Ladd Springs (Ladd Springs #1), by Dianne Venetta

BloominThyme Press, November 2013

Ladd Springs in Tennessee has been home to the Ladd family for six generations. Now, though, the property is at risk from multiple directions. Ernie Ladd, the current owner, promised his sister on her deathbed that he would leave the land to her daughter, Delaney Wilkins, and Delaney's daughter Felicity--but Ernie can't forgive Delaney for having married the son of an old rival, even though the marriage did not survive. Hotel developer Nick Harris wants to buy the property for the latest addition to his hotel chain. Neighbor Clem Sweeney is taking advantage of Ernie's loneliness and sense of isolation--and has found a secret in the forest that, if he doesn't get caught, will make him rich.

And Ernie, even though he has plenty of money to do so, hasn't paid the property taxes in three years. If he doesn't do so soon, Nick--who is willing to pay a fair price and make provisions for the family in the deal--will wind up buying the property for back taxes.

Delicious (Big Sky Pie #2), by Adrianne Lee

Forever (Grand Central Publishing), ISBN 9781455574353, December 2013

Jane Wilson is enjoying her new job as pastry chef at Big Sky Pie, and life seems to be on an even keel, until she gets two unpleasant surprises.

First, her mother is getting married again--and not to just anyone. She's remarrying Romeo Taziano, the man who broke up her parents' marriage, and then broke her mother's heart.

Second, Romeo's hateful son Nick, the Tazmanian Devil, has just been hired by Quint McCoy to develop an advertising campaign for Big Sky Pie. She's going to be seeing way too much of her ex-stepbrother.

If that weren't trial enough, having the Tazianos back in their lives brings up uncomfortable questions and uncovers long-buried family secrets. Jane is forced to rethink what she has always believed about her parents, their marriages--and even herself.

These Broken Stars (Starbound #1), by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Disney-Hyperion, ISBN 9781423171027, December 2013

This is a thoroughly enjoyable execution of a seemingly unpromising plot. A young war hero from a lower-class background is on an official PR tour on a luxury spaceship when he meets the pampered daughter of the head of the corporation that owns it--one of the richest girls in the galaxy. Shortly after they meet, there's some kind of an accident, the ship is destroyed, and our heroes, Maj. Tarver Merendsen heiress Lilac LaRoux, are stranded on a terraformed but uninhabited planet, the only survivors.

It works because Kaufman and Spooner have created original and interesting characters, and while the expected romance is there, it's the secondary plot.

The Disappeared (Retrieval Artist #1), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (author), Jay Snyder (narrator)

Audible Frontiers, March 2008 (original publication July 2002)

Miles Flint and Noelle DeRicci, police detectives in Armstrong Dome on the Moon, have a problem.

They've been assigned to investigate first one, then two, then three ships arrived at the Moon under peculiar circumstances. These are quickly shown to be related to humans convicted of crimes against against alien laws, who have chosen to "disappear" rather than face their sentences.

The first contains three bodies, eviscerated in a Disty revenge killing.

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #14), by Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon, ISBN 9780307378415, November 2013

Precious Ramotswe is facing a new challenge. Grace Makutsi has gone out on maternity leave after the birth of her and Phuti Radiphuti's son--and the office is suddenly quiet. Too quiet. It's been a long time since Mma Ramotswe worked on a case without bouncing ideas off Mma Makutsi, and she finds it's not just Grace's awesome office skills she misses. But life and business must go on, and she has not one but two cases to work on.

Mma Soleti, owner of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, is the target of a nasty whispering campaign that's driving away her customers. And Mma Sheba, a lawyer Mma Ramotswe met a few years ago at a networking lunch for women professionals, wants to know if the young man who has come forward as the heir to an estate she's handling is really who he says he is.

Beyond the Aquila Rift, by Alastair Reynolds (author), Tom Dheere (narrator)

Ifinivox, February 2008

This is a really nicely done short, making very effective use of compression and mood.

Humans have colonized "the Bubble," the local region of our arm of the Milky Way, relatively free of dust. They've done it using a network of FTL travel gateways left behind by some ancient space-faring species they know nothing about except that they left this network behind. Humans have learned how to use, but don't fully understand it or the principles on which it works--so sometimes, things go wrong. Ships wind up somewhere other than where they expected to go, and the crew is just stuck with the problem of getting home again. Depending on how far off course that is, that might take days, or weeks, or months.

The Curse of the Pharaohs (Amelia Peabody #2), by Elizabeth Peters (author), Susan O'Malley (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, ISBN 9780786137060, March 2005 (original publication 1981)

Amelia Peabody Emerson is getting restless in English domesticity, and so is her husband, Radcliffe Emerson. Oh, they love their son Walter, a.k.a. Ramses, dearly, but they were not meant to live quietly at home in England, Emerson teaching archaeology rather than practicing it, and Peabody not having even that much professional outlet.

They are rescued by the unexpected and not entirely welcome arrival one night of Lady Baskerville, widow of amateur archaeology enthusiast and funder of excavations, Lord Baskerville. He had just discovered a new, possibly unplundered, tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and his sudden, seemingly natural death, is rumored to be the result of a curse. Also, his assistant, Armadale, has disappeared. People are quitting, and the tomb is endangered by being now known but yet incompletely guarded and not yet excavated. Lady Baskerville wants Emerson to take over as chief archaeologist of the expedition. Of course, because of young Ramses, he can't.

Gold Web (A Klondike Mystery), by Vicki Delany

Dundurn Group, ISBN 9781459707733, December 2013

It's 1898, and Fiona MacGillivray is running a dance hall in Dawson City,  Yukon. "Dance hall" and "respectable" would not seem to go together, but it is 1898, and it is Canada, even during a gold rush. There are decency laws. And Fiona is raising a son, twelve-year-old Angus. The lead dancer is still fully covered when she finishes the Dance of the Seven Veils, and the Savoy is the most popular dance hall in Dawson.

There's also the little potential difficulty of "Mrs" MacGillvray's own checkered past.

So it's definitely not a good development when, as Fiona and Angus are leaving the Savoy out the back door, a man stumbles up to them, collapses to the ground, utters two words ("MacGillivray" and "Culloden"), and dies, stabbed to death.

A Christmas Hope, by Anne Perry

Ballantine Books, ISBN 9780345530752, December 2013

Claudine Burroughs, a volunteer at Hester Monk's clinic for prostitutes, simply endures her marriage to her husband, Wallace Burroughs. Dutifully attending yet another Christmas season social event with him, she meets a charming if slightly alarming Welsh poet, Dai Tragarron.

Within an hour, a prostitute smuggled into the party is badly injured, and Tragarron is on the run. A servant alerts Claudine to the presence of a man hiding in their barn the next morning, and she discovers it's Tragarron. He insists he's innocent, that the three young men who claimed to have tried to defend the young woman are in fact to blame. Claudine gives him breakfast and sends him on his way.

Later that day, the young woman dies. Tragarron is now wanted for murder.

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker, by Jennifer Chiaverini

Dutton Adult, ISBN 9780525953 616, January 2013

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born a slave in the antebellum American South, became an accomplished seamstress and dressmaker, and purchased her own freedom and her son's. It's after this that this novel based on her life begins--when she is a dressmaker of rising distinction in Washington, D.C., in the months just before the start of the Civil War.

During this time, her patrons were both Democrats and Republicans, Unionists and secessionists. If it seems odd to modern readers that one of her best and favorite patrons at this time was Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, soon to be President of the Confederate States of America, it's really an illustration of how messy and complicated human relationships really are. Mrs. Davis values her skills and likes her personally; she's perfectly sincere, if utterly obtuse, when she asks Elizabeth Keckley to go with her family when they leave Washington for Montgomery, Alabama.