Death and the Lucky Man (DI Tremayne #3), by Phillip Strang

P. Strang, December 2017

Detective Inspector Keith Tremayne, along with his sergeant, Clare Yarwood, is investigating the murder of a man whose family he knows. The Winters family were always a bit sketchy, brothers Fred and Stan now in prison, sister Margie a drug-addicted prostitute, brothers Cyril, Gerry, and Alan working enough to keep themselves in food, housing, and drink. Alan married Mavis, a woman Tremayne was very briefly involved with years before, and they have two children. Rachel is a nurse; Bertie is a ne'er-do-well, drinking and doing drugs. There's one more brother, Dean, who got an education, got a job in the business owned by the father of Barbara Garrett, the woman he married, and moved to Southampton. He doesn't associate much with his low-life family.

Not even after Alan buys a lottery ticket and wins  £68 million.

Now Alan is dead, stabbed to death on the altar stone at Stonehenge.

The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher (author), Kaylin Heath (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, November 2015

Rhea is just fifteen, a miller's daughter, and no more than pleasing in appearance, so it's very, very strange when a lord shows up and wants to marry her. Neither she nor her parents think this is normal or good, but they're not in a position to say no to a lord who is, moreover, a friend of their own lord.

It's even more disturbing when he insists Rhea come for an overnight visit at his home before the wedding.

All of this is nothing to how disturbed Rhea is when she arrives and finds that Lord Crevan has six previous wives, only one of whom is respectably dead.

Mira's Last Dance (Penric & Desdemona #5), by Lois McMaster Bujold

Spectrum Literary Agency, February 2017

Penric is leading General Arisaydia and his widowed sister  through now-hostile Cedonia to what they hope will be sanctuary in the Duchy of Orbas. It's a difficult and tricky journey, with dangerous delays. Temporarily stranded in the city of Sosie, they take refuge in a high-end brothel.

The brothel has a little problem with pests at the moment, which Penric, with his need to shed chaos, is able to help with. What he doesn't initially anticipate is that Mira, one of the ten women whose personalities make up the demon Desdemona, will step forward with her own skills to help them on their way.

Mira, of course, is the courtesan.

Over the course of their days in Sosie, it becomes easy to see why everyone who doesn't already know Penric well at some point suspects that his demon has become ascendant.

Another solid Penric adventure.

I bought this book.

When, by Victoria Laurie (author), Whitney Dykhouse (narrator)

Audible Audio, January 2015

Maddie Fynn is a teenager with a very uncomfortable talent: She can see the death dates of everyone she meets, or sees a picture of, imprinted clearly on their foreheads. As a young child, she had no idea what the numbers meant. Her police officer father's death in a shootout with drug dealers, when she's six years old, is a painful revelation.

It's also the beginning of her mother's drinking.  Her mother's drinking leads to her insisting Maddie read death dates for paying clients, to supplement a shrunken income that can't support both their normal expense's and Mrs. Fynn's drinking. It's not a great life, but not terrible, until children whose death dates she's read start to be murdered, and the FBI decides she looks like a prime suspect.

Penric's Mission (Penric & Desdemona #4), by Lois McMaster Bujold

Spectrum Literary Agency, November 2016

Penric has been through some big changes since the events in Penric's Fox. His studies with the shamans in Easthome completed, he returned to Martensbridge, where his medical abilities became greatly in demand. Very greatly in demand--and only for the most serious cases. The Princess-Archdivine Llewen has died, and so has his mother. In the end, it was too much loss, and he moved to Adria, first to serve the White God's archdivine there, and then to serve the Duke.

And the Duke has sent him to Cedonia, to make contact with a general who wishes to take service in Adria.

Unless, of course, the letter from the general is a forgery.

IQ, by Joe Ide (author), Sullivan Jones (narrator)

Hachette Audio, October 2016

Isaiah Quintabe is a young man, a high school dropout, living in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. He's very intelligent, extremely intelligent, and nicknamed IQ. In such a tough neighborhood, there are many cases that are just too small for the police to focus on, or even notice. If bullets aren't flying, the police are busy.

IQ has taken on the job of solving the cases the police don't bother with, or that his neighbors won't take to the police. Sometimes they pay him good money. Sometimes it's just some money. A lot of the time, it's just baked goods, because they can't afford anything else. The money matters when he can get it, though, because IQ is saving for something important. He's haunted by something he feels great guilt over, but at least at first. we have no idea what.

Lullabies & Lies (A Rosewood Place Mystery #5), by Ruby Blaylock

Ruby Blaylock, December 2017

Annie Richards runs an inn, Rosewood Place, in the South Carolina small town where she grew up. Her mother, Bessie Purdy, and friend and old flame Rory Jenkins help it all work.

It's not innkeeping as usual when Annie and Rory find a car that had passed them on their way to do shopping for the inn by the side of the road, with no driver, but a baby girl in the back seat. A short distance away, in the creek, they find a woman's body.

It's not long before the woman is identified, and the wealthy and well-connected Marshall family, real estate developers, are in Annie's inn, saying the woman, Kimberly, was their friend and former assistant, and demanding to know what happened. They are soon joined by Phillip Hutchens, claiming he  Kim's fiance and that the baby is his daughter.

Hutchens blames the Marshalls for all his business troubles.

What Annie had planned as a quiet week between guests becomes dominated by a homicide investigation. She may have a murderer staying in her inn, tensions among her guests are high, and Annie and Rory can no more stay out of the investigation than they can stop breathing.

Even coming into the series at book five, it was easy enough to pick up the essential information to keep track of who's who and what the larger framework of the series is. The main characters are likable, and even the less likable ones are layered characters, not just stock villains. It's a light, enjoyable read.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, by Stanislas Dehaene (author), David Drummond (narrator)

Tantor Audio, January 2014

It seems we are, finally, starting to solve the mystery of what consciousness is, and how the brain creates it.

Moreover, this is not just a fascinating scientific breakthrough, but one with important clinical implications. These are breakthroughs that are starting to make it possible to identify which patients in a "persistent vegetative state" or "minimally conscious state," have conscious activity going on in their brains, despite their inability to communicate.

More than that, it's becoming the basis experimental treatments that are, sometimes, able to bring some of these patients back to full conscious awareness and ability to communicate and control their lives.

Penric's Fox (Penric & Desdemona #3), by Lois McMaster Bujold

Spectrum Literary Agency, August 2017

Eight months have passed since the events in Penric and the Shaman, and Learned Penric is in Easthome, where in between his duties to the Princess-Archdivine, he's visiting with his friends, Shaman Inglis and Locator Oswyl. Unfortunately, their planned day of fishing is interrupted when a sorceress's body is found in the woods. As awful as the death itself is, the question of who killed her is matched by an equally appalling question: What has happened to her demon?

Penric continues to grow, as a sorcerer and as a divine, and continues to break new ground in ways his superiors don't necessarily expect. There's a lot to explore in this world of sorcerers, shamans, and gods who from time to time take an active hand in the world. Unlike many fantasy worlds, this one has a religion that isn't just a cheap knockoff of Christianity, whether portrayed positively or negatively. Bujold has put thought, work, and probably research into constructing a convincingly different religion, and doesn't treat believers as gullible fools.

I'm looking forward to reading his later adventures.

I'm going with internal chronological order, as Bujold recommends, rather than publication order. Which you do is a matter of personal preference and, except for the first two, shouldn't involve many spoilers.

I bought this book.

Grave Heritage (A Darcy & Flora Cozy Mystery #4), by Blanche Day Manos (author), Michelle Babb (narrator)

Pen-L Publishing, January 2017

Darcy Campbell and her mother, Flora Tucker, are back in another murder mystery in Ventris County, Oklahoma.

In the midst of a violent storm, a stranger is murdered in an isolated and now-abandoned shack. Except this man is not a stranger; he is soon identified as Pat Harris's long-missing husband, Walter. Their son, Jasper, has, as he often does for reasons that make sense to him, vanished into the woods, making him by normal standards an obvious suspect.