was following some mandate rather than his feelings.

Yesterday, during a random encounter in the updeck corridor near her cabin, he’d complimented her for wearing a simple skirt and blouse. The apparel, outputted from a PYG receptacle, was a generic ensemble she’d selected from among the thousands of fashion templates stored in the primary genesis complex. It wasn’t even smart clothing. As usual, and against PYG’s recommendation, she’d chosen the nano-free option.

Alexei had seen her dressed in such attire since the outset of the voyage and had never before said a word, which made the praise all the more bizarre, as did his subsequent proposal...

Visit Christopher Hinz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Other Windsor Girl"

Georgie Blalock is an amateur historian and movie buff who loves combining her different passions through historical fiction, and a healthy dose of period piece films. When not writing, she can be found prowling the non-fiction history section of the library or the British film listings on Netflix. Blalock writes historical romance under the name Georgie Lee.

Blalock applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Other Windsor Girl, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Vera didn’t have the resources to enjoy this life to the full, but to be a small part of it even for a short time, to perhaps meet someone who might help her achieve her dreams or forget her disappointments, proved irresistible. Nothing still might come of it, but for a while she could enjoy herself and finally prove to her mother—and to herself—that she was more than a disappointment, that she was someone worthy of notice. She could finally find some benefit in the freedom of being single. “I’d love to come.”

“Good, then it’s settled.”

Vera had no idea what was settled except that she was going to do something that might, with any luck, bomb her old life to smithereens like the Luftwaffe had done to great swaths of London. She’d craved change when she’d followed Rupert to the Dorchester. She might just have it.

Page 69 of The Other Windsor Girl is the end of chapter four when the heroine Vera decides to take a chance on becoming a member of the Princes Margaret’s Set, Princess Margaret’s group of young aristocrats and socialite friends. This decision changes her life. She will no longer be the overlooked Honorable Vera Strathmore but eventually become second lady in waiting to Princess Margaret and spend the next ten years living a life she never could have imagined possible. Through her association with the Princess, she will gain the respect and purpose that she’s been struggling to find since the end of World War II and that has eluded her, especially in her writing career. Everything will change for Vera after this chapter as she embarks on a friendship with Princess Margaret and becomes part of her world. Vera enjoys opportunities and experiences she could never have imagined and gets a good look at the less than glamorous side of royalty. This page is the heart of the novel and the beginning of Vera’s journey to discovering herself and what she really wants out of life.

Visit Georgie Blalock's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Other Windsor Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Upon the Flight of the Queen"

Howard Jones’s debut historical fantasy novel, The Desert of Souls (2011), was widely acclaimed by influential publications like Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly, made Kirkus’ New and Notable list for 2011, and was on both Locus’s Recommended Reading List and the Barnes and Noble Best Fantasy Releases list of 2011. Its sequel, The Bones of the Old Ones, made the Barnes and Noble Best Fantasy Release of 2013 and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. He is the author of four Pathfinder novels, an e-collection of short stories featuring the heroes from his historical fantasy novels, The Waters of Eternity, and the new novel from St. Martin’s, the second in a new fantasy series, Upon the Flight of the Queen, the followup to For the Killing of Kings, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Jones applied the Page 69 Test to Upon the Flight of the Queen and reported the following:

My trilogy is centered on a heroic order of champions who discover a terrible conspiracy in their midst at the same time an invasion is underway. Naturally I assumed a page 69 test would take me to some of my protagonists unravelling one of several mysteries, or engaged in some swashbuckling action, but what I discovered instead was the madness of their queen, Leonara. In the first book of the trilogy, the queen’s mostly off-stage, and apart from one scene, we only see the terrible results of her choices. Come book two she’s sometimes center stage, and on page 69 Leonara is letting it be known just what she intends to do with her newfound powers. I dare not reveal that, for fear I’ll spoil book one, but suffice to say that she has far too much faith in her own intellectual superiority, and has surrounded herself with yes-women and yes-men eager to curry favor. On page 69 one of them is starting to suspect the queen’s vision may well lead them to disaster and dares suggest a proposed course of action might be premature. The queen’s responses, and those of her closest subordinate, go a long way toward showing us just how dangerous Leonara’s going to be to our protagonists over the course of the book.

Learn more about the book and author at Howard Andrew Jones's website.

View the animated book trailer for Upon the Flight of the Queen.

Writers Read: Howard Andrew Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Wyoming"

JP Gritton’s awards include a Cynthia Woods Mitchell fellowship, a DisQuiet fellowship and the Donald Barthelme prize in fiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, Southwest Review, Tin House and elsewhere. His translations of the fiction of Brazilian writer Cidinha da Silva are forthcoming in InTranslation.

Gritton applied the Page 69 Test to Wyoming, his first novel, and reported the following:

The top of page 69 reads, “I think I must’ve half wanted it to go south.” Shelley Cooper, the construction-worker-by-day/drug-runner-by-night who narrates my novel Wyoming, has just invited a lady of the evening to join him in his hotel room. In some ways, this invitation is exactly what the book is about: the manner by which we subconsciously participate in the disasters of our lives.

Before this point, Shelley’s progress through the book has been a series of dumb ideas. He steals an air compressor (dumb idea). Later, to help his best friend pay for chemotherapy treatments, Shelley agrees to drive fifty pounds of Colorado high-grade down to Houston (dumb idea). He has some dumb ideas about the money he gets for his trouble, which comes padlocked in a stainless-steel briefcase.

There isn’t a lot of me in Shelley, but this much we have in common: sometimes I get the feeling that I am the casual viewer of a TV show about self-sabotage. Bad idea, I’ll think. Don’t do it! And then?

The next line reads, “I smiled to watch her blow inside—this time I hadn’t bothered fastening the chain—smiled even if there was a sweet sad voice in my head, ringing like a bell: You will regret this, it went, you will regret this, you will regret this.”

Visit JP Gritton's website.

My Book, The Movie: Wyoming.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Life and Limb"

Jennifer Roberson has a BS in journalism with extended majors in British history and anthropology. She spent her final semester in London on an American studies program as an adult student in 1982, and while there, two days after her 28th birthday, received a telegram (pre-email!) from her agent informing her DAW Books had bought what became Shapechangers, the first in her Chronicles of the Cheysuli fantasy series. Her collaboration with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott, The Golden Key, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. In addition to the new Blood & Bone series, she has published eight Cheysuli novels, the Sword-Dancer Saga (#8 to come) and three of four volumes in the Karavans universe. The second volume in Blood & Bone is Sinners and Saints, scheduled for publication in March of 2021. Hobbies include showing dogs, and creating mosaic artwork and jewelry. She lives in Arizona with a collection of cats and Cardigan Welsh Corgis.

Roberson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Life and Limb, and reported the following:

Life and Limb is the first volume in an ongoing urban fantasy series about the End of Days, and two perfectly ordinary young men who are strangers to one another have been conscripted to join the heavenly host in a battle against Lucifer’s spec ops troops: demons who now inhabit characters and creatures from fiction, history, myths, legends, and folklore. But the angels have agendas, and Gabe and Remi—an ex-con biker and Texas cowboy—must also come to grips with the unwelcome discovery that they themselves are not after all entirely human, even as they climb the steepest of learning curves in an attempt to save the world.

“It will come,” Grandaddy said. “It’s a process.”

I shook my head. “We have lives. Hell, I just got mine back. You can’t expect us to walk away from everything.”

Grandaddy’s voice took on an edge unlike anything I’d heard from him before. My skin itched, and I stared at him in shock. He was doing something again.

“That’s exactly what I expect, Gabriel. This is the End of Days I’m talking about, with the fate of the world at stake. Everyone born of heaven must answer this call, if we’re to succeed. Is it a sacrifice?—of course it is. But there is nothing in your lives that is of greater importance than this.” His eyes were steady. “You have never disappointed me. Don’t do so now.”

I looked for compassion. Found none. “What about our families?”

Grandaddy didn’t even attempt to hedge. “I said we could massage things. Well, I have massaged the minds of your parents and brother. They believe you are in prison finishing your sentence.”

“But that’s only six more months.”

“And your father’s reaction once you’re out? Would you be welcome in his house?”

After a long moment, I said no. Because I remembered what my father had said, even if he didn’t because of Grandaddy’s brain massage. That night on the porch, as I rolled my bike out of the garage, felt like a death-knell. My mother stayed inside, and kid brother Matty was probably out getting high.

“And what would you do, Gabriel?”

“Get on my bike and head out. Maybe for good.”

Grandaddy nodded. “Well, we will free you of that. They will remember no hostilities, only that you are on the road. And so you are free to do your duty without interference for however long it takes.“

I glanced at the cowboy, looked back at Grandaddy. “What about him?”

“Remi is traveling the world undertaking research for the book he plans on writing. And he may, from time to time, call home to reassure his parents. But the calls will show overseas locations, nothing in this country. You, on the other hand, may drop postcards to your mother. Your father’s a son of a bitch, but she is a worthy woman.”

And there it was, all tied up in a neat little bow. The present. Our futures. An explanation for it all.

Page 69 is representative of the book in that Grandaddy is laying out their futures, and their stakes in that future. It's the end of the world, which is the main plot-driver for the series. The introduction to their new lives is not well-received and sets up internal conflict as Gabe and Remi learn they must sink or swim.

Visit Jennifer Roberson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"An Equal Justice"

Chad Zunker studied journalism at the University of Texas, where he was also on the football team. He’s worked for some of the most powerful law firms in the country and invented baby products that are now sold all over the world. He has wanted to write full time since he took his first practice hit as a skinny freshman walk-on from a 6’5, 240 pound senior All-American safety — which crushed both him and his feeble NFL dreams.

Zunker is the author of the David Adams legal thriller, An Equal Justice, as well as The Tracker, Shadow Shepherd, and Hunt the Lion in his Sam Callahan series. He lives in Austin with his wife, Katie, and their three daughters.

Zunker applied the Page 69 Test to An Equal Justice and reported the following:

Page 69 of An Equal Justice consists of a scene where David Adams, our hero, follows an old homeless man named Benny—who has just saved David’s life from a mugging—deep into the woods of East Austin. Benny is taking David to see his home for the first time. This scene is one of the most pivotal in the entire book. It’s David’s first exposure to a secret homeless community called The Camp, where David meets many others like Benny. Soon after this scene, David begins to feel caught in between two worlds—the wealthy and powerful, and the poor and outcast. This tension leads him toward a dramatic climax as David tries to unravel a dark and sinster conspiracy at his law firm.

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--Marshal Zeringue