Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany (author), Stefan Rudnicki (narrator)

Skylost Media, ISBN 1504668456, November 2015 (original publication May 1966)

The general commanding the forces of the Earth Alliance seeks out poet, linguist, and cryptographer Rydra Wong, to ask her to take on the decryption of the Invaders' code, which is being used to commit sabotage in the Alliance's military and transport forces. After some work with it, she tells him it's a language, not a code, and she needs everything the Alliance has on it to be able to translate it. She also asks him for a ship, and recruits a diverse and somewhat unlikely crew to go with her to what her analysis of the code/language, Babel-17, leads her to conclude will be the location of the next act of sabotage.

They reach their destination, and it's not long before the sabotage strikes in several ways--one of them affecting her own ship, and boosting them into near-disaster.

I Am Not Starfire, by Mariko Tamaki (author), Yoshi Yoshitani (illustrator)

DC Comics, July 2021

Mandy does NOT love having a superhero mother, and even more the fact that people think she must have superpowers, too. Her seventeenth birthday is coming up. She's determined not to go to college, because she's sick of everyone expecting her to do things she can't do.

But her life is about to change. Really change.

Mandy is the teenage daughter of the superhero Starfire, one of the Titans. Starfire is from another planet, but she has lived on Earth since before Mandy was born. Who, exactly, Mandy's father is, is a mystery to everyone but Starfire.

Mandy, unlike her mother, has no superpowers. Her classmates, for the most part, don't believe that, and keep trying to tease and pester her into revealing the powers they assume she has. She's also dark-haired and pudgy, very different in appearance from Starfire--some of which may be deliberate. Mandy does have one good friend, Lincoln, who understands, sympathizes with, and barring her determination not to go to college, supports her "be herself, not Starfire" approach to life.

But her seventeenth birthday is approaching. One of her teachers has given the class a project, and because they always choose the same partners, has assigned them different partners this time. Mandy's assigned partner is Claire--one of the "popular girls," a girl she has a crush on, a girl whose house she had an embarrassing experience at previously, and hasn't been near since. What can possibly go right? Oh, and Mandy's mother wants to have a birthday party for her.

Claire proves to be an unexpectedly compatible study partner--and unexpectedly likable.

At least until they plan a study session at Mandy's rather than Claire's, and Claire's friends whom even Claire admits are dicks show up, and they all arrive to find Starfire holding a meeting with the Titans, and...things don't go well.

But things don't go really bad until Starfire's sister, Blackfire, shows up, and Mandy both learns unpleasant truths about her family background, and finds herself in a fight for her life. And her mother's life. A fight in which she's supposed to use the powers she doesn't have.

This is fast-paced, a lot of fun, treats the teens like real, complicated people, and being LGBTQ as just another aspect of who you are, rather than a big, hairy deal that has to be the center of the story.

I repeat, a lot of fun. And very satisfying. Recommended.

I bought this book.

Horsepower & Medicine, by Charles de Lint

Triskell Press, February 2019

Yirah Green is working on the wrecked bike of her uncle, Jimmy, who went off to war and never came back. She's doing it in a hidden arroyo on the Kikimi rez, telling no one except her best friend, Santana Corn Eyes.

Yirah is also being visited by what she believes is Jimmy's ghost, silently encouraging to keep working on the bike. Santana isn't so sure; ghosts should not be crossing over from the Otherworld. It might not be a good idea to keep working on that bike.

But Yirah won't be dissuaded, and Santana has promised not to tell anyone her secret.

All seems to be well until Yirah completes her repair and refurbishing of the bike.

Deathbeast, by David Gerrold (author), Andy Caploe (narrator)

Audible Studios, May 2014 (original publication 1978)

Time travel. Dinosaurs. A Captain Ahab-like hunt for a Moby Dick-like tyrannosaurus rex.

A group of six hunters and two guides "flash back" to 100 million years ago, to hunt dinosaurs. And specifically, the lead hunter, Ethab, is determined to bag a T. Rex. And he's not interested in the advice of the guides, Meghan and Loevil, that the hunters who have died on previous expeditions, have been the ones who insisted on going after T.  Rex.

Things start to go wrong immediately upon arrival, when they arrive practically on top of a deinonychus, a roughly man-sized predator who responds to their sudden intrusion by attacking. It loses the fight, but not by much, and a significant portion of their gear is damaged or destroyed.

Doctor Dogs: How Our Best Friends Are Becoming Our Best Medicine, by Maria Goodavage (author), Suzanne Elise Freeman (narrator)

Maria Goodavage, October 2019

This is a really enjoyable and informative look at the expanding roles dogs are playing in human health care around the world.

It starts with dogs who are learning to sniff cancer in humans. This is something that started with people's own pets alerting to Something Very Wrong in some part of their owner's body, with the "something wrong" proving to be cancer. It took a while before anecdotal accounts of such incidents began to get the attention of doctors and medical researchers willing and able to follow up on it. This led to to testing dogs on samples that either did, or did not, contain samples of cancer. 

Juniper Wiles (Newford #21), by Charles de Lint

Triskell Press, April 2021

Juniper Wiles played teen detective Nora Constantine on a successful tv show, and then made some movies that weren't so great. She decided to leave LA and go home to Newford. She's living on her residuals, and pursuing the art she once set aside for acting. This has included reconnecting with her friend, faerie artist Jilly Coppercorn, and her interesting circle of friends in the artists' collective, Bramleyhaugh. She's happy, and doing well.

And then one day she's sitting in her favorite coffee shop when a young man walks up to her, and asks "Nora Constantine" to take his case. He wants her to find the man who sold him the manuscript of a new Nora Constantine novel.

He thinks Juniper really is Nora Constantine. And he thinks the new novel is responsible for all the terrible things that have happened in Crescent Beach since the end of the tv show.

Juniper does not respond well, and chases this obsessed fan off.

Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas

Swoon Books, ISBN 9781250250469, September 2020

Yadriel is a Latinx teenager with a traditional family, and hopes to be a true brujo. He's got the talent. He's of an age to have the ceremony pledging himself to Lady Death, and becoming a true brujo.

The problem: Yadriel's very traditional family is convinced he's their daughter, not their son. They expect him to become a bruja, a form of magic for which he has no gift. Finally, with the help of his best friend, his cousin Maritza, he performs the ritual himself--successfully. Lady Death, at least, accepts him as a real brujo.

But he still has to prove it to his family and the rest of their community. The sudden death and disappearance of another cousin provides a chance to provide that proof while doing real good for the community.

He sets out to summon his cousin's ghost.

Instead, he summons the ghost of a fellow high school student who is a bit of a bad boy, rumored to be a gang member--and now recently dead. The ghost, Julian Diaz, wants to know what happened to him, and if his friends are all right. He absolutely refuses to be released to the next world until he does.

Manor for Sale, Baron Included (A Romance of Rank #1) by Esther Hatch (author), Noah Wall (narrator)

Esther Hatch, June 2021

Lord Farnsworth is struggling with the financial challenges created by the repeal of the Corn Laws and the consequent hardships of his tenants on the entailed properties inherited from his father. The only property he owns that isn't entailed, that he can sell, is the estate inherited from his mother. Unfortunately, in addition to his deep attachment to his mother's home, where he spent every winter until her death, it's also the only one that's currently profitable. The tenants there are raising sheep, not grain, so the drop in grain prices has made their farms more profitable, not less.

His solicitor startles him with a proposal to sell only the manor. There's an offer from a very successful merchant, the owner of British Vermilion Textiles, who wants only the manor. The other surprise is that this merchant is a woman, an unmarried woman, Sally Duncan. After his initial very negative reaction, Lord Farnsworth, i.e. Jonathan, has a clever idea that will solve all his problems.

Different, Not Less: Ultimate Success Stories from People with Autism and Asperger's by Temple Grandin (author), Colleen Patrick (narrator)

Future Horizons, January 2017

This is a collection of success stories from a variety of very different people on the autism spectrum, selected and with introductions by Temple Grandin. The people are very different, their stories are very different, and their definitions of success are very different.

For some, success is holding down a job, however modest, and being able to support themselves. For others, there's considerable professional success, in technology, art, teaching, and business in various forms.

Some have found  that marriage and romantic romantic relationships are not a thing they are successful at, no matter how well they do in other areas of life. Some have built successful marriages, though often only after being diagnosed as autistic, enabling them and their partners to understand their behavior better.

Lost and Found in Dog Town (Dog Town #3), by Sandy Rideout

Sandy Rideout, September 2018

Mim is a single mother, raising a teenage son, working as a nurse in the local hospital, and also as a visiting nurse to earn some extra money. Mim and her son Kyle have a dog, George, from a local breeder of 'doodles, her friend Arianna, or Ari. Dorset Hills, a.k.a. "Dog Town," is a wonderful place for dog lovers to live--or should be. The local government is very into promoting it as a tourist destination; that's part of why they promote the "Dog Town" image. However, they also promote the town for Christmas, and have very strict guidelines for decorations that can be seen from the street, anywhere, under any circumstances. And they don't like negative news.

When George is stolen from Mim's back yard, the police initially have no desire to take it seriously, at all. They insist that George most likely just "wandered off"--out of a yard with a substantial fence and a locked gate. And having wandered off, he'll wander back, right? They really don't want a "dog stolen in Dog Town" story breaking right before Christmas, and it's at this point that I start to wonder how much Dog Town really loves dogs.