A Shot to Die For (Ellie Forman #4), by Libby Fischer Hellmann (author), Mary Conway (narrator)

Fischer Hellman Communications, ISBN 9781938733017, April 2012 (original publication August 2005)

Ellie Forman stops at a highway rest stop on her way home from shooting a video at Lake Geneva. She chats with a woman who is is in some distress because her ride hasn't picked her up as expected. In moments, the woman is dead, shot by a sniper while Ellie is standing right beside her.

The shooting is nearly identical to another sniper killing at a different rest stop a few months prior. The woman killed was Daria Flynn, a sous chef at The Lodge in Lake Geneva.

Ellie promises her father, her daughter Rachel, her co-worker Mack, and her friend Susan that she is not getting involved.

Forsaken Skies, by D. Nolan Clark

Orbit Books, ISBN 9780316355698, September 2016

Humanity has colonized about a hundred star systems, and found no signs of intelligent alien life. Now a low-value colony on a barely-terraformed world, Niraya, is under attack, and the "poly" (corporation) that owns it has decided it's simply not worth defending from whatever other poly is attacking it. Its inhabitants aren't ready to lay down and die, yet, though, and they dispatch Elder McRae and Aspirant Roan to Hexus, the nearest major apace station, to seek help.

They first make contact with a Navy officer, Auster Maggs, who promises he can bring them help. Unfortunately, he can't, and doesn't intend to. He has a different agenda.

At this point, Hexus traffic control officer Tannis Valk, and Aleister Lanoe, a legendary retired Navy fighter pilot who came here chasing a young pilot fleeing for his own reasons, accidentally become involved. It's not long before Lanoe, Valk, Maggs, the young pilot Thom, and old comrades from Lanoe's past are on their way to Niraya with McRae and Roan. They've got four pilots and an engineer to fight off an unknown attacker with far greater resources.

Redtooth, by Brian Rathbone, (author, narrator)

Brian Rathbone, February 2011

Bob Hanks likes the stuff he has, and doesn't want to switch to new stuff--even when his wife thinks his old stuff looks kind of dorky. This includes his battered, old bluetooth headset, held together with a bit of electrical tape. When his wife threatens him--from his point of view--with a shopping trip to get "stuff he needs," he seizes the chance to go out without while she's out with a friend. He'll get the new things, but without her guidance.

And for certain values of "new." His first stop is a pawn shop.

It's the beginning of a hair-raising adventure.

This is a short story, just half an hour of listening, that appeals to my admittedly sometimes twisted sense of humor. Well worth your time.

Recommended.

The author posted the link to the Soundcloud audio free on Twitter.

The Brain: Nature's Own Computer, by Anthony Johns

exact-psychology.com, June 2011

Anthony Johns is an engineer, and in this short book he looks at the brain and the human body from that perspective: that we are chemical machines, and our brains are low-voltage, highly efficient computers. They come with a basic operating system installed, and get "programmed," starting in the womb, by the general environment, experiences, and the intentional education efforts of the adults we rely on. He includes some very practical approaches to addressing and correcting mental and emotional disturbances created by unhealthy, destructive experiences.

This includes the effects of his own negative experiences of being abused by a choirmaster in his own church. This helped create an unhealthy, negative relationship with religion for him, which led to later mental and emotional disturbances which he has had to work through. Much of this book, without going into excess detail about his own personal experiences, is concerned with laying out the basic tools used to overcome and emerge from that stressful period.

The Book Club Murders (The Oakwood Mystery Series #1), by Leslie Nagel

Alibi, ISBN 9780425285206. September 2016

Charley Carpenter owns a successful consignment shop in her hometown of Oakwood, and one of the small ways she's made it successful is by letting her friend Frankie Bright lure her into a book club with Oakland society's elite ladies. She really likes only a few members of the Agathas, but she does enjoy books, and it has been great for business.

Then Serena Wyndham, sister of fellow Agatha member Lindy Taylor, is found dead, and it's a scene right out of one of their murder mysteries.

The investigating detective is her old crush and nemesis Marcus Trenault, now a police detective on their local police force. The two of them are both attracted to and exasperated by each other, but as one socially prominent society lady after another dies, all but Serena actually members of the Agathas, they can't avoid each other.

It gets even harder when it's clear that all the murder methods are taken straight from murder mysteries the club has read in recent months.

Letters From Paris, by Juliet Blackwell

Berkley Publishing Group

Claire "Chance" Broussard returns home from Chicago to Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana because her grandmother, her beloved Mammaw, is dying. It's her grandmother and her Uncle Remy who raised her after her mother died in a car accident and her father proved unfit as a parent. Chance never felt she fit in with all her cousins, but studied, worked, and escaped, first to college and then to life in the software industry in Chicago.

Now she's back, remembering her past, asking questions, and wondering why neither Chicago nor Plaquemines Parish feels like "home."

And then she finds a treasure from her past, a mask of a beautiful woman that her great-grandfather sent to her great-grandmother from Paris at the end of World War II. As a child, she hid in the attic and talked to that mask. Now she talks to Mammaw about it, and about the odd letter, torn in half, that was apparently used as part of the packing materials. There are no names, but it includes the plaintive line, "He will never let me go alive."

After her grandmother's death, Chance goes to Paris, looking for the secret of the mask, and for a family secret Mammaw hinted she'll find there.

The mask is a woman known only as L'Inconnue, "the unknown woman," and her mask is famous and popular--and still unknown. Chance finds she doesn't much care for being a tourist in Paris, but as she  gets to know the descendants of the Lombardi family, the maskmakers who made the L'Inconnue mask, she finds he quite likes living in Paris. She takes a job working in their shop, mainly as a translator at first because Armand hates dealing with tourists--his main customers--and his cousin Giselle doesn't speak English. Armand is grumpy, remote, and surrounded by a mystery of his own. The previous translator, who quit abruptly, is also American, and is as grumpy and remote as Armand when Chance brings her some mail.

In alternate chapters, we get Chance's story in modern-day Paris, the real story of L'Inconnue in the Paris of the late 1890s, and even a glimpse of Chance's great-grandfather's visit to the maskmakers's shop in 1945. It's a slow, fascinating, and ultimately satisfying unfolding of both romance and family secrets.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Apprentice in Death (In Death #43), by J.D. Robb

Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 9781101987971, September 2016

The newest serial killer in New York is using a high-powered laser rifle, from a considerable distance indicating a high level of skill, and choose victims that at first glance seem to offer no obvious attraction. The first attack is on ice skaters in Central Park, with three victims: a young woman who's a competitive skater, an obstetrician, and a man celebrating his birthday with his wife. None of them seem to have any enemies. It might be completely random.

Then there's a second hit, with four dead and one wounded, and a pattern starts to emerge. This is definitely a serial killer, and the killer is an exceptional marksman.

Over just a few frighteningly intensive days, Dallas, her crew, and and the entire NYPSD parse the the clues and rush to find the killer before the next hit.

Dead as a Doornail (When the Fat Ladies Sing #3), by Linda P. Kozar (author), Michelle Rabb (narrator)

Audible, November 2008

Sue Jan recently got married and is now waiting for her and Monroe's dream house to be finished. Her friend Lovita is planning her wedding to Hudson. In the meantime, they're running their beauty shop and boutique, the best (and only) one in Wachita.

All this is slightly complicated by the death of the man doing the work on Sue Jan and Monroe's house, Monroe being accused of his murder, the arrival of Sue Jan's trailer dwelling cousins from Paris, Texas, with their trailer, which they park on Lovita's property....

Oh, and Wiley Butz is running for mayor against Monroe, and his girlfriend announces her plans to open a rival beauty shop.

On top of all this, Lovita has a strong feeling that there's something really wrong in Wachita.

Ghost Talkers, by Mary Robinette Kowal (author,narrator)

Audible Studios, August 2016

Ginger Stuyvesant is a young American heiress, who moves to London to be with her aunt, and meets a British army officer. She and Captain Benjamin Harford become engaged, just in time for World War One.

Ginger and her aunt are both mediums, and in this very slightly alternate world, the British army recognizes a potential advantage. Ginger and her aunt become part of the "London branch," a corps of mediums and their supporting circles. British soldiers are conditioned, by a secret method, to report in to the mediums when they are killed in action. They can't pass beyond the veil until they've made their last report. This gives the British an often critical advantage.

The Germans don't have s similar corps because they still burn witches. They've realized something is going on, though, and are now trying to find the "conditioning" method, so they can have their own similar corps of, as they imagine it, ghost spies.

The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone, by Geonn Cannon

Supposed Crimes, by ISBN 9781938108822, September 2015

In an early 20th century where magic, to some degree, works, but not much else is changed, Dorothy Boone is the very frustrating daughter of a very respectable family. In time, the mutual frustration becomes so great that she moves in with her grandmother, Lady Eula Boone. She gets a very unexpected education, and eventually inherits her grandmother's maps, books, artifacts, and career. I'm not clear on exactly why she is thereafter Lady Boone, but this isn't exactly our world, and I choose not to worry about it.

Miss Trafalgar starts out as Tall Girl, a child in a desperately poor Ethiopian village. She and others get traded off to some men who claim they are looking for girls to train as nurses, etc. They have a different plan for the girls, of course, or at least whichever one of them seems most suitable.

They need a body for a supernatural creature from the past to inhabit, so it can rule the world. It doesn't quite work out the way they expect.