"Book of Forbidden Words"

Louise Fein is the author of Daughter of the Reich, which has been published in thirteen territories, the international bestseller The Hidden Child, and The London Bookshop Affair. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from St Mary’s University. She lives in Surrey, UK, with her family.

Fein applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Book of Forbidden Words, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Book of Forbidden Words opens with the musings of Lysbette Angiers, a young girl living in the household of Sir Thomas More in London in the 1520’s.

How would life be in a land where there was no thieving because nobody needed to?” Lysbette thinks. “Where there was enough time for leisure besides work, and where learning and reading was a pleasure enjoyed by all, boys and girls… And like her nobody had a penny to their name but they, unlike her, didn’t care because it was a place where gold and silver, where money itself had no value at all… In Utopia, nobody cared what religion you had. You could believe in God and the immortal soul of man, or the sun or moon or anything else, and nobody punished you for it…

The subject matter of page 69 of Book of Forbidden Words is uncannily pertinent to the novel. Lysbette, one of the three protagonists of the novel, has just read a little book that was written a few years previously by Sir Thomas More, her guardian, entitled Utopia. The book has a profound effect on young Lysbette and comes to influence her greatly in later life. The theme of Utopia and Utopian ideals run through Book of Forbidden Words and are central to the story of what happens in both timelines, namely the turbulent religious wars of the 1500’s and the oppressive suspicions of 1950’s McCarthy era America, and the uncanny echoes between the two eras.

Visit Louise Fein's website.

Q&A with Louise Fein.

Writers Read: Louise Fein.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Vermilion Sea"

Megan Chance is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of more than twenty novels, including Glamorous Notions, A Dangerous Education, A Splendid Ruin, Bone River, and An Inconvenient Wife. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.

Chance applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Vermilion Sea, and shared the following:

From page 69:

They assembled after dinner in the main saloon. Victorine asked Maud to light candles, which glowed on the hutch and the end tables. Maud and Pollan had moved what furniture wasn’t fastened down into a makeshift circle and drawn the curtains. The room, which Billie had found melancholy before, was even more so now. It might have been romantic with the candles, but instead it felt crowded, gloomy, and claustrophobic.

The wind had come up; the Eurybia rocked in the chop, making the pictures hung on cords and the drapes in the saloon swing in a nauseating way. Victorine ordered them all to their places. James and Oliver in the armchairs. Victorine in a dining room chair brought in specially so she could sit in the middle of the circle. Roland and Billie were seated together on the settee. Once they were all assembled, Victorine said, “Now we must all hold hands. No one can break the circle once it begins, do you understand?”

“I’ve done this a hundred times, darling,” James drawled.

“The instructions are for the others,” she said. “Maud, Pollan, keep an eye on the candles, please. I don’t want them rolling and catching something on fire.”

The two servants stood against the doorway to the dining room, trying to keep their balance against the jamb as the ship pitched. Victorine seemed to vibrate with enthusiasm. “Oh, I know he’s here—I think I can already feel him. Quickly now! Everyone—everyone take hands!”

Page 69 of The Vermilion Sea is the point where the creepiness that has to this point only been alluded to really begins. It is where Victorine Coustan Holloway, the wife of the owner of the Eurybia, has decided to hold a séance to contact her brother’s spirit. Her beloved brother committed suicide on the ship two years prior and she yearns to know the reasons why. From this point, the book moves from a pretty standard historical fiction tale about collecting marine specimens for the San Diego zoo into something more ominous and threatening.

So I would say that page 69 is pretty indicative of what the book really is. While it doesn’t show the extent of the horror that ensues, it is the starting point. In that way, it gives the reader a good idea of the overall mood of the book.

Visit Megan Chance's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Splendid Ruin.

The Page 69 Test: A Splendid Ruin.

Q&A with Megan Chance.

The Page 69 Test: A Dangerous Education.

My Book, The Movie: A Dangerous Education.

Writers Read: Megan Chance (February 2023).

Writers Read: Megan Chance (January 2025).

My Book, The Movie: Glamorous Notions.

The Page 69 Test: Glamorous Notions.

My Book, The Movie: The Vermilion Sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Alphabet Sleuths"

Bestselling, award-winning author Laura Jensen Walker is the Agatha and Lefty-nominated author of more than 20 books including Murder Most Sweet, Hope, Faith & a Corpse, and Death of a Flying Nightingale.

A rabid Anglophile since being stationed at an RAF base with the USAF in her twenties, Walker lives in Northern California with her Renaissance-man husband and two rescue terriers, where she drinks tea and dreams of England.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Alphabet Sleuths, with the following results:

From page 69:

He held up a six-pack. “I got the beer, and Tony’s bringin’ the subs.”

“Don’t let us keep you.” Claire climbed into the SUV.

“Sorry, ladies,” Vince said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.” He noticed the suitcases. “Goin’ on a trip, huh?”

“That’s right.” Barbara opened the door behind the driver’s seat and hopped in. “Girls trip to Vegas.”

Putting on her seatbelt, Atsuko started the SUV. “Let’s get this show on the road, ladies. My slots are calling.” She backed out of the parking space, leaving Lenny and Vince in the dust as Barbara waved goodbye.

* * *
“Uh-oh,” Barbara said an hour later from the back seat. “We’ve got trouble.”

“What is it?” Claire asked.

Barbara held up her phone, and Claire saw the face of the man she’d killed. A face she’d never forget. Beneath the dead man’s photo in the online edition of the Santa Bonita Herald, the headline read “Have You Seen This Man?”

“Want to share with the class?” Atsuko turned down the Golden Oldies station.

Barbara read aloud. “Benny Popov, longtime resident of Santa Bonita, recently released from prison, is missing. Mr. Popov’s parole officer said he failed to check in, and his employer, local businessman Dmitri Glazatovsky, said Benny never reported to work, to the job waiting for him upon his release. A rental car registered in Mr. Popov’s name was found in the parking lot of the Muddy Pig Saloon.”

Barbara continued reading. “Jake Hetland, longtime owner of the Muddy Pig, said he has not seen Mr. Popov since before he went to prison, years ago. I’m surprised Benny didn’t come straight here once he was released,’ Hetland said in an interview. ‘He always said the first thing he’d do when he got back here was come to the Pig for a Jack and Coke. I told him the drink would be on the house, but he hasn’t collected it yet. Benny, if you’re reading this, your Jack and Coke is waiting for you,’ Hetland said.”

The Page 69 Test gives a good idea overall of The Alphabet Sleuths since it furthers the critical plot we see in the first chapter where Claire accidentally kills a bad guy who’s in the process of strangling her friend, Daphne. She and her senior gal pals then have to dispose of the body, which becomes quite a comedy of errors.

On page 69, three of the self-proclaimed Alphabet Girls; Atsuko, Barbara, and Claire, are on their way to Nevada, to fill in retired cop Daphne (who’s left town to protect her friends) on the latest, and bring her back. What this page doesn’t reveal is the critical plot point of Claire finding another dead body—a friend and fellow resident who’s been brutally murdered—within their California retirement community. The friends then put on their sleuthing hats to solve the mystery of who killed the resident curmudgeon, despite the police warning them off, questioning suspects, discovering shocking secrets, and putting themselves at risk.

Visit Laura Jensen Walker's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Alphabet Sleuths.

Q&A with Laura Jensen Walker.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Bone Queen"

Will Shindler has spent most of his career working as a broadcast journalist for the BBC. He also spent nearly a decade working on a number of British television dramas, working for both the BBC Drama Series Department, and Talkback Thames Television as a writer and script editor. He has been writing novels since 2020, including the five-book critically acclaimed DI Alex Finn series: The Burning Men, The Killing Choice, The Hunting Ground, The Blood Line, and The Cold Case. He currently combines reading news bulletins for BBC Radio London with his novel writing and has previously worked as a presenter for ITV West, a reporter for BBC Radio Five Live, and as one of the stadium presenters at the 2012 London Olympics. He lives in London.

Shindler applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Bone Queen, and reported the following:

I’m not going to lie, I found the premise of this absolutely fascinating. With some trepidation, I turned to page 69 of my novel The Bone Queen and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. My honest answer, after reading it, is yes: this page does give an accurate sense of the book as a whole.

By page 69, my protagonist Jenna has travelled to Athelsea (a fictional island off the coast of England) in search of her missing teenage daughter, Chloe. Jenna has already learned that Chloe may have become obsessed with a local legend: an ancient supernatural figure known as the Bone Queen.

Page 69 is where several crucial ideas converge. Chloe is shown scouring the internet for information about the Bone Queen, uncovering fragments of folklore and accounts of other teenagers - girls very much like herself - who appear to have been influenced by the same legend. One post in particular explains the myth:

One long post written by someone in Toronto claimed she was a spirit of retribution, punishing children for the sins of their parents.

From there, through Chloe’s perspective, we learn that Jenna is a recovering alcoholic - an important plot and character point of the novel - and that during her worst periods of drinking she was not always the mother she wanted to be. There’s one passage in particular that encapsulates her:

Later Jenna would be mortified, ashamed of herself, and would apologize profusely. In many ways she’d never stopped apologizing.

Taken together, the page establishes two ideas that sit at the core of the book: the Bone Queen as a figure who punishes children for parental wrongdoing, and Jenna as someone haunted by the fear that she may deserve that judgment.

From a writer’s point of view, that’s the ideal sweet spot of exposition and emotional truth. So, from this mildly surprised - and genuinely delighted - author’s perspective, page 69 successfully passes the test!

Follow Will Shindler on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

My Book, The Movie: The Bone Queen.

Q&A with Will Shindler.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Study in Secrets"

Jeffrey Siger is an American living on the Aegean Greek island of Mykonos. A former Wall Street lawyer, he gave up his career as a name partner in his own New York City law firm to write the international bestselling, award-recognized Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series of mystery thrillers telling more than just a fast-paced story.

Siger applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Study in Secrets, and shared the following:

For more than 15 years, virtually every time I released a new book in my Greece-based Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series I’d take The Page 69 Test. And each time I’d be amazed at what the Test revealed. This year is different in many ways, but not in the uncanny revelations of the Test.

Now I’m launching A Study in Secrets as the debut novel in my brand-new “The Redacted Man” series. It’s set not in Greece, but in New York City, and instead of a gregarious, happily married Chief Inspector serving as my protagonist, I’m introducing a Sherlock Holmes-worthy amateur sleuth possessing a complicated George Smiley retired-secret-agent past. Practically a recluse and partially handicapped, Michael A spends his days imagining the lives of the anonymous people he watches in the park beneath the windows of his elegant New York City townhouse–number 221–his every need tended to by his housekeeper, Mrs. Baker.

For decades Michael has taken great care not to get involved in the lives of those he observes until one day he realizes that a young girl he’s watched for weeks sitting alone in the park at dawn faces terrible danger. For reasons unclear even to himself, he makes an uncharacteristic decision to abandon his solitude and help her…changing everything.

Page 69 represents two major revelations for Michael: First, he learns that a colleague’s trusted employee has played a key role in a process that put the young girl’s life in danger, and second, he realizes how a pair of seeming innocents came to possess a priceless purloined treasure that could now cost them their lives.

Page 69 also mentions virtually every “good guy” character central to the story line and one very bad one…leaving many more of the latter for readers to discover. Most significant for me, page 69 captures the essence of Michael’s character––revealing his thought processes, compassion, sense of humor, and decisive toughness whenever the situation calls for it.

Thank you, Page 69 Test, for once again eliciting from me a unique perspective on my own work.

Visit Jeffrey Siger's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Mykonos.

The Page 69 Test: Prey on Patmos.

The Page 69 Test: Target Tinos.

The Page 69 Test: Mykonos After Midnight.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Twist.

Q&A with Jeffrey Siger.

The Page 69 Test: At Any Cost.

The Page 69 Test: Not Dead Yet.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Her Cold Justice"

Robert Dugoni is a critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author, reaching over 9 million readers worldwide. He is best known for his Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle. He is also the author of the Charles Jenkins espionage series, the David Sloane legal thriller series, and several stand-alone novels including The 7th Canon, Damage Control, The World Played Chess, and Her Deadly Game. His novel The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell received Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award. The Washington Post named his nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary a Best Book of the Year.

Dugoni applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Her Cold Justice, with the following results:

On page 69, Keera and her private investigator, JP Harrison are asking neighbors if they saw or heard anything on the night of two homicides. They speak to Jada Davis, who lived across the street from the young man accused, Michael Westbrook, who is JP Harrison’s nephew.

If the reader opened to this page they would know that Keera is an attorney representing the accused in a double homicide and that she is trying to find any and all witnesses who might have seen or heard anything during the night in question. It would give them a good head start on what the book is about, but not much more. I would call the test inconclusive.

The book started with the simple premise, “Who is the most powerful person in the criminal justice system?” I think the reader will be surprised by the answer. Her Cold Justice explores how far a person will go to obtain justice and what are the far-reaching consequences for all of us when constitutional rights are not respected? It’s a scary proposition for anyone who finds themselves suddenly accused of a heinous crime and looking at the possibility of life in prison. The criminal justice system is a juggernaut and sometimes it grinds up everyone and everything in its path and the only thing a defendant can cling to is his attorney.

Visit Robert Dugoni's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Bodily Harm.

My Book, The Movie: Bodily Harm.

The Page 69 Test: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: Murder One.

My Book, The Movie: The Eighth Sister.

The Page 69 Test: The Eighth Sister.

My Book, The Movie: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Agent.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Agent.

Q&A with Robert Dugoni.

The Page 69 Test: In Her Tracks.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Killing on the Hill.

My Book, The Movie: A Killing on the Hill.

The Page 69 Test: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

My Book, The Movie: Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

Writers Read: Robert Dugoni (October 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Her Cold Justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Epicenter of Forever"

Mara Williams drafted her first novel in third grade on a spiral notebook—a love story about a golden retriever and the stray dog who admired her from beyond the picket fence. Now she writes about strong, messy women finding their way in the world. Williams is the author of The Truth Is in the Detours and The Epicenter of Forever. When not writing or reading, she can be found enjoying California’s beaches, redwoods, and trails with her husband, three kids, and disobedient dog.

Williams applied the Page 69 Test to The Epicenter of Forever and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Epicenter of Forever is a pivot point in the novel. Our protagonist, Eden Hawthorne, has just reluctantly committed to spending several months with her mother in Grand Trees to nurse her back to health, and she’s adapting to the rhythms of the town that she swore she’d never return to.

The Page 69 Test works fairly well. Readers would get a good sense of the tone of the story and dynamic between the three main characters—Eden, her mother, and Caleb. The reader would see Eden and her mother’s polite, careful, and tense relationship—with some resentment simmering just beneath the surface. While Caleb is not in the scene directly, he’s mentioned several times in Eden’s interiority, revealing how quickly he’s woven his way into Eden’s psyche.

There’s a bit of foreshadowing as well, as we watch Eden’s visceral reaction to tending to her mom’s injuries. She’s determined to be a good daughter to the detriment of her own well-being. She’s burying a trauma response and ignoring her own needs in order to prove Caleb wrong. This is Eden’s harmful pattern and, ultimately, is the work she needs to do over the course of the novel: listen to her gut and acknowledge her own wants and needs.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

My Book, The Movie: The Truth Is in the Detours.

Writers Read: Mara Williams (August 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Epicenter of Forever.

Writers Read: Mara Williams.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Simone in Pieces"

Janet Burroway, the author of Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, has written eight previous novels, as well as a memoir, plays, short fiction, children’s books, and more. Recipient of the Florida Humanities Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing, she is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at Florida State University at Tallahassee.

Burroway applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Simone in Pieces, and shared the following:

The Page 69 Test works miraculously well for Simone in Pieces, showing Simone at a crucial turning point in her life, between a refugee childhood and a scholarship in New York City.

Simone Lerrante was rescued, alone, from the Belgian coast during the Nazi occupation of WWII. She was ten years old. Now she is in her early twenties, having lived through three periods with British families, and been awarded a good degree at Cambridge and a Fulbright. Page 69 is a critical hinge “piece” of the self that, because she has lost her childhood memory, she must gradually construct.

Here she is at her most confident, with perhaps a touch of hubris?—having “shed her old self like a skin. She’s her American self; optimistic, even sassy.” She has charmed her way up from steerage to Cabin Class, “exactly as she intends to do” in New York, has been invited to lunch at the purser’s table with a couple from South Dakota and a gaggle of wealthy Americans, and now she has been offered a bath in the couple’s cabin.

With a “flute’s worth of champaign and half a snifter of Remy Martin” in her “lean and solid, long, presentable body,” she finds herself deliciously adrift, “wafting in the water sloshing in the tub on the ship that wallows in the ocean that is cradled by the underwater mountains of the planet Earth, which is a bubble adrift in the solar system.”

For the moment, adrift is a delicious state. Too delicious? Can that ambitious stasis morph to “nomad,” where to be adrift becomes a permanent state and an unfulfilled way of being?

Visit Janet Burroway's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bridge of Sand.

--Marshal Zeringue

"First Do No Harm"

SJ Rozan, a native New Yorker, is the author of twenty novels and eight dozen short stories. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards for Best Novel and the Edgar for Best Short Story. She’s also the recipient of the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award and has received Life Achievement Awards from both the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Rozan applied the Page 69 Test to First Do No Harm, the newest title in the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery series, with the following results:

Page 69 of First Do No Harm is the start of Chapter 12, so it's just over half a page long; but it does give a good idea of the book. There's description:

I could see a puzzle-piece of sky squeezed between the canopy over the driveway and the high-rises across the avenue.

dialogue between my two leads, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith:

(Bill:) ...it might be a great time for us to spelunk in the east basement.

(Lydia:) Spelunk. You're a show-off, you know that?

and a new plan being made that will lead into the rest of the scene:

(Lydia:) ...You're right about the east basement, though. He pretty much told us it's got no security...

These are elements -- description, dialogue, action -- that I like to keep in balance and page 69 is a good example of how I try to do it. I use description to anchor the viewer in time and place; but while place is important to me, pure description ("There was a canopy over the driveway") is dry and tells the reader nothing about the person doing the describing. In this case "puzzle-piece" is a word Lydia might not have used if the case weren't so confusing. I always try to make an element do more than one job; for example, in this dialogue -- and I use dialogue to tell as much of the story as possible -- Bill suggests a course of action, but in a way that also shows a facet of his relationship with Lydia.

Throughout the book in different places one or another of the elements will predominate, but to the extent that I'm successful in using each element to comment on the others, the book will be textured and will move forward in ways that will both surprise readers, and keep them interested.

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.

Q&A with S. J. Rozan.

Writers Read: S.J. Rozan (February 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Family Business.

Writers Read: S. J. Rozan (November 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Mayors of New York.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Loon Point"

Carrie Classon is a performer and a nationally syndicated columnist with Andrews McMeel Universal. Born in Minnesota, she had a fourteen-year career in theater, performing in dozens of shows from Oregon to Maine. After founding and running a professional Equity theater for seven years, Classon earned her MBA and began working in international business. She also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Mexico and has written a memoir and over six hundred columns.

In her 600-word weekly column, The Postscript, Classon writes about the transformative power of optimism and how to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. She champions the idea that it's never too late to reinvent our lives in unexpected and fulfilling ways. She performs a live show based on her writing—with lots of sequins. With her husband, Peter, and former street cat Felix, Classon splits her time between St. Paul, Minnesota, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, Loon Point, and reported the following:

I would be very happy if a reader were to open to page 69. While it might not be the most defining moment of the book, it offers a great glimpse into the character of Wendell and, without Wendell, there would be no story to tell.

In the scene, Wendell is introduced to the Chickadee Cabin, a log cabin in a resort on the shore of a northern Minnesota lake. It is offered to him as a place to live after the roof of his house collapses in a late March snowstorm. Wendell is rescued, somewhat unwillingly, from his ruined home and taken to the Chickadee Cabin until a new home can be found.

Wendell surveys the neat and well-maintained cabin, decorated in a chickadee theme, and sees none of it: not the comfort of the cabin, nor the beauty of its environment, and certainly not the generosity of the people who offered him a place to live when he had nowhere to go. Wendell surveys the cabin despondently and thinks, “So. This is what it has come to.”

Wendell came into being after I read a Facebook post quoting from my weekly syndicated column, The Postscript. The post was written by someone I knew named Wally, and it was 1200 words of criticism concerning my excess of optimism—or idealism as the writer, Wally, would describe it.

He went on to say how my brand of optimism caused people to ignore or dismiss natural disasters and mass shootings and could only be maintained by people who kept themselves deliberately ignorant. He finished the piece with a touch of regret that he was unable to maintain this level of stupidity, as he was sure it would make his life more pleasant.

I was hurt, angry, and intrigued—in that order—for about 48 hours.

I was hurt because I was genuinely concerned that I was seen as someone who lacked empathy, but I concluded that a concerted effort to see the good in the world made me far more empathetic than I would otherwise be.

I was angry that Wally would say such unkind things about my character after quoting me by name.

But finally, I was intrigued by his point of view and wondered what, if anything, would cause a person who believed what Wally believed to change his mind.

And Wendell was born.

Visit Carrie Classon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Now That I Know You By Heart"

Amy Hagstrom is the author of The Wild Between Us and Smoke Season. She is a writer and editor with two decades of experience in the travel and outdoor industry, recognized as an O Magazine Insider and previous columnist and feature writer at Travel Oregon, US News, and Huff Post. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Whitworth University. A lifelong outdoors enthusiast, she served as a volunteer EMT with her local county search and rescue unit before launching her travel writing career.

After raising three children in the Pacific Northwest, Hagstrom traded the Cascade, Siskiyou, and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges for The Berkshires, making her home in Western Massachusetts with her wife.

Hagstrom applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Now That I Know You by Heart, and shared the following:

On page 69 of Now That I Know You By Heart, our protagonist, Shelby, has begun the process of restoring and rebranding her historic inn…a daunting and critical task thanks to a rumor that the inn is haunted. She’s also taken baby steps in rebranding herself, having started anew on San Juan Island after a personal tragedy and self-discovery. She returns to a local winery where she recently met an intriguing local, only to have her hopes of seeing her again dashed. And yet, the man behind the bar—her crush’s father, Dan Caster—has intel that can help her in her mission.

An excerpt from page 69:

[Dan] took the liberty of pouring Shelby a glass of the franc. “You must be new around here,” he added predictably.

Was there a script all San Juan Island residents followed when they smelled fresh meat? Shelby gave him her usual spiel about buying the inn, and then, before he could beat her to it, she heard herself say defiantly, “And yes, I already know what I’m in for.”

One eyebrow lifted. Shelby noted that Dan had Holly’s green eyes. Or rather, that Holly had Dan’s. “Ah yes. The haunted history.”

Just like last time, several additional heads turned at mention of this taboo subject of conversation, but also like before, the Caster behind the bar seemed immune to the stigma sticking to the Merrick. Suddenly, finding Dan at the winery instead of her daughter didn’t seem like quite as much of a waste of an evening.

“Do you know much about it?”

“I was working doubles here in the tasting room most of last season, while Holly bottled out back,” he said. “Had a front row seat to the stream of…enthusiasts…driving past to gawk at the Merrick. Word has it, Ezra Peterson put on quite a show.”

The Page 69 Test works pretty well for Now That I know You By Heart, because it marks the point where several formative elements of Shelby’s arc, which have been independently set up, come together on the page. Her acceptance (in herself) that she is romantically interested in the winemaker, Holly, dovetails with the professional intel she gleans from Dan about her problematic groundskeeper, Ezra. The novel has found its stride by this point, and the causal browser would be able to immediately intuit the stakes in the story.

Now That I Know You By Heart is a quieter, more melodic read than my previous novels, which could be characterized as character-driven suspenses. It’s in moments of human connection, like on page 69, that the plot is formed and the tension rises, perhaps without the reader even aware, on a conscious level. In other words, it’s the people who make this book sing, and the ‘ensemble cast’ type quality of the book is certainly in evidence in this scene.

Visit Amy Hagstrom's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Wild Between Us.

Q&A with Amy Hagstrom.

Writers Read: Amy Hagstrom.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Sea Child"

Linda Wilgus grew up in the Netherlands and lived in Italy, Belgium, and the United States before settling in England. A graduate of the University of Amsterdam, she worked as a bookseller and a knitting pattern designer before becoming a full-time writer. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines. Wilgus shares her home with her husband, three children, and their dog.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Sea Child, her debut novel, with the following results:

I don’t have my author copies of The Sea Child yet, so this is about what’s on page 69 of the US advanced reader copy. Turning to page 69 finds Isabel looking at the sea inlet by her cottage and reflecting on her yearning for the ocean:

She thinks of the villagers’ belief in the sea spirit shaped like a merman. Could it be that there are things in the ocean of which they have no knowledge? Almost as if in response, the sun appears, lifting the blue into bright iridescence as it hits the water, and the longing to get in and follow the current briefly takes her breath away.

Following this, Isabel is learning to cook her own food after being attended to by servants her whole life, and an officer of the Revenue Service, Lieutenant Sowerby, arrives at her door to warn her about smugglers.

It is amazing to me how well the Page 69 Test works for The Sea Child! Keeping in mind that page may end up at a different page number in the finished copy of the book, the reference to Isabel’s connection to the sea and her yearning for it, coupled with the mention of antagonist Sowerby as well as the mention of smugglers gives such a perfect taste of the narrative as a whole. In addition, early on in the novel, Isabel has to learn how to do many basic household tasks herself without the help of servants and this is a key experience for her in the first days and weeks after she moves back to Cornwall from London and adds to her growing sense of independence.

A big part of the plot of the book revolves around smuggling as Isabel becomes involved with the operation run by smuggling captain Jack. Lieutenant Sowerby, who is a Riding Officer of the Revenue Service out to catch smugglers plays an important role in the book as well, as he turns out far more dangerous than he initially seems to Isabel. Aside from that, Isabel’s connection to the sea drives a lot of her actions. At the start of the book she has just returned to the Cornish village in which she was found as a small child, dripping wet and unable to speak, and learns that the local population has come to believe she’s the child of a sea spirit from folklore. As she gets settled in her new home, she attempts to learn more about her mysterious origins. Without giving away too much of the plot I can say that what’s on page 69, at least in my advanced reader copy, gives a great sense of what the book is about.

Visit Linda Wilgus's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder"

Nina McConigley was born in Singapore and raised in Wyoming. Her short-story collection Cowboys and East Indians was the winner of the PEN Open Book Award and a High Plains Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, High Country News, O, Oprah Magazine, Parents, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and The Asian American Literary Review among others.

McConigley applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, and reported the following:

From page 69:

But poor Papa, poor Papa

He’s got nothing at all


And Mama eats ham, and Mama eats lamb

Mama eats bread with strawberry jam

But poor Papa, poor Papa

He eats nothing at all

Amma taught it to us one day when we had a wet spring snow that snapped the power lines in two. She made a fire and roasted hot dogs over the fire with chopsticks. Vinny Uncle was sleeping. Auntie Devi was at work. We wrapped ourselves in sleeping bags. Narayan sang the loudest of us all, his thumbs hooked under imaginary suspenders as he marched through the house. Vinny Uncle woke up and joined us. He and Amma sang loud and clear. All of us danced. And then Agatha Krishna switched to “Papa Don’t Preach.” Her hair had started to grow back and she was trying to style it like Madonna. We all laughed.

But most days, we were in a house of women. Most days we felt the air between Amma and Auntie Devi. The only songs were Agatha Krishna trying to record songs off the radio with her tape deck.

After Vinny Uncle died, we never sang like that again. Our fathers were gone—one dead, one on the rigs. Poor, poor papas.

I think if a browser opened the book to page 69 they would get a sense of the book. In that so much of the book is the day-to-day, the quotidian, at the house, Cottonwood Cross. The page opens with an old folk song, "Poor Papa," which the kids perform. It was performed by the mother in India and now in Wyoming by the girls. It harkens back to a nostalgia and an enamoring of all things Western. It also shows how the house is mostly a house of women. The men are absent or weak.

What page 69 reveals is that even with the horrors of the house, there is happiness and a kind of joy. There is a coziness of fires and hot dogs and songs. We also see the innocence of the children, and how much they are kids. And even within the scene of domestic unity, there is something underlying that is dangerous. Poor Papa is starving, and in a way, the girls are too.

Visit Nina McConigley's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Jean"

Madeleine Dunnigan is a writer and screenwriter from London. She was a Jill Davis Fellow on the MFA at New York University. While there she was awarded a GRI Fellowship in Paris.

Dunnigan applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Jean, and shared the following:

On page 69 of Jean, readers are thrust into the end of a scene in which our protagonist Jean is breaking rocks. This, we are told, is a punishment he must serve, having hit Tom, another boy in the school. Jean considers the material he is breaking: it is Wealden Clay, which dates back to the Hauterivian and Bavarian times. As he breaks rocks he thinks about this: how he is ‘literally’ cracking through time. This sparks another thought about a letter he received that morning. The postage stamp is from a week ago, which means the letter is something from the past. Thus Micky, who wrote it, has already enacted what in the letter was only a promise. He has already gone away.

Now the narrative jumps backward from 1976 to 1969 when Micky, or rather Mick Caro, a famous rock star, moves onto Jean’s street in Holland Park, London. Mick Caro’s arrival causes a buzz a half-mile radius around. Jean, who asked for Mick Caro’s latest EP for Christmas, plays it all day. Rosa, his mother, mutters that the area is going downhill now the celebrities have moved in. Then the builders arrive, whole droves of them, to begin construction on Micky’s new house and it is this that sends Rosa ‘crackers.’

The Page 69 Test makes for an interesting read of my novel… This page is split between the end of one scene and the beginning of another, leaving many questions for the reader. Who is Jean and where is he? Who is Tom? Who is Micky? Where has he left and where is he going?

A little intuition might serve her well – clearly Tom is someone Jean shouldn’t have hit, and Jean is breaking rocks as a punishment. Such punishments happen in places of authority, like schools. Jean must have strong feelings about Tom in order to hit him, she might assume. Indeed Jean is set in a hippie, rural English boarding school for boys with ‘problems’. Jean is our antisocial and violent protagonist. The novel centres around his relationship with another boy in the school, Tom, and their burgeoning romance. Although this doesn’t come through strongly on page 69, there is at least a hint that something is going on between them.

The other person mentioned on page 69 is Micky. Clearly, Micky is also someone important to Jean if he is thinking about him. The slip into backstory tells the reader that she is about to find out who exactly Micky is and why he is important to Jean.

Yet I fear that the lack of context on page 69, and the shifting between so many characters and settings might confuse the reader. At its heart Jean is a boarding school novel about a boy, Jean, who is at odds with the world around him. Tom offers him escape in the form of love; yet Jean’s complicated past (of which Micky is a part) prevents him from true intimacy. Yet on page 69 none of these things are obvious.

In short, there are hints at the larger themes of the book – Jean’s violence, his repression at school, his complicated relationship with men, his broader existential musings, his difficult mother and his troubled past. Perhaps these will confuse the reader, or perhaps they will be just enough to wet her tastebuds and encourage her to read more…

Visit Madeleine Dunnigan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Jean.

--Marshal Zeringue

"What Boys Learn"

Born in Chicago and now a resident of Vancouver Island, Canada, Andromeda Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction. Her first novel, The Spanish Bow, was translated into eleven languages and chosen as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, BookSense pick, and one of Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. Her next four novels, The Detour, Behave (an Amazon Book of the Month), Plum Rains (winner of the Sunburst Award), and Annie and the Wolves (a Booklist Top 10 Historical Fiction Book of the Year) reflect her diverse interest in the arts, history, science, and technology, as well as her love of travel and her time spent living abroad. Starting with The Deepest Lake (a Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick and Amazon Book of the Month) and continuing with her new novel, What Boys Learn, Romano-Lax has swerved into the world of suspense fiction, although she continues to write historical and speculative fiction as well.

She applied the Page 69 Test to What Boys Learn with the following results:

On page 69, Abby starts to question what her sixteen-year-old son Benjamin is telling her about a stupid thing he was just caught doing: breaking into a neighbor’s house to steal a girl’s diary. Worse yet, another girl in town was recently found dead. Abby has ignored lots of signs up until this moment, but now she’s getting wise. We get hints that her ex-boyfriend, a cop, might be fibbing about the break-in as well. This page encapsulates the stakes and the world we’re in, where you can’t trust anyone and the choices a woman makes—in her family, in her love life—may not be good ones.

On top of that, the scene on this page alludes to something Abby found in Benjamin’s room. And that discovery takes us into Abby’s past, when her brother—now in prison—hid a similar item. The plot’s many strands criss-cross this page in multiple places!

Visit Andromeda Romano-Lax's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Spanish Bow.

The Page 69 Test: The Detour.

Writers Read: Andromeda Romano-Lax (February 2012).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Reckoning"

A critically-acclaimed, bestselling author of crime fiction, Kelli Stanley is the author of the award-winning Miranda Corbie historical noir series (City of Dragons, City of Secrets, City of Ghosts, City of Sharks), featuring "one of crime's most arresting heroines" (Library Journal), private investigator Miranda Corbie, and set in 1940 San Francisco.

Stanley also writes an award-winning, highly-praised series set in Roman Britain (Nox Dormienda; The Curse-Maker).

Her newest novel, The Reckoning, is a first-in-series mystery-thriller set in Northern California's "Emerald Triangle" in 1985.

Stanley applied the Page 69 Test to The Reckoning and reported the following:

I love this test! Not because it accurately captures the essence of a book—it really couldn’t, not with a crime fiction novel’s potential for twists, turns and the rolling-hill cadence of suspense and setting—but because it’s simply fun!

So here’s the first part of page 69 from The Reckoning. That page happens to feature the end of one scene and the beginning of the next. We’ll tackle the end of the scene.

“Though what’s happened—Jennie—so, so horrible and scary. I hope to God they find this—this monster soon.”

He shook his head. “She’s not the first. And I’m worried—very worried—that she won’t be the last.”

Another older man in a sweater was waving him down from the bleachers and he looked at his empty hands with chagrin.

“I’m sorry—I need to get back in line. I told Copely I’d buy him a hot dog—he’s the choir master at South Fork and my—hope to God!—temporary roommate. I hope we can talk again, Natalie. Maybe you could come to the school and speak to my English class about law school preparation—we need all the outside influence—outside of Humboldt County, I mean—that we can muster.”

“I’m sure I’d like that. You can always reach me through the hospital.”

“Count on it.”

He trotted back to the Snack Shack. Renata stared after him.

She wanted to know more about Ian Sharpe—and why Phyllis Dawson said he “ruined” girls.

She slid into the bleachers. Two rows down, Mike was deep in conversation with a large man who was bending over to hear him better.

Wayne Hunt.

OK, what may we surmise from this—and does it hold true for the book?

First, something’s wrong—something happened. Whatever happened to Jennie, she was not the first. Serial killer in (yes, the setting is mentioned!) Humboldt County?

Check. That is the main plot line of the novel, so page 69 came through!

The bleachers and Snack Shack suggest a game, and from his dialog, Ian Sharpe sounds like a high school English teacher at a school named South Fork. So, high school football game?

Check. A high school football game plays a major role in the story.

The diction, pace and tone of the passage conveys an unsettled, uneasy feeling. I think the page does a good, understated job at suggesting a sense of dread, something I’ve tried to express throughout the narrative—as though there’s a fuse running and a bomb’s about to go off. “Ruined” girls”? Who is Phyllis Dawson? Why is Renata—whom Ian is calling “Natalie” —focused on the man called Hunt? Is she a cop? A lawyer? Why the double name? Who is Mike? Page 69 raises some provocative questions!

All of the information is crucial to the characters and the plot, but what the page achieves most effectively, I think, is capturing some of the emotional tension that runs very high throughout the novel. The Reckoning is a slow-burning thriller and you never know what’s around the corner—at a shop, a library or a high school football game in a tiny town in the middle of the woods. Even the fact that the page contains a break between two scenes emphasizes the relentlessness of time, an element which is not in Renata’s favor.

All in all, I think page 69 hits the mark in some unexpected ways!

Visit Kelli Stanley's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kelli Stanley & Bertie.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.

The Page 69 Test: City of Secrets.

The Page 69 Test: City of Ghosts.

My Book, The Movie: City of Ghosts.

The Page 69 Test: City of Sharks.

My Book, The Movie: City of Sharks.

Writers Read: Kelli Stanley (March 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Asterwood"

Jacquelyn Stolos grew up in Derry, New Hampshire. She loves tromping through the forest and reading good books.

Asterwood is her first novel for children.

Stolos holds an MFA in fiction from NYU, where she was a Writers in the Public School Fellow. Her short fiction has appeared in Joyland and No Tokens. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Stolos applied the Page 69 Test to Asterwood and shared the following:

From page 69 of Asterwood:

Quick and silent, Madelyn followed Fern down the slope to their camp, where Matthew was stuffing the last tent pole into his lumpy pack.

"Cannibals?" whispered Calle.

Fern nodded.

Calle's eyes widened.

"She has our scent," said Fern, tossing Madelyn her pack. "And she'll be after us as soon as she regains consciousness."

"She had two men with her,” Madelyn offered, pulling the pack’s straps over her raw shoulders.

“We’re well aware,” snapped Fern.

Calle gestured toward a tree, where the two men were unconscious, gagged, and bound. A chill tickled down Madelyn’s spine.

“They were here?” she asked.

“Watching us from the bushes.” Fern patted the blowgun in her belt. “I’d say we have a little under an hour to put as much distance between ourselves and them as we can. Cannibals are fast, crafty, and incredibly intelligent.

On page 69 of Asterwood, Madelyn had just been rescued by Fern from an unsettling encounter with a bewitching woman wearing a crown of yellowing bones. The two rejoin The New Hopefuls at their camp where Madelyn learns that cannibals lurk in the enchanted forest of Asterwood, and, in wandering away from the group and interacting with this woman, she’s put her new friends in grave danger. Now they must pack up and flee through the night forest.

The Page 69 Test works well for Asterwood. This excerpt demonstrates the adrenaline and adventure threaded through the novel, while also giving a taste of the friendship dynamics that drive Madelyn, who begins the book feeling like an outsider in her small, New Hampshire town and finds herself over the course of her adventures with this crew of tenacious misfits. More, Madelyn’s encounter with the cannibals by campfire was inspired by Bilbo Baggins’ campfire encounter with the man-eating trolls in The Hobbit. Readers can expect more notes of Tolkien throughout Asterwood. I was a huge fan at the age of Asterwood’s readers (and still am!). The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy was an enormous influence in how I imagined and wrote this woodland adventure.

Visit Jacquelyn Stolos's website.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Stolos.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Flightless Birds of New Hope"

Farah Naz Rishi is a Pakistani-American Muslim writer and voice actor, but in another life, she’s worked stints as a lawyer, a video game journalist, and an editorial assistant. She received her B.A. in English from Bryn Mawr College, her J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School, and her love of weaving stories from the Odyssey Writing Workshop. When she’s not writing, she’s probably hanging out with video game characters. Rishi lives in Philadelphia.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Flightless Birds of New Hope, with the following results:

Page 69 of The Flightless Birds of New Hope looks backward. Aden is ten. His sister, Aliza, is five. Their parents have left them home alone for the evening to attend a dinner party—something they still occasionally did back then, before their lives narrowed around bird shows and ribbons and the long, obsessive weekends that followed. Before Coco became the center of their world. Before everything began to orbit her.

Aden makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for himself and his sister and puts on Finding Nemo, Aliza’s favorite movie at the time. He lets her curl up on the couch beside him, eyelids fluttering, the crust of her sandwich still clutched in one hand. Within minutes, she’s asleep. The house seems to register it too: walls settling, silence blooming in the corners. Aden allows himself, briefly, to breathe with it. His shoulders loosen. A rare indulgence. Then he goes to check on Coco, the family’s cockatoo, sitting in her cage in the corner of the living room, “like a piece of furniture someone had forgotten to move.”

I think a browser opening the book to page 69 would get a true—if partial—sense of the whole. Not the plot, exactly—this is not a novel propelled by spectacle—but the emotional logic of the book. This page contains many of the forces that shape the story: a child stepping into a caretaker role, a family consumed by both obsession and neglect, and a quiet, almost imperceptible shift in what home truly feels like. The book unfolds in moments like this, where nothing is announced and everything is already changing.

What page 69 reveals is how The Flightless Birds of New Hope understands love and loss: not as singular events, but as slow accumulations. Aden isn’t frightened or resentful here. He’s capable. Attentive. Even calm. But that calm carries weight. It’s the kind that settles into a body early and never quite leaves. The Flightless Birds of New Hope is built from these small domestic scenes—children depending on each other, their house holding its breath, love expressed through action rather than words. If a browser were to read only this page, they might not know where the story goes, but they would know how it moves: slowly, inwardly, and with an understanding that the ordinary moments are the ones that end up mattering most.

Visit Farah Naz Rishi's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Flightless Birds of New Hope.

--Marshal Zeringue