A Scone to Die For (Oxford Tea Room Mysteries #1), by H.Y. Hanna

Audible Audio, September 2016

Gemma Rose is home in Oxford after eight years in Australia, working her way up the corporate ladder. She finally decided the corporate ladder wasn't for her, sold her flat, quit her job, and went home to Oxford to buy a tea room. She's hired her best friend, as well as a local handyman who, it turns out, is also a fantastic baker. Things are starting to go really well, even with the hassles that go with being in food service and hospitality.

Such as the really arrogant, hostile American tourist, who seems to be with the otherwise pleasant American tour group.

Mastiffs, Mystery, and Murder (A Dog Detective Mystery #1), by Sandra Baublitz (author), Nancy Bober (narrator)

Sandra Baublitz, November 2017

Clarissa Hayes and her trusty St. Bernard, Paw, are helping out her PI boyfriend, Bruce Sevor, are at a dog show to investigate the possible murder of a much-disliked former competitor. It's a problem that neither of them knows anything about dog shows, and Clarissa has never done more than the most rudimentary training with Paw, but he is purebred, and a lovely dog. Fortunately, they also get help from friends who are more more interested in the dog show scene, especially Shelbee, who is a pet sitter and dog trainer.

The Preening Peacock (A Rosalinda Alameda Mystery #1), by Lisa Shea (author), Grace Sylvan (narrator)

Minerva Webworks LLC, March 2017 (original publication August 2015)

Rosalinda Alameda is a Puerto Rican who moved to Massachusetts to attend college, and  instead her life went sideways because of an ill-judged marriage. Now 50, working in a veterinarian's office, and living in Boston, she enjoys visiting the Franklin Park Zoo. This is a mystery short story set at the zoo. In this outing, she notices something odd about the peacocks, and meets some of the zoo staff and volunteers. For such a short story, it's hard to say much more without spoilers. However, I like Rosalinda, and I think some of those she meets along the way will be likable and/or interesting as the series continues.

Short, clever, and enjoyable.

I bought this audiobook.

The Ladies' Room, by Carolyn Brown (author), Donna Postel (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, November 2016 (original publication October 2011)

In the ladies' room at church during her Great-Aunt Gert's funeral, Trudy overhears her cousins talking about her husband Drew's infidelity. Unbeknownst to Trudy, it's been going on for the entire twenty years of their marriage--and her cousins can't decide whether she's too stupid to know, or too spineless to do anything.

Trudy is uncomfortably aware that she's been willfully ignoring signs of trouble for a long time.

But Drew's latest playmate is a twenty-something teller at their bank, and he's given her a Thunderbird, and Trudy is furious at realizing how she's let herself be used.

Surrender of Trust (Surrender Series #1), by Mariel Grey

Buoni Amici Press, November 2017

This book has such a promising premise.

Not necessarily historically reasonable, but,  heck, it's a Regency, right? Some allowances are built in. I was totally willing to go with the idea of the sister stepping in to run her brother's thoroughbred race horse breeding business when he's badly injured in a carriage crash, and needing to hide that fact.

But we are supposed to believe in the high moral and ethical standards of Lord Chalifour, and his determination to clean up racing. He's a good guy, really!

And from the first moment he meets Lucy Goodwin, sister of his proposed business partner Lucien Goodwin, he wants to seduce her. She's a friend of Lady Monique, the sister of a Duke, received by the ton, and he has no hesitation about introducing her to his own sister, Elizabeth. She ought to be within the protected circle even for Regency England, at least in a Regency novel.

Artemis, by Andy Weir (author), Rosario Dawson (narrator)

Audible Studios, November 2017

Jazz Bashara has a challenging life. She lives in Artemis, the only city on the moon, and there aren't that many opportunities to make money. She's working as a porter, and that barely covers the rent.

So she also smuggles. Raised by her father, Amar Bashara, one of the most respected welders in Artemis, she's a very honest, ethical smuggler. She delivers on her deals, never squeezes her customers for more than the  agreed price, and she doesn't smuggle dangerous contraband No guns. No dangerous drugs. Flammables very tightly limited.

She could make more money welding. Why isn't she? She freely admits, poor life choices, but she's tight-lipped about the details.

Then Jazz gets drawn into a plan that's more than smuggling. It's sabotage. One of her best customers is rich, connected, and has a clever plan.

Stranger Magics, by Ash Fitzsimmons

Harper Voyager Impulse, ISBN 9780062686725, November 2017

Colin Leffee is a dealer in used and rare books, living quietly over his shop in Rigby.

He's also a half-Fae prince, at odds with his mother, Titania, working with a priest to stop other Fae who amuse themselves by harassing humans.

His relatively quiet life is disrupted when a sullen, teenage changeling is dropped on his doorstep.

The teenager is his daughter, but she was raised to regard Titania as her mother. When Colin figures out that she is his daughter, he wants to return her to her mother--a woman he had a brief affair with years ago. This girl, though, whom Titania called Moyna but whose mother, Colin's old love, Meggy, named Olive, is absolutely determined to return to Titania, and doesn't believe Colin when he says that Titania won't allow a changeling she's thrown out to return.

Colin's troubles are just beginning.

A Christmas Return (Christmas Stories #15), by Anne Perry (author), Jenny Sterlin (narrator)

Recorded Books, November 2017

With the Christmas season approaching, Charlotte Pitt's grandmother, Mariah Ellison, is at the home of her other granddaughter, Charlotte's sister Emily, with none of Emily's family in residence. They're traveling for the holiday. Mariah has mixed feelings about spending the holiday alone except for Emily's servants, but has no plans to do anything to change that.

Then a most unusual package arrives. It's improbably heavy, especially when it's revealed to be a Christmas pudding. Or at least, it looks like a Christmas pudding. It proves to be about an inch or so of cake around a small, decorative cannonball. Then in the later post that day, she also receives a Christmas card with a message from an old friend's grandson. He sent her the cannonball, and he wants her to come help with an impending family crisis, the long-delayed fallout from an unsolved murder twenty years ago.

The Pearl Thief (Code Name Verity #0.5), by Elizabeth Wein (author), Maggie Service (narrator)

Bolinda Publishing, May 2017

Julia Beaufort-Stuart is fifteen years old, and hasn't yet learned to fly. She's at her grandfather's estate for the summer, and was looking forward to a last, happy summer holiday there.

When she wakes up in the hospital, with little memory of the events that led to her injuries, she knows it's not going to be a normal summer.

Euan and Ellen McEwan, Scots Traveller teens who found her and got her to the hospital, start out as her best chance of finding out what happened. Gradually, they become her friends. Meanwhile, events get stranger and stranger. Hugh Houseman, a scholar employed to help catalog the Murray Hoard and other valuables attached to the estate, disappears on the same day Julia is hurt. A collection of pearls that was part of the Murray Hoard, and which Julia remembers playing with as a young child, is missing and no one else seems to care about it.

Mother Go, by James Patrick Kelly (author), January LaVoy (narrator)

Audible Studios, July 2017

Mariska Volochkova is the clone-daughter of Natalia Volochkova, famed deep space explorer. Like her clone-mother, she is genetically engineered for the ability to hibernate, born for interstellar exploration.

That's not what Mariska wants, in part because she resents the woman who created her and then took off through the wormhole to a distant galaxy. Mariska was left with contract father Sal, under a term adoption contract, and an artificial intelligence that is her room. More than anything she resents the idea that Natalia could return and, as her mother and legal guardian, take her off through the wormhole again, away from a life she enjoys, her friends, and the contract father she loves. Then Natalia does return, with news of a beautiful, habitable planet at the other end of the wormhole.