Twist of Faith, by Ellen J. Green (author), Angela Dawe (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, February 2018

Ava Hope Saunders, six months after the death of her adopted mother Claire, is still searching for the identity of her birth mother. The story she's been told, of being found wrapped in a blanket in a Philadelphia church when she was less than two months old, doesn't match memories of some very frightening events, when she was a toddler, or of a mother who wasn't Claire.

She takes a picture she's found in her mother's things, of a house, and visits it. It's unoccupied at present, but a neighbor tells her there was a terrible murder there five years ago, of the couple who lived there, by an apparent intruder. The murder was never solved.

Conversations with an Armory, by Garth Nix

Solaris, September 2017 (in Infinity Wars:Infinity Project #6)

Three military officers are at the entrance to an armory, or rather Armory, run by a sentient AI, needing to get in. We don't at first know exactly where we are, and circumstances come out gradually, as officers under stress try to explain themselves to an AI controlling a sensitive military facility that was partially shut down more than a decade ago.

They're on a ship, and after some frustration on both sides, they manage to identify an officer on the ship that the AI recognizes as being in its chain of command...who unfortunately is in very bad condition. Not really functional at all.

They rig a cable to reconnect the Armory AI to the ship brain, and the situation starts to clarify.

Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder--A Journey into the Wild World of Nuclear Science, by James Mahaffey (author), Keith Sellon-Wright (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, June 2017

James Mahaffey is former senior research scientist in nuclear physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who, as he says near the end of this book, now writes books. If you enjoy geeks geeking on about what they love (and I very much do), his books are a lot of fun.

This one is about some of the wilder and woollier adventures in atomic energy, bombs, scientific frauds, and all the things that make a life in science a lot more exciting than someone thinking of it only as, you know, science, might reasonably assume.

The Evening of Their Span of Days, by Carrie Vaughn

Solaris, September 2017 (in Infinity Wars:Infinity Project #6, edited by Jonathan Strahan)

Opal is a dock manager on Tennant Station, out on the edge of human-occupied space. It's not clear what the political setup is; it's more implied than stated that there is more than one human polity, necessitating a Military Division. They don't seem to have encountered any alien civilizations.

But there are rumors, and strange sightings. Opal hears about them as she goes about her duties, making sure her subordinates have as much of what they need for work on ships in dock as she can wrangle. She's also trying to keep them focused on priorities, and running interference with ship captains in a hurry, who weren't necessarily open about how much work their ships needed.

Command and Control, by David D. Levine

Solaris, September 2017 (in Infinity Wars:The Infinity Project #6, edited by Jonathan Strahan)

Amirthi Kandiah is a sergeant in the Indian army, fighting in a war to liberate Tibet from Chinese domination, at some unstated but reasonably distant point in the future. She and her squad are on a well-planned attack, when it turns out the Chinese are both more numerous and more aggressive than expected. They get themselves out, with losses, but also the unexpected gain of a Chinese soldier's tablet.

The one thing they manage to learn from that tablet before it self-destructs is that General Fu Jiaoyang is in Tibet, in direct control of the Chinese troops. If they can take her out, the war is probably over.

If they can take her out.

If only she weren't sitting inside a World Heritage site. If they destroy the site in the process of killing her, they'll have destroyed much of their rationale for fighting the war.

Perfect Gun, by Elizabeth Bear

Solaris, September 2017 (in Infinity Wars:The Infinity Project #6, edited by Jonathan Strahan)

John Steel is a mercenary.

He buys a lovely rig, a decommissioned war machine, restores her, and deletes all the inconvenient safety, morality, and Geneva software that would keep him from earning his living in what he's come to consider the only reliable way.

He's a mercenary, and he doesn't insist on working for the bad guys, but mostly that's who hires him.

The Great Passage, by Shion Miura (author), Juliet Winters Carpenter (translator), Brian Nishii (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, June 2017 (original publication January 2011)

Kohei Araki falls in love with words and dictionaries as a boy. When a university education makes it clear to him that he's a good but not academic-level lexicographer, he goes to work for Gembu Books, and makes dictionaries.

More than thirty years later, he's nearing retirement. His greatest work, The Great Passage, a top-level dictionary of the Japanese language, is well under way, but not yet complete, and he needs to recruit a successor.

He finds Mitsuya Majimi, a disheveled, seemingly unpromising, young man, who nevertheless proves to share his love of words and their power.

One Sunny Night (The Adventures of Sonny Knight #1), by Charon Dunn

Leaping Lagomorph, January 2016

Leroy Knight is fifteen, is nice enough looking, and has no particular talents. This is a real problem in his nation of Braganza in 3147, because talent is what his culture is all about. His family loves him, and worries for him.

Then a silly accident gives him a little notoriety, an accidental resemblance to an international clashball sports hero, Rufus Marshall. In an especially silly publicity stunt, Rufe's team, the Vanram Rams, invites Leroy and his family to the championship game.

What could possibly go wrong?

Still Waters (Sandhamn #1), by Viveca Sten (author), Marlaine Delargy (translator), Angela Dawe (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, October 2015 (original publication 2008)

A body washes up on the beach of the island of Sandhamn, in Sweden, and at first it looks like an accident. It takes a while to identify him, but Krister Berggren seemingly just had an accidental fall off a boat, and wasn't noticed in time. Police Detective Thomas Andreasson identifies him, and talks to Krister's only close relative, his cousin Kicki Berggren, in Stockholm, and is about to close the case when Kicki turns up dead, apparently badly beaten, in a bed-and-breakfast on Sandhamn.

The Addictive Brain (The Great Courses: Better Living), by Thad A. Polk (author, narrator)

The Great Courses, March 2015

Addiction is a word that is often tossed around casually, but real addiction is a serious and complex problem. This is a look at what we know about the biological aspects of addiction, the role that human physiology and genetics play in making addiction, and in treating addiction.

Polk starts off by defining what he means by addiction in this book, the stricter definition of actual physical addiction, with continued use of the addictive substance despite serious negative consequences, and often despite a real desire and effort on the part of the addict to quit. Then he explains what's going on in the body, in creating and maintaining addiction. This includes the research in twin studies and in animal models--mostly mice, who are surprisingly genetically similar to us.