Match Made In Wyoming (Wyoming Wildflowers #2), by Patricia McLinn (author), Julia Motyka (narrator)

Craig Place Books, ISBN 9781944126445, November 2013 (original publication July 2001)

Taylor Anne Larsen has left her job at a big firm in Dallas, and bought a tiny practice in a small town in Wyoming. She has friends, including Matty, owner of one ranch and wife of the owner of another. She and Matty work together in a dog rescue organization, and her assistant in the law practice is also a friend, and there are others.

She's mostly seen Cal Ruskoff from a distance. He's handsome, interesting, and clearly determined to maintain that distance. Cal isn't from the town, or Wyoming, and he's got nothing to say about where he's from, or why he's working as the foreman on Matty's ranch.

Antiques Ravin' (A Trash 'n' Treasures Mystery #13), by Barbara Allan (author), Romy Nordlinger (narrator)

Highbridge Audio, ISBN 9781684417452, April 2019

Seventy-something Vivian Borne, co-owner with her daughter Brandy of antiques store Trash 'n' Treasures, has, due to events in earlier entries in the series, been elected sheriff of Serenity County. She has actually done some useful things, such upgrading the county's emergency communications, so that police, fire, and EMS can all communicate directly with each other when need. Vivian has also, though, appointed her daughter Brandy as a very reluctant deputy to be her driver. This is necessary because, oops, Vivian's driver's license has been revoked because of her reckless driving, and she can't legally drive her spiffy new official vehicle anywhere. The third member of their little team is Sushi, their shih tzu, who, unlike most small dogs in fiction, acts like a real dog, and a fairly smart one at that.

Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator, by Jason M. Colby (author), Paul Heitsch (narrator)

Highbridge Audio, ISBN 9781684415533, January 2019

Orcas are the most popular, profitable, and of course, controversial, animals on display in history. The controversy stems largely from the fact that captivity is objectively horrible for orcas. They're large, intelligent, and highly social. They live in large, matrilineal family groups, who live near other, related family groups whom they socially interact with. There's no way we can provide a truly appropriate habitat for orcas in captivity. When captured, they lose their entire families, their entire social group, they lose the auditory stimulation that's a normal part of their world, they're forced to change their diets to what we can feed them, and they are confined to what are rceally unbearably small spaces for orcas. The more people learn about this, the more people want no more orcas in captivity.

Lending a Paw (Bookmobile Cat Mystery #1), by Laurie Cass (author), Erin Bennett (narrator)

Tantor Audio, December 2017 (original publication, December 2013)

Minnie Hamilton has been working in the job of her dreams, Assistant Library Director in the small resort town of Chilson, Michigan. Her latest proud achievement, in the face of her boss's cost-cutting preferences, is to get a bookmobile to service the areas no longer served by the now-closed branch libraries. She achieved this by getting a donation from uber-rich Stan Laraby, to purchase the bookmobile and fund the first year's operations. Stan has a reputation as a miser who gives money to no one, but he really values libraries (and, we later learn, other valuable public services), and not only provides the money, but works with her to plan the startup of services. And then, on her first day driving the vehicle, at her last stop on that day's route, she finds a dead body--Stan's. He's been shot.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes, by Adam Rutherford (author, narrator)

Tantor Audio, September 2018

Adam Rutherford gives us a fascinating tour of what genetics tells us about the history of our species, including the close relatives with whom we interbred, the Neanderthals and Denisovans.

New discoveries show the first H. Sapiens left Africa even earlier than we previously thought, and didn't always take the paths we assumed. Our DNA tells us a great deal about ourselves as a species, but not nearly as much as we like to imagine about ourselves. There just isn't that much diversity in the genome of H. Sapiens, and most of what there is, is among the peoples of Africa. The rest of us haven't been gone from Africa long enough, or separated from each other long enough, to produce that much genetic variation.

Echo in Time (Echo Trilogy #1), by Lindsey Fairleigh (author), Dana Dae (narrator)

Rubus Press, ISBN 9781094262048, December 2013

Archaeology grad student Alexandra Larson has just experienced her first notable success--a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal.

She's also starting to experience more disturbing events, in which she has dreams that recall forgotten memories just when she needs them, or, more disturbingly, things that haven't happened yet, but which are all too real. Or things which have happened, but aren't her experiences. They're the experiences of other members of her family.

Then her mother reveals a startling and disturbing fact: her father isn't her biological father. She's the product of artificial insemination, with sperm from a sperm bank donor who remained anonymous. Her world has come completely unhinged.

For a Good Paws (Barkery & Biscuits Mystery #5), by Linda O. Johnston (author), Carla Mercer-Meyer (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, May 2019

Carrie Kennersley, owner of the twin bakeries, Icing on the Cake (selling human sweets) and The Barkery (selling treats for dogs), is a little worried when she learns that Mike Holpurn, convicted of killing Knobcone Heights' first female mayor, is being released on parole after ten years. However, her attention is focused mainly on her assistant, Dinah, and the birthday party Carrie has planned for her at "the resort." If the hotel in question has another name, I didn't catch it in the audiobook. But that's the risk of listening to an audiobook; you may not catch all the relevant names, and you can't easily flip back through the book when you realize you missed it.

Murder Off the Page (42nd Street Library Mystery #3), by Con Lehane (author), Wayne Mitchell (narrator)

Dreamscape Media, November 2019

Raymond Ambler is a librarian at the New York Public Library, curator of the Crime Fiction Collection, and an amateur sleuth. The bartender at the nearby Library Tavern, favorite watering hole of at least some of the librarians, is a good friend, Brian McNulty. Another friend is Mike Cosgrove, an NYPD homicide detective. Adele Morgan is another librarian, a friend, and a potential love interest, if Ambler can figure out how human relationships work.

Ambler also has joint custody of his grandson, Johnny. His son, John, is in prison for second degree murder. Johnny's mother is deceased (apparently unrelated to John's case--hey, it's book three, and the first one I've read.) So Ambler has a lot on his plate without getting involved in a murder at a local hotel, that McNulty wants him to solve. But why? It seems a woman called Shannon Darling is involved.

Swearing is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language, by Emma Byrne (author), Henrietta Meire (narrator)

Highbridge, January 2018 (original publication November 2017)

This is a lively, funny, informative book about foul language.

Emma Byrne, a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence, has always loved a good swear. In this book, she lays out, using peer-reviewed science, why swearing and foul language is really good for you, for work teams, and society as a whole.

A key "news you can use" bit is that swearing is a very effective pain reliever. Whether you've hit your thumb with a hammer, or are sticking your hand in a bucket of ice (part of a real study to test this effect), or being treated for cancer, swearing really, measurably, helps your ability to handle the pain. The bad news? If you're a woman, even if you're being treated for cancer, even your female friends will judge you for this, and may drift away.

Witches of Bourbon Street (Jade Calhoun #2), by Deanna Chase (author), Gabra Zackman (narrator)

Bayou Moon Press, June 2019 (original publication February 2012)

Jade Calhoun is a powerful empath, and witches she knows tell her that she's a powerful white witch, too. She steadfastly denies it, because she blames witchcraft for the loss of her mother when she was just twelve years old. Jade has a point; her mother vanished during a coven ritual. The head of her mother's coven then gave the extremely distressed Jade a spelled herbal drink that sent her to sleep for two days. She woke up in a hospital, where this was diagnosed as a psychological reaction, not a result of a drug.

But Jade is now living in New Orleans, and has a boyfriend (Kane) who's a sleepwalker, a friend (Ian) who's a ghost hunter, an acquaintance (Lailah) who's a minor angel, and of course Ian's Aunt Bea, who is the leader of the local coven. When Bea and Lailah tell her she's a powerful white witch, it's harder to ignore. Yet she still blames witchcraft for her mother's loss, and is determined to have no part of it.

The Beatrice Stubbs Series: Box Set One (DI Beatrice Stubbs #1-3), by J.J. Marsh (author), Jill Prewett (narrator)

Prewett Bielman Ltd., March 2020 (original publication November 2013)

Beatrice Stubbs  is a detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police, middle aged, graying, suffering from bipolar disorder--and her career somewhat stalled since a suicide attempt a year or so ago. In the first of these first three books of the series, her superior officer, Hamilton, has arranged for her to lead an international team in Zurich. The team will be investigating what look superficially like a series of unconnected suicides by prominent businessmen with shady reputations. Yet there seems to be a theme; the men have all died in ways that look like poetic justice for their particular vile actions. And when the team looks at the DNA evidence from each of these deaths, happening on average a year apart over nearly a decade, the only DNA not belonging to the dead men is the same at each scene--an unknown man who is otherwise not in evidence at all.

The Heart of Texas (Texas #1), by R.J. Scott (author), Sean Crisden (narrator)

Love Lane Books Ltd. Audio, August 2016

Riley Hayes is the playboy of the Hayes Oil family, and the younger son--but he's also the oil brains of the family. Family patriarch Gerald Hayes has his own reasons for preferring his older son, Jeff, as the next head of the company, but his stated one is maturity. In deciding to apportion control of the company among his offspring (48% to Jeff, 22.5% to Riley, and 22.5% to Eden, the youngest, the girl, and the only one not working in the business), he also specifies that if Riley marries someone he loves within three months, and remains married for at least a year, he'll reapportion the company shares more equitably.

In one sense, you only have to look at the cover image to see where this is going.

Marjorie's Cozy Kitten Cafe (Books 1-3), by Katherine Hayton (author), Kirsty Gilmore (narrator)

Chirp Audio, April 2020

Marjorie Hardaway runs a kitten cafe in the small New Zealand town of Hanmer Springs. Selling good coffee and excellent pastries, she encourages and facilitates the adoption of the kittens wandering all over her cafe, charming the customers. Unfortunately, her business might be about to go under. A local developer is planning to open a competing business--in front of hers, building on a section of land she had thought couldn't be developed, and thus cutting off the beautiful view her cafe currently has.

Even this concern fades into the background, though, when the police ask her to take in a little calico kitten--who was apparently a witness to the murder of one of her neighbors.

A Murderous Tangle (Seaside Knitters Society Mysteries #14), by Sally Goldenbaum (author), Julie McKay (narrator)

Dreamscape Media, January 2020

Birdie, Nell, Cassie, and Izzy are planning a holiday event for the approaching Christmas holiday, for all their family and friends. This is a small Massachusetts seaside town, and there's a sense that everybody knows everybody, though that's not always true.

Tess Bean is a fairly new arrival in town, working at two rather different part-time jobs. One of them is at the Seaside Harbor school, teaching science to the young students. She's lively and interesting, an environmental activist, and is very inspiring to many of them, including Birdie's granddaughter, Gabby. She also works for Clark Turner, the local veterinarian, in his kennel, where her gentle touch with the animals is valuable.