"The Perfect Marriage"

Adam Mitzner is the acclaimed Amazon Charts bestselling author of Dead Certain, Never Goodbye, and The Best Friend in the Broden Legal series as well as the stand-alone thrillers A Matter of Will, A Conflict of Interest, A Case of Redemption, Losing Faith, and The Girl from Home. A practicing attorney in a Manhattan law firm, Mitzner and his family live in New York City.

Mitzner applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Perfect Marriage, and reported the following:

Without spoilers, page 69 encapsulates some of the important intrigue The Perfect Marriage.

The page is split into two scenes.

The first is the tail-end of a discussion between the two main characters – James and Jessica Sommers – regarding the well-being of their son and a financial crisis they’re facing. These two issues are at the center of the book and propel much of the action to follow, as well as the twists and turns at the end.

The second part of the page concerns a twist in which two characters we’ve seen a lot of previously turn out to have a relationship that had not yet been disclosed.

I would not want a reader to turn to page 69 at the beginning, because it reveals too much, but after they’ve read the book, I welcome them to return to that page because a lot of what happens throughout its 300-odd pages is right there on page 69.

Learn more about the book and author at Adam Mitzner's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Conflict of Interest.

The Page 69 Test: A Case of Redemption.

The Page 69 Test: Losing Faith.

The Page 69 Test: A Matter of Will.

My Book, The Movie: The Perfect Marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Hiding Place"

Paula Munier is the USA Today bestselling author of the Mercy and Elvis mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search was inspired by the real-life rescue of a little boy with autism who got lost in the woods.

Munier credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs Bear, Bliss, and Blondie—a Malinois mix as loyal and smart as Elvis—and a lifelong passion for crime fiction as her series’ major influences.

She’s also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Fixing Freddie and Happier Every Day.

Munier lives in New Hampshire with her family, the dogs, and a torbie tabby named Ursula.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new Mercy and Elvis mystery, The Hiding Place, and reported the following:

From page 69:

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Patience had one of those motion cameras on the porch. So that she could see the people who left animals on her doorstep.”

“I thought it was anonymous,” said Troy. “I thought that was the whole point of the rescue drop-off station.”

“It was,” said Mercy. “It is. But in case anything goes wrong, she needs to be able to contact them. Like if the animals turn out to have rabies or some other communicable disease.”

“Does that ever happen?” asked Ed.

“I don’t know. But that’s not the point. The point is, we should have film of whoever left those kittens on the porch.”

“And whoever left the bomb.”

Don't panic. No kittens--or any other animal--were harmed during the course of this story. But on page 69 we see our heroine Mercy Carr, her cousin Ed, and game warden Troy Warner examining a crime scene, which just happens to be the porch of the Victorian house where Mercy's grandmother Patience lives. The man who murdered Mercy's grandfather has escaped from prison, and this bombing may confirm that he's out for revenge--and that the target of his revenge may be Patience.

Her grandmother is the one person Mercy most relies upon for love and understanding—the rock who never fails her. The thought of losing her is unbearable, and she’ll do anything to keep her safe. In The Hiding Place, Mercy must dig deeply into the past to reveal the dark secrets that could destroy her grandmother and their family—or save them all. The porch bombing is just the first in a series of threats that Mercy and her canine companion Elvis must face while they search for the truth—and take down the killer.

Visit Paula Munier's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Paula Munier & Bear.

The Page 69 Test: A Borrowing of Bones.

The Page 69 Test: Blind Search.

My Book, The Movie: The Hiding Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Red Widow"

Author Alma Katsu writes:

Lyndsey Duncan is a case officer at CIA tasked with finding the mole who is handing over the Agency’s best assets to Russia. Theresa Warner is the Red Widow, wife of a CIA officer who died during an operation inside Russia. Both were once rising stars at Langley but separate events have thrown their careers and their lives for a loop. And now, the two officers become entwined over the mole hunt, ultimately causing both women to question what it means to work at CIA, what you owe to your country, and what you owe to yourself.

In some ways, Red Widow is a little unconventional for a spy novel. It’s meant to appeal to viewers of shows like The Americans and Homeland more so than maybe James Bond and Jason Bourne.

Katsu is best known for her award-winning historical horror and fantasy novels, but retirement from a 30+ career in intelligence has freed her up to write what she knows best: spy novels.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Red Widow and reported the following:

Page 69 opens on a video teleconference between Langley and Moscow station, where Eric Newman, chief of Russia Division, is giving Hank Bremer, Moscow station chief, bad news. Lyndsey Duncan, who is in charge of the hunt for the mole, sits in:

Popov and Kulakov killed, Nesterov missing. The grim truth settles over the four of them. The evidence seems undeniable: Moscow is rolling up CIA’s assets.

Eric clears his throat. The corners of his mouth twitch. What he’s about to say next pains him. “Hank, I want you to stand down all operations for the time being.” It’s the same advice Lyndsey gave him, only now he’s ready to act on it.

Bremer’s face goes red, like his shirt collar has suddenly gone too tight. “You can’t do that. We have things in the works—”

“It doesn’t matter, Hank. You know that. Shut it down, all of it. Tell your people”—the assets, Eric means, their Russian spies—“to lie low until we get things under control. We can’t afford to lose anyone else right now.”

Bremer is clearly upset but he knows not to say anything more. Instead, he strikes the table with a closed fist.

“I know you don’t like it, Hank, but we have to think of our people.” Eric’s tone is more conciliatory but it’s too late. Station Chiefs don’t like to have their authority questioned in front of subordinates. He should’ve helped Hank come to this conclusion himself. “We’ll figure out what’s going on and stop it.”

Page 69 thrusts you into what it’s like on the job—there are many, many meetings to make sure nothing is being overlooked, because the spy business is complex and fraught with peril, obviously—but only a taste of what the whole book is about, I’m afraid. It’s very work-oriented and crackles with the difficulties of managing and juggling work relationships, but you don’t get to see the interaction between the protagonist, Lyndsey Duncan, and the titular character, Theresa Warner.

Visit Alma Katsu's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Floodpath"

Emily B. Martin splits her time between working as a park ranger and an author/illustrator, resulting in her characteristic eco-fantasy adventures. An avid hiker and explorer, her experiences as a ranger help inform the characters and worlds she creates on paper.

When not patrolling places like Yellowstone, the Great Smoky Mountains, or Philmont Scout Ranch, she lives in South Carolina with her husband, Will, and two daughters, Lucy and Amelia.

Martin applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel Floodpath, and reported the following:

The Page 69 Test opens a tiny but dead-on window into Floodpath. It’s the very end of a chapter in which Lark, the main protagonist, has been running away in every sense of the word. Once a much-feared desert outlaw, she’s uncovered truths about herself that redefine everything she is and could become, and up to this point in the book, she’s been emotionally, mentally, and physically fleeing from them. By the end of this chapter, on page 69, she’s out of time, and all the things she’s been running from have caught up to her. She collapses and loses consciousness. Narrating this, she ends the chapter with, “I tilt and disappear.”

This is such a great glimpse of Floodpath because the whole book is about losing and rebuilding identity. All three protagonists—Lark, Veran, and Tamsin—have gone through major identity crises in book 1. In the sequel, I wanted essentially to break them all down, strip away everything they thought they were, leave them to flounder for a few beats, and then watch them build themselves back up into something stronger, something truer. Lark is at this breaking point on page 69. Up until then, she’s been denying the things she’s found out about her past. She refuses to believe it’s true and gets angry when Veran tries to discuss it. After this page, when she’s dragged back to consciousness, she begins to give in, just a tiny bit. She starts to prod this new identity, examine it, try it on for size. And while she still has a long road to travel before she accepts it, this page is where that turning point begins.

In short, it’s the moment she stops running from something and starts creeping toward something.

Visit Emily B. Martin's website and check out her six stunning eco-fantasies for nature lovers.

The Page 69 Test: Sunshield.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Vietri Project"

Nicola DeRobertis-Theye was an Emerging Writing Fellow at the New York Center for Fiction, and her work has been published in Agni, Electric Literature, and LitHub. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she was the fiction editor of its literary magazine Ecotone. She is a native of Oakland, CA and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

DeRobertis-Theye applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Vietri Project, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I realized I didn’t need to go so far as to look up a utility account, really I could check any piece of mail. I tried to remember the dim orange-lit lobby of the apartment building, attempting to summon the memory of a mailbox. I decided that if I was willing to go as far as requesting a complete stranger’s birth certificate, if I had possibly stolen and kept in my possession a rare and not unpolitical book from someone named Chiara, then it seemed arbitrary to draw the line at trying to check Vietri’s mail. At least, I thought, I should return to the apartment, see if the mailbox was easily accessible, if so, peek at the names, put everything back in its place. A car was exiting the driveway as I walked up the street, I’d timed my visit to the morning, hoping to catch some resident leaving for work, and I broke into a jog, slipping inside the metal gate as it rolled shut, keeping my eye on the car as it continued down the street, but it didn’t slow. I doubted they had seen me, given the angle, still, I felt a rush of anxiety, or excitement, as I ascended the stairs, gave three soft knocks on Vietri’s door, suddenly afraid of what would happen if the shrill neighbor heard me again. But no one answered, and the steady thuds of my feet moving down the stairs calmed me, by the time I’d returned to the lobby my heartbeat had slowed, my head felt clear. The postboxes were just inside the entryway, thin and metal, with a lock at the bottom so that the door opened upwards to reveal a slot. Vietri’s number, like the door buzzer outside, was missing a name card, and I slid my fingers under the lip at the

I’m impressed by how well this would work! It even opens on a complete sentence, the start of a new section. Gabriele, the narrator, is deciding how far she will go on her search to find Vietri: will she, in this instance, try to break into his mailbox? She has been unable to find him home at his apartment, and finding proof of his existence itself has proved elusive. This is a turning point in the novel, in which she decides she’s willing to take a risk in order to find him, and it leads her into all of the discoveries in the rest of the book—a story of his life that encompasses one hundred years of Italian history. It’s also a scene that shows how the book engages with mystery tropes as well.

Visit Nicola DeRobertis-Theye's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Vietri Project.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The House Uptown"

Melissa Ginsburg is the author of the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City, the poetry collection Dear Weather Ghost, and two poetry chapbooks, Arbor and Double Blind. A second poetry collection, Doll Apollo, will be published in 2022 by LSU Press, and the poetry chapbook Apollo is forthcoming in June from Condensery Press. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Fence, Southwest Review, and other magazines. Originally from Houston, Texas, Ginsburg studied poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Mississippi. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with two dogs, eleven chickens, and the writer Chris Offutt.

Ginsburg applied the Page 69 Test to The House Uptown and reported the following:

Page 69 finds the character Lane eating a bite of omelet prepared by her married lover, Bertrand, a corrupt city councilman. She is recovering from a migraine and goes to bed, then muses about their relationship: "He risked plenty, coming to her. He trusted her, he gave her so much power. She could destroy his family and his career with a single phone call. She could probably send him to jail with what she knew. Lane wondered how often he considered that. Sometimes she thought the potential for destruction was a measure of his love."

This test is a bit misleading, because the scene is a flashback to decades before the bulk of The House Uptown takes place. Bertrand is not a major character in the book. He has been dead for two years and Lane's cognition is faltering. She gets confused about time, and slips into reveries like this one, in which memories feel utterly real and present to her. On the other hand the test kind of works, because this is a book about characters who abide by their own rules which often fly in the face of social convention, morality, and the law--Lane and Bert's affair is really the least of it! This page is also representative of the psychological intimacy of the book. We get to know the way that the main characters think, and to look at the world through their unique sets of beliefs.

Lane is a brilliant painter, obsessed with her art, in denial about the problems with her mind. Her assistant Oliver, a young gay man and former drug dealer, takes care of all the details of her life so she can focus on her paintings. He loves her and tries to do what's best for her, but his job gets increasingly complicated. When Lane's 14-year-old granddaughter Ava shows up to stay with Lane, her presence disrupts the delicate equilibrium of Lane's life. The House Uptown is a lyrical meditation on grief, art, and family connections, paced like a thriller, set in a New Orleans that tourists never see.

Visit Melissa Ginsburg's website.

Q&A with Melissa Ginsburg.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Stills"

Jess Montgomery is the author of the Kinship Historical Mysteries. Under her given name, she is a newspaper columnist, focusing on the literary life, authors and events of her native Dayton, Ohio for the Dayton Daily News. Her first novel in the Kinship Historical Mystery series garnered awards even before publication: Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts & Cultural District (MCAD) Artist Opportunity Grant (2018); Individual Excellence Award (2016) in Literary Arts from Ohio Arts Council; John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House (Columbus, Ohio) in 2014.

Montgomery applied the Page 69 Test to The Stills, the third novel in the Kinship series, and reported the following:

On page 69, Sheriff Lily Ross enters the Harkins farmhouse in a far reach of Bronwyn County, in the Appalachian hills of southeastern Ohio. The Harkins son, Zebediah may have ingested tainted alcohol. It’s 1927, a little over halfway through the United States’ experiment with Prohibition, and by this time, the federal government had started adding deadly methyl alcohol to industrial alcohol, sometimes used in brewing alcohol for human consumption. Sheriff Lily, whose character is inspired by Ohio’s true first female sheriff in the 1920s, is more worried about the boy’s well-being than the law at this point, and has arrived with the doctor.

Not only that, but the Harkins mother, Dora, is very ill with cancer. The Harkins father, Leroy, works on Lily’s small farm.

Here’s part of page 69:

Lily clears her throat. “Mr. Harkins, I can get Zebediah to the help he needs. Based on what Ruth told us, Zebediah has ingested tainted alcohol. The sooner we c-can—”

Lily stutters to a stop. Whereas at her farm Leroy often removes his hat and lowers his eyes when addressing her, now his gaze is straight and sharp as a finely honed stone arrowhead. This is his turf, his land.

“You need to pull my boy in for drinking, so be it.” As he starts to pull his wife from the cold door, his voice softens. “Come on, honey.”

Lily’s fists clench. Damn that it’s the man’s legal right to run his family as he sees fit. She relaxes her hands, tries to speak gently. “I’m not pulling him in. We just want Zebediah to be all right.”

Dora jerks away from her husband, and the look on his face is as if she has shot him through the heart. “Please, Leroy! Just let the doctor in—”

“Didn’t do nothing for you,” Leroy mutters. “Just like that fool church didn’t do nothing.”

Lily’s heart crackles, sorrowful for the man’s loss of faith. He’s already lost so much.

But not his love for his wife. As he gently turns her away from the door, Leroy says over his shoulder, “Come in then. Shut the door behind you!”

I feel this passage on page 69 actually captures a lot of the spirit of The Stills, whose plot is driven in part by both Prohibition and the church to which Leroy refers, as well as by the illnesses of Zebediah and his mother.

More importantly, it shows Lily at her best, prioritizing her concern for the people she serves, and being sensitive to the nuances that drive their lives. It also reflects the extra challenges that women face in the 1920s, even in having power in their own home. And yet, Leroy ultimately do as his wife wishes, even as he struggles with his own fears and grief.

The setting, the Appalachian area, is a character in this passage too, as it is in the whole of my novel and in my series.

Visit Jess Montgomery's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Widows.

The Page 69 Test: The Hollows.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Skyward Inn"

Aliya Whiteley is one of the most exciting talents in the UK. The author of five books of speculative fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted The Loosening Skin. Her novels have been shortlisted for many awards, including the Clarke Award, the Shirley Jackson Award and the James Tiptree Jr. Award. She lives in Sussex with her husband and teenage daughter.

Whiteley applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Skyward Inn, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I’m in the thick of it. The men ask for drinks, and I pour them; they flirt with me and I flirt back, just a little, just enough. How do I know what enough is? I’m good at this, I enjoy it: noise, business, the thunk of darts into the board like drumbeats calling me up, giving me music to which I can work. But all I can think of is the woman.

The match is over. The Away team have won and they’re lording it over the local lads, of course, but that’s the way the game is played, and everyone is cheerful. I head to the kitchen and find Isley finishing up the pork and apple pies, his shirt sleeves rolled back and his apron in place, tied in a double bow around his waist. He looks up and smiles at me as if I’m the only person he wants to see, and I remember why I asked him to come back here with me.

‘It’s ready,’ he says. ‘I’ll dish it, you carry it through.’

‘My brother found someone. The trade’s on.’ Is this really the right time? It doesn’t matter; I need to tell him.

He looks at me, a tea towel in one hand and a fish slice in the other. ‘That’s good,’ he says, cautiously.

‘It’s on for tomorrow morning. Early. Out by Wrecker’s Cave. I’ll go. Give me the stuff to trade and I’ll take it.’

Page 69 of Skyward Inn is a good taste of the first two-thirds of the book, I think. This is the Inn at work. The main character Jem is working front of house at the bar she’s opened back in her home town. She’s serving the drinks and her long-term partner Isley is out back cooking the food. The extract gives us the sense of her enjoyment of the job, and the balancing act it requires to keep everyone happy.

Maybe some readers would think this was set in the past. I doubt many would place it in the near future, or realise that Isley is, in fact, an alien from a planet Earth has invaded. Things are not as they seem, but that’s a key element of the book.

Then there’s the undercurrent of tension. Jem tells us her mind is elsewhere, and the drumbeats of the darts hitting the board builds a driving rhythm. I think you could read this page and get the feeling that something threatening is building.

It wouldn’t be possible from this to get a sense of what happens in the final third of the book, which is meant to be a bit of a surprise. I’d say it does give a sense of where the fracture points in the story will be – Jem and Isley’s relationship, and the intrusion of ‘the woman’. The desire to be together, part of a team. And the need to be alone, sometimes, too.

Even so, the book does head off in a different direction, but I’d say in this case page 69 certainly gives you clues to what terrain lies ahead, if not a roadmap.

Visit Aliya Whiteley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Death Waits in the Dark"

Mark Edward Langley was instilled with a love for the American West by his father at a young age. After visiting it throughout adulthood, his connection to the land became irrevocable. After spending almost thirty years working for someone else, he retired and began to focus on writing.

Langley applied the Page 69 Test to his latest Arthur Nakai mystery, Death Waits in the Dark, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Death Waits in the Dark, we find my Navajo protagonist Arthur Nakai heading toward what he hopes will be a fruitful—even though unexpected--meeting with the mother of one of two missing girls who may have seen who killed the two sons of Arthur’s first love.

I believe if a reader opens Death Waits in the Dark to page 69, they wouldn’t get a good grasp of the storyline. Truth be told, I scanned page 69 in handful of best-selling authors books I have in my collection and it was about 50/50 that any of them had anything you would say to be tantalizing enough to give a reader a good idea of the work as a whole, so personally I don’t think that is a good way for someone to choose to purchase a novel from any author.

Death Waits in the Dark finds Arthur Nakai, a former Marine with ten years experience outside the wall in Afghanistan and twelve years tracking illegal drugs and human traffickers dragging kids and young girls across the border and selling them into worlds that shouldn’t be allowed to exist. While Arthur is attending the wake of a soldier that was under his command—the sixth to take his own life—he receives a call from Margaret Tabaaha, the first girl that taught him about love. Her two sons had been murdered, and she pleads for Arthur to do what the police can’t. Arthur’s journey leads him into the world of oil and gas exploration in New Mexico—the Land of Extraction. But when Arthur learns who the killer may be, he struggles with disbelief. Because if the police are right, the decision he will be forced to make may be something he can't live with.

Visit Mark Edward Langley's website.

My Book, The Movie: Death Waits in the Dark.

Coffee with a Canine: Mark Edward Langley & Lady Cora.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fatal Intent"

Tammy Euliano is a practicing anesthesiologist and tenured professor of anesthesiology at the University of Florida. In addition to a prolific list of academic publications, YouTube teaching videos, and numerous teaching awards, she has also written award-winning short fiction.

Euliano applied the Page 69 Test to Fatal Intent, her debut novel, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Fatal Intent, my protagonist, Dr. Kate Downey is about to confront a new and unpleasant surgeon named Charles Ricken. First, she does a little online research and finds an obituary for Ricken’s father, a “well-respected surgeon and philanthropist” in Miami. A few clicks later, she learns that the older brother died four months later. “So Ricken was a middle-aged orphan with no family of his own.” Before she left her office to find Ricken, she spoke to the photo of her comatose husband, “Wish me luck.”

So what do readers glean from this single page? They get a hint of Kate—she does her research, she prefers to avoid confrontation but will stand up for what’s right, she loves her husband and is nowhere near ready to accept the inevitable. They also learn of conflict between the protagonist and the surly surgeon (same root word? You be the judge). This friction persists for much of the book, and is one more stressor on Kate’s already dreadful situation. Her one saving grace is her Great Aunt Irm’s reassuring presence a few pages later. Oh, and her black Lab, Shadow.

All in all, page 69 provides browsers an important, if necessarily incomplete, view of Kate and another important player in the novel. With the characterization that happens to fall on that page, they catch a glimpse of some of the ongoing conflict and the strength of the protagonist through her heartache. I hope that small taste would leave browsers wanting more, and wondering what the @#$% was going on. Should they choose to continue reading, they’ll be immersed in the operating theaters of a large teaching hospital (minus the gross parts…unless you find hospital politics gross, which I kinda do). They’ll hopefully root for Kate to solve the mysterious deaths of her patients while dealing with false accusations, an imperious chief of staff, her insolent brother-in-law, and unexpected dangers lurking around every corner…with the occasional respite from Aunt Irm’s confused English idioms and the simulator engineer’s unique evaluation of Kate’s medical students. One of whom he considers “a box of extra stupid rocks.”

I hope a Page 69 Browser will want to know who lives…and who dies…and who is responsible in the end (Page 311, by the way).

Visit Tammy Euliano's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"While Paris Slept"

Ruth Druart grew up on the Isle of Wight, leaving at eighteen to study psychology. In 1993 she moved to Paris, the city that inspired her to write While Paris Slept. There she pursued a career in international education and raised three sons with her French husband. She recently left her teaching position, so she can write full time while running her writing group in Paris.

Druart applied the Page 69 Test to While Paris Slept and reported the following:

Page 69 is about collaboration during the occupation of Paris. Charlotte, aged 18, is working in German hospital, and her friends are concerned that people may think she is collaborating with the Nazis.

If a browsing potential reader started with this page, they would get a good idea of the setting and tone of the book. The conversation the young women are having about Nazism and collaboration is designed to make the reader question how ordinary people would have coped under an enemy occupation. Some people would have resisted at all costs, even prepared to sacrifice their own lives for their moral conscience - the true heroes. Others would have seen what could be in it for them - the collabos. But I imagined that the vast majority of people were just trying to survive and protect their families, and so compromises were made. And this is how Charlotte finds herself working as a nursing assistant in a German hospital. It is not an 'action' chapter and therefore doesn't show the tension that runs through the novel, of which there is plenty!

Also, collaboration is one of the many themes weaving through While Paris Slept, but not the main theme, which is about parental love, and the lengths one mother will go to in order to protect her child.

Visit Ruth Druart's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Starfish"

Lisa Fipps is a graduate of Ball State University, award-winning former journalist, current director of marketing for a public library (where she won the Sara Laughlin marketing award), and an author of middle-grade books. Starfish is her debut novel. She’s working on her next novel and several others. She currently lives in Indiana and lived in Texas.

Fipps applied the Page 69 Test to Starfish and reported the following:

Starfish is a middle-grade novel in verse. Page 69 of Starfish is the poem “Big Ol’ Fat Thing.” The protagonist, Ellie, has just told her therapist, Dr. Wood, about something deeply hurtful that Ellie’s mother had said.

A reader opening Starfish and flipping through to page 69 would get a very good idea of the magnitude of the bullying that Ellie endures for being fat, especially by her mother, who’s her biggest bully. Starfish isn’t just about the bullying, though; it’s about Ellie’s journey from letting others’ words and actions make her feel small to boldly taking up her space in the world. So, a reader wouldn’t get that part of the story from reading page 69.

The poems involving “big ol’ fat thing” are the most powerful examples of how one word can form the basis of a child’s self-image and self-worth and have a far-reaching, lasting, negative impact. These poems are some of the most painful for readers to read. They were also some of the most painful for me to write.

Visit Lisa Fipps's website.

My Book, The Movie: Starfish by Lisa Fipps.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Rose Code"

Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of southern California, she attended Boston University where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Classical Voice. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with The Alice Network, The Huntress, and The Rose Code. All have been translated into multiple languages. Quinn and her husband now live in San Diego with three rescue dogs.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Rose Code and reported the following:

If you were to flip to page 69 of my latest release, historical novel The Rose Code, you'd like be every bit as confused as my heroine finds herself:

If Bletchley Park had a motto, Mab thought, it would be “You dinnae need to know.”

“Are the other huts set up like this one?” Mab asked as she was whisked through the central corridor of Hut 6.

“You dinnae need to know,” said her new supervisor, a middle-aged woman with a crisp Scottish voice. “You're assigned to the Decoding Room...”

That's Mab's introduction to the top-secret world of Bletchley Park, a secluded country house in the middle of nowhere in Buckinghamshire where the best and brightest minds in Britain have been recruited to break the supposedly-unbreakable Axis military codes. Mab is a London shop-girl, sharp as a tack and just come to the Park clutching her secretarial degree and her wish to serve her country, and as she's whisked off to Hut 6, she's less introduced to her work than thrown into the deep end of it. And this scene on page 69 is a good introduction for the reader too—because the hush-hush air that shrouds Bletchley Park's work is the linchpin of The Rose Code, and “you dinnae need to know” will be both the savior and the bane of the characters' existence.

Mab is put to work as a decoder, and her oath of secrecy is so critical she's not allowed to tell her family, her friends, or even her roommates (who also work at Bletchley) what she does there. All the codebreakers work under the same oath, and they all take it seriously...so what happens when they find out someone's been talking, and Britain's codebreaking hub has a traitor in the midst?

Read The Rose Code to find out!

Learn more about the book and author at Kate Quinn's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kate Quinn and Caesar.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Forget Me Not"

Born and raised in upstate New York, Alexandra Oliva is the author of The Last One. She has a BA in history from Yale University and an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, dog, and young son.

Oliva applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Forget Me Not, and reported the following:

Page 69 starts with the main character, Linda, opening the door of her apartment and retrieving a box someone has left in the hallway. Inside the box are cookies, a wrapped gift, and a note. It’s essentially an apology/peace offering from her neighbor, Anvi. (There was a pretty intense scene a few pages earlier; secrets were revealed, and it didn’t go well.) Linda then puts the box aside and checks Anvi’s social media profile to see if the gift-giving is sincere or performative. It appears to be sincere. Next, Linda searches for #clonegirl, a hashtag that went viral years ago and indicates—inaccurately—Linda herself. She looks at an old picture of herself as a feral young girl who’d just escaped from the isolated, walled-off property where she’d essentially raised herself, and thinks about how unprepared that girl was for everything that would happen in the years following her escape. She thinks about how right that girl was to be afraid.

I think readers opening to page 69 of Forget Me Not would get a sense of some of the primary themes of the novel—Linda’s isolation and anxiety, a taste of the strangeness of her background—but not necessarily of the novel’s pacing. There was a series of reveals a few pages earlier, including a high-emotion scene that is one of my favorite parts of the whole book. Now, around page 69, the story is taking a breath to recover and ground itself before everything really gets kicked into high gear. It’s an important moment and in the flow of the novel it accomplishes a lot, but I could see how a reader who opened up to just that page might think the plot is less exciting than it actually is.

So, as far as the page 69 test is concerned, it’s a close call, but ultimately I think it works. It just might work better for some readers than others. The page is a little slower than most of the rest of the book, but the eeriness of Linda evaluating the photo of herself as a child, recognizing from a distance how monstrous that feral girl must have seemed to the people who found her—but also remembering how it felt to be that girl, how comfortable she’d been as a wild, dirty thing—captures the suspense and tension at the heart of the story.

Visit Alexandra Oliva's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Last One.

Coffee with a Canine: Alexandra Oliva & Codex.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Rebel Nun"

Marj Charlier began her writing career at daily and mid-size newspapers before joining the Wall Street Journal as a staff reporter. After twenty years in journalism, she pursued her MBA and began a second career in corporate finance. While she has published ten novels, The Rebel Nun is her first historical novel.

Charlier applied the Page 69 Test to The Rebel Nun and reported the following:

From page 69:

Marian threw back her head and laughed with an abandon I had never seen from anyone in the cloister, even during the happy days of Radegund’s tenure. I smiled even as I shushed her.

“Lebover will prohibit you from working in here if she hears you,” I whispered. “She hates joy.”

“Do you think God hates joy?” Marian asked, straightening out the laughter in her face and lowering her voice.

I smiled. “I am certain He does not.”

+ 

I wish that short-lived improvement in the goodwill and cheer at our monastery had made me optimistic about the future—my soul could have benefited from the respite—but a cynicism that colored my humors muddied even my best moods and especially my most anxious ones. I would be listening to the clever banter of my sisters, their heads bent over the stitches of their wool work, and feel a creeping gloom sneak up on me like the draft from an open door.

Maroveus avoided our monastery until a month after Marian arrived, which should have been a relief for all of us, but I never doubted he would return to refresh our misery. When he did come, early in March, blowing through the front door like a cold gale personified, he did not disappoint. He met with Lebover in the reception room, and the rest of us were ordered to stay away so that we would not hear their discussion.

Before then, Lebover could not have told him much about what was happening at the monastery, other than the fact of the arrival of Sister Marian. She was spending nearly all her time bedridden by her gout in her chamber. Near the end of his visit, Maroveus hailed Bertie to bring Marian to the reception room.

This page may not capture the entire plotline, and it may not be the most representative page in the book, but it does present a few main elements of the story. First, it shows the behaviors and attitudes of several main characters, in particular, the narrator (Clotild), Marian, Lebover, and Maroveus. It speaks to the cloud of despair that the nuns feel and their hope for more joyous days at the monastery. It tells us how worthless Lebover is and how much Maroveus craves power and creates misery. These are key themes to the plot. And by raising the question of whether God hates joy, the passage indicates this is a book about women who are seeking meaning in life—whether from religion or from a philosophy derived from personal experience.

Marian has been sent to the monastery for the remainder of her life because she violated a church council proclamation that women who were widowed by priests could not remarry. Her marriage, which had given her a new lease on life and joy, was annulled and she was condemned to the cloister. But despite that injustice, she brought her happy spirit with her. As we see throughout the novel, women are not given choices in life. Every woman in the monastery arrived not by volition, but by circumstance or coercion. This speaks to a major theme of the book: the few opportunities women in the sixth century had. They could be married and widowed (only once, if they married a priest), become a prostitute, or go to the nunnery. As our heroine seeks to gain independence and agency, she battles the church’s hegemony, misogyny, and cruelty. These aspects are all represented or hinted at in this short passage.

Visit Marj Charlier's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Rebel Nun.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All Fall Down"

James Brabazon is an author, frontline-journalist and documentary filmmaker. Based in the UK, he has travelled to over 70 countries – investigating, filming and directing in the world's most hostile environments. He is the author of the international bestseller My Friend the Mercenary, a memoir recounting his experiences of the Liberian civil war and the Equatorial Guinea coup plot; and the Max McLean series of spy thrillers The Break Line and Arkhangel (UK) / All Fall Down (USA).

Brabazon applied the Page 69 Test to Arkhangel and reported the following:

On page 69, Max McLean, the Irish spy-assassin protagonist in All Fall Down, has woken up injured in hospital in England, after escaping his captors at sea. As he pieces the details of what has happened to him back together, the realisation dawns that whoever is hunting him is at most a day behind…

I opened All Fall Down to page 69 in trepidation… but as a window on to the propulsive narrative that keeps Max Mclean on his toes and on the move, it works really well. Max and the reader are both in the same boat – neither knowing how is after Max, or why… or how, indeed, Max will manage to escape this time, or to where. Escape. Evasion. Menace. These are the hallmarks of the entire book – and although the whys and wherefores become more nuanced and sophisticated as the plot develops, that raw sense of fight or flight pervades the entire text right until the very end!

One of the core elements of All Fall Down is what happens when the hunter becomes the hunted. Max McLean belongs to an ultra-secret black ops unit called the UKN – an off-the-books outfit that carries out assassinations and other deniable operations for the British Government. But after a routine hit on a terrorist goes disastrously wrong, Max finds himself on the wrong end of a state-sponsored manhunt. As he goes to ground, literally underground at times, he’s forced to face uncomfortable truths about his deep past, his real motivations, and his loyalty to a cause and a country that seem to have turned against him. What you read on page 69 is the beginning of the full horror of what Max is up against stating to take shape. Wounded, exhausted, confused – does Max have the reserves it will take to outrun the Angel of Death?

Visit James Brabazon's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Break Line.

My Book, The Movie: The Break Line.

My Book, The Movie: All Fall Down.

--Marshal Zeringue