"Amish Country Homicide"

Susan Furlong grew up in North Dakota where she spent long winters at her local library scouring the shelves for mysteries to read. Now, she lives in Illinois with her husband and children and writes mysteries of all types. She has over a dozen published novels and her work has earned a spot in the New York Times list of top crime fiction books of the year. When not writing, she volunteers at her church and spends time hiking and fishing.

Furlong applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Amish Country Homicide, with the following results:

The Page 69 Test is a fun way to gauge a story. Have you ever tried it? Pick any book and turn to page 69, read a few paragraphs, and see if the story pulls you in.

In my newest release, Amish Country Homicide, I’m thrilled to say that the Page 69 Test provides a surprisingly accurate glimpse into my story. On page 69, readers are dropped right into an exciting moment of rising danger.

In this scene, Alena Walsh’s life has taken a dark turn. She has unknowingly witnessed a crime, and now the killer has tracked her down, placed a bag over her face, and is trying to recover a crucial piece of evidence that he believes will expose his crime:

Fingers dug into the back of her neck. A sudden shove. Her face plunged into the river. Icy water rushed into her ears, her mouth, stung her eyes. She bucked, twisting, thrashing as her lungs screamed for air, her hands painfully struggling against the zip ties.

Her head was yanked up.

She sucked in a desperate breath, wet fabric suctioning to her lips, bile burning her throat. “I … I don’t know what you want…”

“The phone.” He shook her, her head snapping back and forth like rag doll. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know…” she choked, coughed and her stomach heaved, emptying into the bag around her face. She sobbed, tiny mewing noises like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a coyote. “I … I don’t know anything about a phone. I’m telling you the truth. I promise…”

Her head was forced down again, plunged into the water like a baptism of hate.

I love that, somehow, page 69 of Amish Country Homicide, captures the essence of the story: an ordinary woman caught in extraordinary danger, relying on courage and faith to survive.

Visit Susan Furlong's website.

My Book, The Movie: Splintered Silence.

The Page 69 Test: Splintered Silence.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong (December 2018).

Q&A with Susan Furlong.

Writers Read: Susan Furlong (July 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Lethal Wilderness Trap.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Two Truths and a Lie"

Mark Stevens is the author of The Flynn Martin Thriller series including No Lie Lasts Forever (2025) and Two Truths and A Lie (2026); The Fireballer (2023), and The Allison Coil Mystery Series including Antler Dust, Buried by the Roan, Trapline, Lake of Fire, and The Melancholy Howl.

Buried by the Roan, Trapline, and Lake of Fire were all finalists for the Colorado Book Award. Trapline won.

Stevens applied the Page 69 Test to Two Truths and a Lie, and reported the following:

Well, bang.

Page 69 of Two Truths and a Lie is, I hope, a fairly tense moment.

Television reporter Flynn Martin is discussing a news conference she has just covered with her station’s news director, Rick Goodman. The news conference was about the disappearance of an entire family—mother, father, son, and daughter—from their suburban Denver home.

But Flynn can’t tell Goodman what she’s just found on the dashboard of her car, a second note from an anonymous someone who is taunting her. She’s contemplating a trip to go see her nemesis from the first book in the series, No Lie Lasts Forever. The guy she’s thinking about going to see is a serial killer now behind bars in the Colorado prison system. She is sure he must be playing a role in the new messages, but she can’t let on (to anyone) that she might pay Harry Kugel (a.k.a. “PDQ”) a visit.

Because that would seem both entirely inappropriate and unprofessional.

In Two Truths and a Lie, the Page 69 Test gives us many facets of Flynn Martin. She’s thinking about her son. (The first note arrived, mysteriously, in her son Wyatt’s school backpack). She’s processing a fresh news story. We see Flynn thinking about who might have seen someone approach her car while she was off covering the news conference. “As Flynn talks, she scans. All the humans have scattered back to their air-conditioned comfort zone, but she spots a video doorbell on the house directly across the street.” And we see her cajoling her boss for a day off to go confront the guy she helped send off to prison.

As always, Flynn Martin has a lot on her mind. Page 69 gives us a glimpse of her juggling balls in the air and charting her course for what she needs to do for work and for herself.

Visit Mark Stevens's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fireballer.

Q&A with Mark Stevens.

My Book, The Movie: The Fireballer.

Writers Read: Mark Stevens (June 2025).

The Page 69 Test: No Lie Lasts Forever.

My Book, The Movie: No Lie Lasts Forever.

Writers Read: Mark Stevens.

--Marshal Zeringue

"As Far as She Knew"

Diana Awad is an Arab American who grew up all over the world as the daughter of a United States Foreign Service Officer. After college, she became a local television journalist and often covered stories about violent crimes and mysterious disappearances. She eventually decided to write her own stories with unexpected endings. Awad also writes historical romance as Diana Quincy and historical mystery as D. M. Quincy. She is now happily settled in Virginia but still gets the itch to explore far-off places. When she’s not bent over her laptop, Awad reads, devours streaming thriller series, and plots her next travel adventure.

Awad applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, As Far as She Knew, and shared the following:

From page 69:

Compassion filled Lulu’s face. “The facts do seem to point to a pretty ugly reality.”

Tears stung my eyes. “I was married to the man for more than two decades. I knew who he was, didn’t I?”

“But you didn’t know about the secret house in North Carolina,” she gently reminded me.

“Yes, Ali lied. That’s for sure.” I took a breath, still holding on to hope. “But maybe there’s another explanation for why he did that.” Please, God, let there be.

Lulu dipped celery into the hummus. “I hope you’re right. But I just want you to be prepared for the worst.”

I would never be ready for that. “What if I sue her?”

Nasser poured himself more iced tea. “Who?”

“Carol Darius.”

Doubt crossed Nasser’s face. “You don’t even know if Carol Darius got the house.”

“Then I’ll sue the LLC. I’d learn what I need to know during discovery, right?” I warmed to the idea. “Wouldn’t they have to show me the operating agreement?”

“They might,” Nasser admitted. “It could work, actually.”  

As it turns out, page 69 gives readers an excellent capsule of what As Far as She Knew is about and marks a significant turning point in the novel. Several of the novel’s central themes—primarily the question of how well we really know the people closest to us—are explored on page 69. The scene features a three-way conversation between Amira, the protagonist, who recently discovered that her late husband, Ali, owned a secret house; Nasser, her husband’s cousin and best friend; and Lulu, Amira’s sister and often the voice of reason. The scene foreshadows the numerous twists ahead, delves into family and marital devotion, and the complexities of grief when a wife is no longer sure her marriage was as happy as she thought.

Ultimately, the scene marks a decisive moment. Amira resolves to take control of her life by investigating how and why Ali came to acquire the house, and to explore what that means not only for her past, but also for her and her children’s future.

Visit Diana Awad's website.

My Book, The Movie: As Far as She Knew.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Whispers of Ink and Starlight"

Garrett Curbow is the author of Whispers of Ink and Starlight and the Daughter of Light trilogy, which was short-listed for the Publishers Weekly Selfies Award. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Curbow applied the Page 69 Test to Whispers of Ink and Starlight with the following results:

I’m going to cheat a little, if that’s okay. The actual page 69 in Whispers of Ink and Starlight is the title page for Part Two: Wish Me On My Way, and I will answer for that page.

But to have a little more fun, I flipped back to page 67 to see if it fits this challenge.

Page 67 (pretend it’s 69):

His gaunt face is splashed with shadows and firelight, a droopiness to his shoulders, a crack of defeat in his stature.

Nelle steps into the hall, hesitating before she shuts the study door. Father watches her go, and despite the fire wreathing him, no warmth touches his face. For a heartbeat, she considers saying goodbye. Then, on second thought, she slams the door shut.

James is already by her side, holding a chair. He wedges it underneath the handle, as if that will stop Father. Though he may not try to escape. Without her, what does he have to live for? She feels no remorse for leaving him to burn, instead relishing the idea of him melting while the pages of his precious Nellie crumble to ash.

A new Nelle walks through the house, chin held high, James beside her, strange folder held tight against her chest. She walks out into the sticky night, tears dry on her cheeks, fireflies blinking between the trees, and watches flames lurch off the tin roof, an artist stepping back to survey her canvas after brushing on the final stroke.

James starts his truck. Nelle climbs into the cab and feels along the cracks in the leather seat.

He gingerly hovers his finger over the still-fresh cut in her palm.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“Yes.” She braces herself for the burn as his fingertips touch her open wound. On the dashboard, he writes: Nelle rides with James.

A tight ball of yarn unspools inside her. As her cut stitches back together, Nelle watches the road and listens to her life crackle away over the sound of gravel under the tires.

If I’m going based off the true page 69, which would be the title page of Part Two: Wish Me On My Way, then I honestly do think this test works. One of the reasons I chose that phrase as the title for the second part of the novel is because it perfectly captures Nelle and James’s journey.

If I’m doing the test based off page 67, which is the closest I could get with actual text to 69, then, again, I think it works! Page 67 is a major turning point for the story, when a lot of the overarching themes, especially for Nelle’s character, start to bloom.

I guess you could technically say that Whispers of Ink and Starlight fails the Page 69 Test, but it does pass the Page 67 Test with flying colors.

This page contains one of my favorite scenes in the novel, with Nelle looking back at her past life and feeling, for the first time ever, hope for a future she never thought she would have. It’s dramatic and, taken out of context, can seem heartless. Most people wouldn’t leave their father inside a burning house, but…

Without a doubt, the Page 69 Test works for this book. This scene, which breaks the story into Part Two, is one of the most integral moments of the book. Without it, the rest of the novel could not exist.

Visit Garrett Curbow's website.

Q&A with Garrett Curbow.

Writers Read: Garrett Curbow.

--Marshal Zeringue

"If Books Could Kill"

Karen Rose Smith, USA Today bestselling author, is a wife, mom, and catmom of five rescued felines. Married for 54 years, she focuses on family relationships in her novels. She has written romances, mysteries and women’s fiction. Her pastimes include cooking, gardening and listening to Calum Scott’s latest. She saw a dream come true when one of her romances was made into a movie for UPTV. She’s a firm believer that dreams can come true at any age.

Smith applied the Page 69 Test to If Books Could Kill, her 112th novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 features sleuth Jazzi Swanson (Daisy’s daughter from Daisy’s Tea Garden cozies) stepping into the house and room where her friend and librarian Mathilda Woods was murdered. Mathilda’s lawyer Blair McNally has invited her inside. Fingerprint dust still dirties the side tables and bookshelves but the rug has been removed. Jazzi asks Blair if Mathilda mentioned family in her will. Blair explains that the librarian did not and reveals that she intuited that there had been a family breach.

The Page 69 Test works for If Books Could Kill. After a winter scavenger hunt, Jazzi and friends hear a gun shot near the librarian’s bungalow. Knowing Mathilda had worries about her safety, Jazzi peers in her window and finds Mathilda shot dead on the rug. On page 69 that rug has been removed but Jazzi remembers its placement. New to sleuthing, this is book 3 in my Tomes & Tea series, Jazzi is uncertain about becoming involved. Belltower Landing’s detective always warns her against that. However, she and Mathilda had begun sharing personal information, though Mathilda never mentioned family.

Meeting Blair McNally, Mathilda’s lawyer, gives Jazzi the opportunity to delve into the murder and find out more about Mathilda’s life. She believes attorneys often know their clients’ secrets. Perhaps one of those secrets was the reason Mathilda was murdered. Or else… Jazzi is aware of the bookshelves in the scene on page 69. One of the secrets Mathilda shared with her was that a rare book could be hidden on those shelves. Mathilda was a collector of rare books. Her lawyer was one of the few people who knew that. This conversation with Blair leads Jazzi in the direction of learning more about Mathilda’s life before she moved to the tourist town to become director of the library.

A major part of writing If Books Could Kill was researching rare books and their worth. I mention several in this cozy including Anne of Green Gables, a personal childhood favorite, and Where The Wild Things Are. I have a stack of old books from Golden Books to romances I read as a teenager stored away. I can’t seem to give them up. Like Mathilda appreciating the scent, cover and texture of the novels on her bookshelves, I appreciate having books all around me. I hope you enjoy the spotlight on books in If Books Could Kill.

Visit Karen Rose Smith's website, Facebook page, and Instagram page.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Rose Smith & Hope and Riley.

The Page 69 Test: Staged to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Murder with Lemon Tea Cakes.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Marks the Page.

The Page 69 Test: Booked for Revenge.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Survivor"

Born in Scotland, Andrew Reid worked as a research scientist for almost a decade on projects including DNA synthesis, forensics, and drug development. He now teaches Science and lives in Stockholm with his wife, three children, and two cats.

Reid applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Survivor, and shared the following:

Before I opened to page 69 of The Survivor, I wondered: what would happen if it was the start or the end of a chapter? Would less than a page still be representative?

It turns out that page 69 is the final page of Chapter Eleven. Here it is, in its entirety.

If he gets off now, then more people will die, starting with the woman right in front of him.

Ben stretches out a hand to reach for the radio mic that Sarah dropped when she fell. He doesn’t want to use it. The last thing he wants is for more people to get dragged into this. To risk more people knowing the name Adam. But he is out of options.

Ben needs to call for help.

I love that somehow, in less than a hundred words, it still delivers the premise in microcosm. Ben is trapped in a situation where it isn’t just his own life that hangs in the balance, and that to save the life of the person in front of him he is going to have to reveal something he wants to keep secret. I used to sniff at the term high concept, but it turns out that I really enjoy high stakes and a steep price. What immediately jumped out at me is the first five words: if he gets off now. Even though The Survivor takes place on the subway, the setting is not what is keeping Ben trapped. It’s his nature that the killer is counting on: that no matter what he goes through, they know that he can’t bring himself to walk away. I hope readers enjoy seeing how deep that journey goes.

Follow Andrew Reid on Instagram and Threads.

Writers Read: Andrew Reid.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Two Deaths of Lillian Carmichael"

Paulette Kennedy is the author of The Artist of Blackberry Grange (2025), The Devil and Mrs. Davenport (2024), The Witch of Tin Mountain (2023), and Parting the Veil (2021), which received the HNS Review Editor’s Choice Award. Her work has been featured in People Magazine, The Mary Sue, and BookBub. Originally from the Missouri Ozarks, where as a young girl she could often be found wandering through the gravestones in her neighborhood cemetery, Kennedy’s affinity for fog-covered landscapes and haunted heroines only grew, inspiring her to become a writer. She now lives with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets in sunny Southern California, where sometimes, on the very best days, the mountains are wreathed in gothic fog.

Kennedy applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Two Deaths of Lillian Carmichael, with the following results:

From page 69:

“...Beautiful things deserve to be enjoyed. Please, will you join me?”

I sit next to him, and he pours wine into the crystal goblet nearest me. I raise it to my lips and drink. It’s rich and dark, with an underlying peppery tone.

“Zinfandel,” Alex says with a smile. “A newer wine variety. Have you ever tasted anything like it?”

“I can’t say that I have.” It’s been so many years since I’ve enjoyed a proper, seated dinner, much less wine. Papa preferred ale and cider with supper, although Mother would insist upon French wine for formal occasions. “It’s delightful.”

Alex carves the roast and serves it to me, ladling sauce over the meat. I dredge the meat in the sauce and lift my fork to my mouth. A moan of pleasure escapes my lips. It’s so tender it melts on my tongue. After years of near starvation in prison and in the marsh, and nothing but broth and soup during my recovery, this meal feels worthy of a queen. It makes me curious about Alex’s financial standing, and how he can afford such sumptuous food.

“Is it good?” he asks, his eyes sparkling.

“Heavens, yes,” I say, laughing. I carve another piece with my knife, savoring the taste more slowly this time.

This is such an interesting test for The Two Deaths of Lillian Carmichael, because while the context of the scene is a meal shared between two soon-to-be lovers, it encapsulates many aspects of the novel: sensuality and hunger, as well as wealth and class, which are major themes. Vampires are true hedonists, and while Alex and Lillian are not vampires, this scene conveys sensory delight and the growing romantic tension between my characters. The setting of the novel, Charleston, South Carolina in the 1850s, was filled with earthly, materialistic vanities, pleasures, and classism. If readers were to turn to this page, it would help to set the tone for the book. The line, "Beautiful things deserve to be enjoyed," has an especially harrowing context when applied to the vampiric murderer, who very much views the young women he victimizes as beautiful things that he is entitled to. Predation and desire, ambition, and revenge are all explored in the novel, so I believe the Page 69 Test works well for this scene.

Visit Paulette Kennedy's website.

The Page 69 Test: Parting the Veil.

The Page 69 Test: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport.

My Book, The Movie: The Artist of Blackberry Grange.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sing the Night"

Megan Jauregui Eccles lives in the foothills of San Diego and is a writer, poet, and professor at John Paul the Great Catholic University. Her gothic fantasy novel, Sing the Night, explores the ambition and grief of being an artist. When she’s not writing or rehoming rattlesnakes, she plays Dungeons and Dragons with her husband and six kids. She holds an MFA in Fiction from UCR—Palm Desert.

Eccles applied the Page 69 Test Sing the Night, and reported the following:

Page 69 takes us inside the forbidden mirror beneath the opera house with the ghost trapped inside. This is a quintessential scene where Selene witnesses the magnitude of his magic--marking the difference and noting the possibilities of what magic can do.

"She couldn't live with herself, knowing she'd left him here.

He hovered there--winged in darkness and haloed by false stars--like a vengeful god. There was no music to this magic. This wasn't controlled by breath or voice. This magic was wild, living. It had taken his blood and made him monstrous and lovely.

Something sparked, feral and hungry inside Selene. Whatever he was doing, whatever dark magic this was, she needed it. If she could harness this, she would have magic like never before. They'd have no choice but to crown her the King's Mage. To write the Dreshé name down in all the books. She would be unstoppable.

"Selene." His voice was all the thunder but none of the honey, dissonant and dark and somehow still a siren's song.

He flapped his great, dark wings. The force of it shattered the air, pushing Selene back, back, back. The ground slide from beneath her feet and she was floating, falling into the shapeless nothing that was the dark."

This is an excellent test for Sing the Night. It propels us into one of the main conflicts of the book—the Faustian bargain to free the ghost from the mirror—all while balancing Selene’s need for more power, more magic, and a chance to secure her father’s legacy. Sing the Night is very much an ode to the grief and ambition of being an artist, which is fraught with contradiction. We make art because it’s what our souls need, but we must have commercial viability in that art in order to survive. That creates systems in which artists must push themselves to tbe brink in order to succeed. This scene also captures the rich atmosphere and the lush prose that I worked hard to embody throughout the book. This is such an interesting craft exercise and I look forward to trying it out again on my future work.

Visit Megan Jauregui Eccles's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sing the Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Tore All to Pieces"

Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr. is an advocate, educator, author, and Kentucky Teacher of the Year. His work is focused on advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and creating inclusive spaces for students, especially within the context of Appalachia. He is the author of Tore All to Pieces, a fragmented novel about a small town in Appalachia and the interconnectedness of our identities, as well as Gay Poems for Red States, a bestselling collection of narrative poetry about his childhood growing up queer in Appalachia.

Carver applied the Page 69 Test to Tore All to Pieces and shared the following:

Hearing about the Page 69 Test tells me two things: (1) that I have the humour of a middle schooler, since I know that the poem “The Scientist” in my first collection begins on that page because I giggle every time I tell people to turn there, and (2) that I am not to be trusted.

This is because when I opened Tore All to Pieces to page 69, I immediately thought, “This is one of my favorite moments.” Then I found that suspect, so I randomly tried pages 86 and 141 and had similar feelings. Still…

On page 69, Patrick, a college-aged queer hillbilly, has just spent the evening in the backseat of a car with a stranger on the strip job at a coal operation, and is now tired and also afraid to retrieve his car from the driveway of a gun-toting family that lives against a hillside. He is trying to convince his sister, Rayeanne, to take him to get it, but she is more invested in canned cheese dip and police detective television shows. She simply declares, “Fuck I will.”

This page is a true slice of the entire book—a bite of dressing with onion, turkey, and celery in it. These characters are Appalachians for Appalachia. They’re unadorned, unafraid to be messy, and unwilling to have to work to be legible outside of here. Many Appalachians know the feeling of worrying about looking serious and worthy to others. This book refuses that lens. It begins with the knowledge that these people already matter—as do their stories. Tortilla chips broken in cheese dip and lovemaking up on strip jobs?

That’s home to me.

That’s Tore All to Pieces—folks I love without wrapping paper. Hungry. Tired. Worthy.

Visit Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.'s website.

Q&A with Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.

My Book, The Movie: Tore All to Pieces.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Only Spell Deep"

Ava Morgyn is the USA Today bestselling author of The Bane Witch and The Witches of Bone Hill. She grew up falling in love with all the wrong characters in all the wrong stories, then studied English Writing & Rhetoric at St. Edward’s University. She is a lover of witchcraft, tarot, and powerful women with bad reputations, and she currently resides in Houston surrounded by antiques and dog hair. When not at her laptop spinning darkly hypnotic tales, Morgyn writes for her blog on child loss (forloveofevelyn.com), hunts for vintage treasures, and reads the darkest books she can find.

She is the author of YA novels Resurrection Girls and The Salt in Our Blood.

Morgyn applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Only Spell Deep, with the following results:

Page 69 of Only Spell Deep reads:

A scream that my grandfather put there, that my mother fed and the voice honed, that woke up in the park under that bridge and might swallow me alive if I don’t get it out. It is a horrific, caterwauling sound that claws its way out of my throat and into the wires supplying the building. And when it hits the night, the Needle goes black, every light ticking off in a dizzying sequence, dousing the heart of the city in shadow.

While I find this passage intriguing and think it makes several very telling points—alluding to the abuse of her grandfather and mother, mentioning “the voice” which was such a significant part of her childhood, discussing the park in which she first met the Fathom, and most importantly describing her power and the effect it has on her as she exercises it again—I think there is just too little here to satiate readers that don’t already know the story. It even mentions “the Needle”, meaning the Seattle Space Needle, which hints at the setting, but without that other word, I don’t know if readers will even pick up on that.

That said, I do think even this tiny passage carries the tone and mood of the book and might be enough to draw a reader solely based on “vibes” if they know they are looking for dark fantasy and moody storytelling.

What I’d really like for readers to get as a teaser of my book is something more like this passage on page 23:

Magic is only spell deep, my mother used to say. It is as likely to harm as to heal.

Who knows how many other cautionary tales in love and magic populated my storied family tree? And at the simple age of sixteen, I had, in my own way, taken my place among them.

Still, I knew there was more. Things my mother hadn’t told me, things about my grandmother, about her, about our family. Things she’d run from once, only to have to run back. But I assumed that those things lived in the past; they couldn’t touch me.

This passage is only a small snippet of a much larger, more informative page, but even it tells and tantalizes in ways the page 69 passage does not. We know instantly that our main character is grappling with family secrets and generational trauma, with the silencing of women and with hereditary magic. We even get a glimpse of where the title of the book came from.

Visit Ava Morgyn's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bane Witch.

Q&A with Ava Morgyn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Best Little Motel in Texas"

Sonia Hartl (AKA Lyla Lane) is the author of YA, romance, and cozy mysteries. Her books have received starred reviews from BookPage and Booklist, and earned nominations for the Georgia Peach Book Award, YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, and ALA’s Rainbow Booklist, and was named an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Young Adult. When she’s not writing she enjoys board games with her family, attempting to keep her garden alive, or looking up craft projects she’ll never get around to completing on Pinterest.

Hartl/Lane applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Best Little Motel in Texas, and reported the following:

Page 69 features Cordelia and the chicks trying to come up with a list of suspects for the murder of the local pastor and debating what makes someone a suspect. Cordelia thinks the pastor’s wife is guilty of poisoning him, while my the chicks think it’s the local land developer, but mostly because they can’t stand her.

The Page 69 Test works well for my book because it showcases the main characters just starting the investigation. They’re already putting together a list of both suspects and people they don’t like, and the way they chime in on individuals gives a good sense of their history, personalities, and their relationship with people in town. It’s a nice blend of both plot and character development.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but I drop a pretty significant clue on this page that doesn’t feel like a clue at all and is only mentioned in passing, but becomes Very Significant later on. Part of the fun of writing a mystery is leaving little breadcrumbs for the readers to pick up on, so it’s funny that I was asked to do this test and the page number given happened to have a great deal of relevancy to it.

Visit Lyla Lane's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Best Little Motel in Texas.

Q&A with Lyla Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Island of Ghosts and Dreams"

Christopher Cosmos was raised in the Midwest and attended the University of Michigan as the recipient of a Chick Evans Scholarship. In addition to being a bestselling author, he is also a screenwriter and has had his work featured in the annual Black List of best Hollywood screenplays of the year. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Cosmos applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Island of Ghosts and Dreams, and shared the following:

Page 69 of Island of Ghosts and Dreams features the main character, Maria, talking with her best friend as they sit in her apartment and look out at the iconic Chania Harbor, discussing both the activity that's happening there in the harbor (the British and remaining Greeks getting ready for a potential invasion of their island) as well as the British soldier that Maria has found, nursed back to health, then returned to the British Army.

This passage is a great representation of the novel visually, as it's the stunning harbor of Chania which the characters are looking out at from an amazing vantage that was one of the inspirations for this novel. The harbor is also actually even featured on the cover!

It's also a good representation of the story as a whole, as Maria's life soon becomes defined by the German invasion of her island, and the help she receives from this particular British soldier she saved and which becomes essential to both her and her family.

If you have a chance to check out Island of Ghosts and Dreams, I so very much hope you enjoy! I'm a Greek-American writer and moved to Chania while I researched and wrote this story, sitting in an apartment looking out over the harbor each morning and day, just like Maria does on page 69.

Visit Christopher Cosmos's website and follow him on Instagram.

The Page 69 Test: Once We Were Here.

Q&A with Christopher Cosmos.

The Page 69 Test: Young Conquerors.

--Marshal Zeringue