The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space, & Speed, by Scott Parazynski (author, narrator), Suzy Flory (author)

Brilliance Audio, August 2017

This is an excellent first-person account of a doctor, astronaut, and inventor who had a really impressive career in the space program.

Oh, yeah, and he climbs mountains a lot.

I wish I could care more about that. I really do. It's not a fair criticism of the book to say that he talks too much about that. Objectively, I don't think he does. It's not his fault that for me, climbing the world's major peaks for the heck of it pushes a lot of buttons--particularly after he marries and has two kids.

And he knows his wife isn't thrilled about it.

And he's taking out home equity loans on their house to pay for it.

Honestly, for a lot of readers, I suspect the mountain climbing stuff is a bonus. He's knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and writes about it as well as he does about his NASA career. It isn't even irrelevant to his NASA career. At one point, it gets him an Earth-bound assignment that is directly relevant to future exploration of Mars. So my advice is, ignore my grumpiness on this point. You'll probably like those bits.

Lady Josephina's Secrect, by Agnes Forest

Sundance House Publishing, August 2018

Lady Josephina Crawford is well-born, lovely, and intelligent. The last isn't necessarily an advantage at Almack's in the hunt for a husband, but it doesn't need to be a disadvantage, either.

However, she's also a talented, and very popular, author of novels. Not that anyone knows! Her books are published under the name of her brother, Francis, future heir to the father's title of Viscount Whitemore. Francis is very happy to take all the credit, and Josephina has agreed to this because it would certainly be the death of her respectability to be known as an authoress.

Gerard Sheridan, Marquess of Richmond, heir to his father, Duke of Bedfordshire, is in a position he never expected. He was the younger son, planning a career in the church, until his brother died a year ago. Newly out of mourning, he is also newly in need of a wife. Planning to be a clergyman, he had never expected to need a wife.

Rogue Protocol (Murderbot Diaries #3), by Martha Wells (author), Kevin R. Free (narrator)

Recorded Books, August 2018

Murderbot is still in pursuit of evidence against GrayCris, because awkward questions are being asked about where Dr. Mensah's SecUnit is. Murderbot really needs those questions to go away, permanently.

So it's off to the site of a failed terraforming project GrayCris was involved in, where very strange things happened and may still be happening. Quietly antisocial Murderbot would prefer just to stay in its storage unit all the way there, watching its downloaded media, get the job done promptly on arrival, and leave.

Once Upon a Haunted Moor (Tyack & Frayne #1), by Harper Fox (author), Tim Gilbert (narrator)

Audible Studios, December 2017 (original publication October 2013)

Gideon Frayne is a hardworking local police constable in the village on the Bodmin moor that he grew up in, the village of Dark. Now, he's working on his very first missing child case--a little girl whose family he's known all his life.

And he's doubting his competence as a police officer.

It isn't a boost to his confidence when his boss sends in a psychic, Lee Tyack. Gideon regards psychics as frauds, doesn't want anyone giving Lola's mother false hope when it looks more and more like Lola must be dead, but Lee is hard to hate.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula Le Guin (author), Barbara Caruso (narrator)

Recorded Books, January 2018 (original publication December 2017)

This is a collection of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin, who was one of our great American writers, and great science fiction and fantasy writers. Her many awards include being named  a Grand Master in 2003, by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.

The essays were written as blog posts for the Book View Cafe blog, and range over a wide variety of subjects, including fan letters from children, the differences among fact, myth, and lies especially when talking to children, eating an egg, her cat Pard, both when she first adopted him, and as he matured and become a real and important personality in her home.

Probable Claws (Mrs. Murphy #26), by Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown

Bantam, May 2018

Let's start by saying that Mrs. Murphy (tiger cat), Tucker (corgi), and even new recruit Pirate (Irish wolfhound puppy) are amazingly patient with Pewter (fat gray cat). Just saying!

Harry Haristeen is working with architect Gary Gardner on improvements to her barn and workspace, and all seems as peaceful as it ever is around Harry. Then the illusion of peace is shattered as Harry, Gary, and Deputy Cynthia Cooper are standing outside Gary's office. A motorcyclist, completely obscured in bike leathers and an opaque helmet drives up, shoots Gary fatally, and drives away.

Cooper's sincere plea to Harry that she stay out of the investigation really just means Harry has to be more careful. And, really, the deputies would probably never have paid really close attention to Gary's stolen and recovered paper copies of the building codes for every jurisdiction he's worked in going back to his days at Rankin Construction...right?

Children of Blood & Bone (Legacy of Orȉsha #1), by Tomi Adeyemi (author), Bahni Turpin (narrator)

MacMillan Audio, ISBN 9781250300119, March 2018

I loved this book. Now, if I can just say something more useful...

Tomi Adeyemi is Nigherian-American. This is a book grounded in Nigerian tradition, storytelling, and imagery, and reflecting, in mythic form, many of the tensions affecting contemporary American society. Because I listened ti the audiobook, I'm relying on Wikipedia for spellings.

The kingdom of Orȉsha once had a thriving culture of magic-wielding maji clans, living among the non-magical kosidàn. Then King Saran blamed the maji, all of them, for the death of his first family. He destroyed magic, by means that we don't fully understand at least in this first volume of the trilogy, and killed all the adult maji. Their underage children of likely magical talent, called diviners, are left alive, on the theory that they can now never become maji, but they and their kosidàn family members face punitive taxation and harsh punishment for even small offenses.

Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers #3), by Becky Chambers

Harper Voyager, July 2018

Chambers' Wayfarers stories are set in the Galactic Commons, a galactic federation of intelligent species, most of them significantly older than the newcomer humans. Each has looked at a different part of life in the Galactic Commons. This one is set in the Exodus Fleet, the fleet carrying the descendants of the last humans to leave Earth, fleeing its environmental collapse.

They're a distinctly different culture from the humans who settled Mars and the outer planets prior to that final collapse. Originally, they were looking for an Earthlike planet to start over on, and they wanted their descendants to be prepared for planetary life. In addition to their quite functional food- and oxygen-producing farms, they have decorative oxygen gardens, theaters that show nature videos of Earth, murals on the walls that, functionally, don't need to be anything but bare metal.

They also guard against the development of the competition and divisions that helped destroy Earth. Everyone has windows onto space in their living quarters. Everyone is guaranteed "if we have food they will eat, if we have air they will breathe, if we have fuel they will fly." Their economic system is barter.

And membership in the Galactic Commons has brought changes, changes that can disrupt this system.

Faceless Soldiers, Patchwork Ship, by Caroline M. Yoachim

Solaris, September 2017 (in Infinity Wars:Infinity Project #6)

Ekundayo is a watch officer on a space station in a space polity at war. The enemy are the Faceless, aliens who are, in fact, patchwork creatures--parts from multiple different intelligent species, including humans. They are terrifying, representing not just an enemy power, but the potential loss of personal identity. A virus, the Patchwork virus, makes possible their easy addition and removal of alien parts, and no one on Ekundayo's side of the war understands their shared consciousness, or wants to.

Her sister Neva is a combat officer on the same station, but Ekundayo, with sickle cell trait, is not eligible for combat duty. She's on the station, though, because sickle cell trait gives some resistance to the Patchwork virus, and potentially useful for some...special missions.

The Haunting of Hattie Hastings (Part 3), by Audrey Davis

Audrey Davis, July 2018

Again, this is part three, and you really want to read parts one and two first.

Hattie, Gary, and Cat are still working out what Gary's return means, but it's clear, also, that Gary's time as a visiting ghost is coming to an end. Hattie and Gary have managed to complete the errand the child ghost, Marty, asked of Gary, but there's still another, unfinished task, and even Gary's so-called spirit guide, Clarence, can't tell him what it is.

Cat is, of course, making a mess of her life, getting involved with her ex-husband, Stewart, again. Hattie has dated a couple of men, both of them complete losers, and she's worried that Gary's old friend, Barry, is getting the wrong idea from her friendliness.