Secrets in Death (In Death #45), by J.D. Robb (author), Susan Erikson (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2017

Eve Dallas is back again, and this time the murder victim almost literally drops at her feet. She's reluctantly having a drink with Garnet de Winter at a bar Roarke owns, a French-oriented bar called Du Vin. She's noticed that a well-known gossip columnist, Larinda Mars. She barely notices when Mars heads downstairs to the ladies' room, but everyone notices when she comes back up into the bar.

Mars' arm is soaked in blood, and she is staggering and seemingly barely aware. It's not long before Dallas, Roarke, and Peabody are tracking down her killer, a search which gets ever more interesting when they discover she's been blackmailing the well-heeled.

Soon they find she was choosing her targets very carefully.

Also, that her background may not be the one her official records show.

I'm impressed that even 45 books in, J.D. Robb is still keeping the In Death series, fresh, interesting, and completely absorbing.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Little Girl Lost (DI Robyn Carter #1), by Carol E. Wyer (author), Emma Newman (narrator)

Bookouture, January 2017

DI Robyn Carter is just about to return to work on the police force after an extended leave following the death of her husband and unborn child. During her leave, she's worked temporarily with a friend, Ross Cunningham. He's a former police officer who now runs a private detective agency. For her last case with him, he hands her a woman, Mary Matthews, whose husband has disappeared. There's no apparent reason, and also no apparent evidence of foul play, and initially very little to go on.

Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities, by Amy Stewart (author), Coleen Marlo (narrator)

Tantor Audio, June 2011

If you need to research some clever poisons for your next murder mystery, you could do worse than start your search for candidates here. It's a quick and readable introduction to the wide world of dangerous plants, with the fun and exciting (well, if you share some of my gallows humor) basics on the major ones plus the relatives of these dangerous plants.

But that's not all this book offers. It's not just clever murder methods. It's also the stuff won't kill you (probably), but will make you sick and very uncomfortable. It's the stuff it would never occur to you to eat, but might kill your animals.

It's the stuff you probably don't want to plant in your garden, especially if you have allergies, or care about people who do.

It's the invasive plants that are choking waterways.

It's the nasty stuff that global warming will help invade areas currently free of it.

It's those fascinating carnivorous plants.

Did I mention it's a lot of fun?

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

The Shark (Forgotten Files #1), by Mary Burton (author), Christina Traister (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, May 2016

Riley Tatum is a Virginia state trooper now, but twelve years ago she very nearly died at the hands of a serial killer in her childhood home of New Orleans. It was a painful lesson in the dangers of the streets she had fled to when her mother died and her stepfather proved to be a predator, and she still has no idea how she escaped and wound up at a bus stop in Virginia.

Riley is a topnotch investigator who had the chance to be promoted to agent, but turned it down to stay with her search dog, Cooper. She's also in the process of adopting a former runaway, Hannah, and is just a couple of weeks away from the adoption being finalized. The last think she needs, she feels, is her carefully concealed past to come out now, and possibly mess up the adoption.

A Strange Scottish Shore, by Julianna Gray

Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 9780698176492, September 2017

Emmaline Truelove, Lord Silverton, and their friend Max Haywood, now the Duke of Olympia, are once again seeking the answers to the strange events in Greece last year. No longer the Duke's secretary, Truelove is now the
Director of the Haywood Institute, created to be the organizing force in the Duke's research into history, archaeology, and anachronisms--and last year's events, recounted in A Most Extraordinary Pursuit, are currently a major focus.

And a puzzling adversary, a ginger-haired man who seems determined to stop something the new Duke of Olympia will do at some point in the future, is becoming ever more dangerous.

Silverton disappears--just disappears--while he and Truelove are traveling north to meet up with the Duke, who is meeting a possible new Duchess. In Scotland, at the castle of Thurso, Truelove and the Max negotiate tricky social waters created by the rumors they are lovers, and also the puzzling reasons for the ginger-haired man's pursuit.

A Dangerous Talent (Alix London #1), by Charlotte Elkins (author), Aaron Elkins (author), Kate Rudd (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, April 2012 (original publication January 2012)

Alix London is trying to build a career as an art restorer and as an art consultant, nine years after her father, Jeffrey London, once a noted art restorer, was convicted of art forgery. She's on the coolest of terms with her father, now out and in the art importing business, who nevertheless persists in trying to maintain contact with her.

Then one day she's approached for a job that could be the true start of her consulting career. A woman just beginning in collecting art wants Alix to evaluate a Georgia O'Keeffe painting she has been offered. Soon she's on a chartered plane from Seattle to Santa Fe.

On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers, (author), Bronson Pinchot (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, ISBN 9781441755025, October 2010 (original publication 1987

This book was the basis of the fourth of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. On the one hand, it's surprising they took so long to notice it--this was originally published in 1987. On the other hand, Powers doesn't write the same thing over and over, and this is his only "pirates of the Caribbean" novel.

Also, the movie is based very loosely on the book.

John Chandagnac is the son of a French puppeteer, who eventually left his father's business to become an accountant with an English merchant company. He's on his way to the Caribbean to track down his uncle, Sebastian, who cheated his father of his rightful inheritance when the ship, Vociferous Carmichael, is attacked by pirates. It's not long before he's pressed into pirate service, and renamed Jack Shandy.

And not long after that, working with the most famous pirate of all: Blackbeard.

Vodun, or voodoo, magic is a big part of this story, with dire consequences for quite a few people Jack comes to care about. On his trip out, he'd met Elizabeth Hurwood and her father, Benjamin, who turns out to have really dire plans for her. Hurwood's partner in magic, Leo Friend, has his own terrible plans for Elizabeth.

So does Blackbeard.

Jack at least wants to have better plans for her.

If he can outwit three powerful magicians.

The plot takes many interesting twists and turns, and Jack finds some very unexpected use for his puppetry skills.

This is, as always with Powers, smart, well-written, creative, clever, and thoughtful. The characters keep surprising the reader in ways that are utterly plausible and convincing. Powers also never fails to do his research, giving the novel an overall depth and reality that just can't be counted on in freewheeling historical fantasy.

I loved it.

Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Soldier Dogs: The Untold Story of America's Canine Heroes, by Maria Goodavage (author), Nicole Vilencia (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, March 2012

Maria Goodavage, like many people, became seriously interested in Military Working Dogs after hearing about Cairo, the dog who was part of the mission to get Osama bin Laden. She thought that surely this wouldn't be a hard subject to investigate; after all, these are dogs, not not nuclear weapons or stealth fighters.

It turns out that this is a very challenging area to investigate, precisely because these are "just dogs" and dogs who are in many ways quite secret. In many ways, in many places, they officially don't exist. This includes in veterinarian's offices, where the normal paperwork simply does not occur. She had her work cut out for her just getting in touch with the people who could tell her about these dogs and introduce her to their handlers.

The Duke and I (The Bridgertons #1),, by Julia Quinn (author), Rosalyn Landor (narrator)

Recorded Books, October 2016 (original publication January 2000)

Daphne Bridgerton has a problem.

'sShe beautiful, bright, charming, and everyone's friend. She grew up with four brothers, three of them older than herself, and the gentlemen love to talk with her. They just don't think of her as a romantic prospects, and in her second season, she has received proposals only from the elderly and, in one case, the crashingly stupid. Her mother and her eldest brother, the new Viscount Bridgerton, are not going to compel her to make an unhappy match, and she's in danger of being on the shelf.

The Duke of Hastings has a problem.

A Perfect Plan (Wiltshire Chronicles #1), by Alyssa Drake

Dream Big Publishing, May 2016

Ten years ago, Lord Matthew Hastings died, in odd circumstances, but the doctor determined it to be natural causes. Shortly thereafter, his wife also dies, leaving his children as orphans.

The son and heir, Edward, marries, has three daughters, and eight years later, leaves on a trip to France for business reasons.

He does not return. His fate is unknown, but he is ruled to be dead.

Two years later, his widow, Wilhelmina, reluctantly decides it is time for her to remarry, and for Edward's younger sister, Samantha, now twenty, to also marry.