A Banquet of Consequences (Inspector Lynley #19), by Elizabeth George

Viking, ISBN 9789525954330, October 2015

Thomas Lynley, Barbara Havers, and others are back after some fairly harrowing events in previous novels.

Havers has a transfer to Berwick-on-Tweed hanging over her, with Chief Superintendent Ardery ready to sign it at the least excuse. She's gotten completely restrained in dress and behavior--and Lynley feels he's effectively lost the use of his partner, previously an excellent detective. Havers needs some leeway if she's to do anything useful. Dorothea Harriman, department secretary, tries befriending Havers in the hope of changing her focus  just a bit, with mixed results.

Then a famous feminist author Havers has met briefly, Clare Abbott, dies suddenly, and her editor, Rory Statham, doesn't believe it's "just" a heart attack. At Havers' urging, Lynley pushes for and gets a second autopsy--which finds evidence of poison, specifically sodium azide.

Then Statham is found barely alive, apparently of the same poison.

Deadly Ties (A Waterside Kennels Mystery), by Susan Holmes (author), Robin Rowan (narrator)

Susan A. Holmes, September 2014

Maggie Porter has come home to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, reopening her grandfather's Waterside Kennels. She's been gone from the town since she was five, when her mother left the family and her father moved to Florida, taking her and her grandmother--her mother Margaret's mother. Now her grandmother is gone, Maggie has inherited the property, and it's time to start living her own dreams rather than trying to keep her father happy.

Maggie has found many people happy to welcome her back, and Waterside's pet boarding business is off to a strong start. The local veterinarian, Angus Sheppard, has enough confidence in her that he closes his clinic and his own kennel for remodeling, sending the boarding business her way. She's hired a groomer, and has hired part-time staff, some of whom worked for her grandfather in his last few years. There are old family friends eager to lend a hand when needed.

But then the anonymous letters put together from words and letters cut out from newspapers and magazines start to arrive. Also heavy-breather phone calls. Doreen, the receptionist she employed for a few weeks who then quit without notice turns up dead--with a locket that had belonged to Maggie's mother. There are break-ins, and once the boarding dogs are let loose on the property. What's going on?

Christmas at Evergreen Inn, by Donna Alward

St. Martin's Press, ISBN 9781250086945, October 2015

This is a gentle little Christmas romance to help you get ready for the holidays.

As teenagers in Jewell Cove, Lainey Price and Todd Ricker were a bit wild, and very popular with the opposite sex. Ironically, they regarded each other as a bit out of reach. Then Lainey went off to college and came back engaged to Jason. She also took over the Evergreen Inn, restored it, and built up its business. Meanwhile, formerly wild Todd became a police officer in Jewell Cove.

When a major nor'easter hits Jewell Cove and the entire region a few days before Christmas, Todd is out on his last, very tricky patrol of the roads when he sees a car that's slid off the road into the ditch. He pulls the driver, Mr. Sewell, out of his car and drives him to the only place in town that might still have room-Evergreen Inn. It's full, too, but by now the roads have been closed, and Sewell and Todd are stuck there. Lainey finds space for Sewell, and puts Todd on her couch in her own cottage behind the inn.

The Mare, by Mary Gaitskill

Pantheon, ISBN 97803073, November 2015

Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old and living with her mother, Sylvia, and brother, Dante, in Crown Heights, New York. Her mother is from the Dominican Republic, and still only speaks Spanish, but Velvet and Dante were born here.

Sylvia signs her children up for a program that will send them out of the city for two weeks, By the rules of the  program, the siblings go to different families in different locations.

Velvet goes to Ginger and Paul, in upstate New York. Ginger and Paul live across from a stable, and Velvet meets a horse called Fugly Girl, whom one of the trainers, Pat, rescued from a life of abuse. She winds up staying with her hosts for a full month, and it's the start of a long relationship.

The Magician and Laplace's Demon, by Tom Crosshill

Clarkesworld Magazine, December 2014

A magician and an AI are locked in a long, long duel.

The AI is programmed to keep humanity safe and happy. Magic is unpredictability, and that's not safe...

When the AI meets a real magician and discovers what she can do, it's clear it needs to first, understand magic, and second, eliminate magic and the threat the magicians represent.

This is a neat little conflict, seen entirely through the eyes of the AI, who over the centuries comes to permeate and control all of human existence--except the magicians. It takes over a thousand years to get lucky and find the crucial information that enables the identification and elimination of magicians, one by one.

But what if magic and magicians are essential to the survival of the universe?

And what really happens at the end?

Quick, enjoyable, and interesting. Recommended.

The Case of the Passionless Bees, by Rhonda Eikamp

Lightspeed Magazine, June 2014

Steampunk Holmes!

Gearlock Holmes is an "amalgamated person," what we in less enlightened times than Holmes' might call a robot, or a droid. He's been retired to the countryside for some time now, raising bees, but when a crisis arises, he sends for his old friend, Dr. Watson.

The crisis is that his housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson--also an amalgamated person--has been taken into custody for the murder of one of Holmes' guests.

It's a neat little mystery, and both the characteristics and the legal standing of amalgamated persons are crucial to how the story plays out.

Recommended for a quick, fun read.

The Last of the Firedrakes (The Chronicles of Avalonia #1), by Farah Oomerbhoy

Wise Ink Creative Publishing, ISBN 9781940014708, August 2015

So much fun.

And so much idiot plot.

Aurora Darlington is sixteen years old, and, after having been adopted by loving parents at about two years old, has recently been orphaned by the deaths of both her parents and is now living with her aunt and uncle.

Her aunt, uncle, and cousin Cornelia are not at all affectionate or kind, but she's safe, warm, and fed. Things could be worse. The only thing she knows about her original parents is that she was found with a note saying her name was Aurora, and with the medallion she still wears all the time.

Bream Gives Me Hiccups, by Jesse Eisenberg (author, narrator), Hallie Eisenberg (narrator), Annapurna Siriam (narrator), Erin Darke (narrator), Colin Nissan (narrator)

Audible Studios, September 2015

I had modest expectations for this book; it's a collection of short stories of the genre that thinks it isn't a genre, literary fiction. Very often, literary fiction seems to operate on the premise that because the world is familiar and real, the behavior of the people doesn't have to make sense.

The behavior of Eisenberg's characters does make sense, not by being sane and reasonable, but by reflecting real human emotions, motivations, desires, fears, insecurities. The first story is a nine-year-old boy, writing reviews of restaurants and other dining experiences that are really accounts of episodes in his emotional progress through the experience of learning to be the child of a single mother after his parents' divorce. He's working out what his relationship is with his mother, what it means to be best friends with Matthew, another child  of a broken home, and whether or not his father was really "there," even before he left for Louisiana and married another woman.

The Litany of Earth, by Ruthanna Emrys

Allen Williams
http://www.tor.com/2014/05/14/the-litany-of-earth-ruthanna-emrys/

Tor.com, May 2014

It's a few years after the end of World War II, and Aphra Marsh is living in San Francisco. She's living with a family that, like her own, spent the war locked up as possible threats, despite neither guilt nor evidence, solely based on group identity.

The Kotos are Japanese-Americans.

Aphra Marsh is something else, as her family was. The greatest cruelty they were subjected to was isolation from the sea.

With most of her family and all their possessions gone, and having lived too much of her life in captivity, Aphra doesn't have as complete an education in their ways as she would like. There may be more texts than the pitiful few she has recovered hidden away at Miskatonic University, but she'll never be able to get access to them.

But somewhere along the way she meets an old bookseller, who in the back room of his shop has his own private collection of materials--some real, some fakes--and a great desire to learn.

Into this sometimes fragile new life, an FBI agent walks, and threatens to upend her life again.

This is an interesting and extremely well-done take on the Cthulu mythos, and I very much enjoyed the unfolding of Aphra's identity and personality, as well as her relationship with the bookseller and the Kotos.

Recommended.

A Darker Shade of Magic (A Darker Shade of Magic #1), by V.E. Schwab (author), Steven Crossley (narrator)

Tantor Audio, April 2015, (original publication February 2015)

Kell is one of the last of the Antari, or Travelers, blood magicians able to move between alternate universes. His world is the world of Red London, where magic is common, and supports a healthy, thriving society. Kell serves the King and Queen, and has been raised as a brother to the Crown Prince, Rhy. He feels like a brother to Rhy, but to the king and queen, although they are kind, and warm, and generous, he feels more like a valued possession.

One of his duties as the Crown's Antari is conveying messages to and from the other Londons--or rather, to and from White London and Grey London. Black London is dead, completely closed off, and a rebuke and warning to the other Londons. White London is closest to Black London, and cold, drained of color, and ruled by a murderous pair of twins, Astrid and Athos Dane. Grey London is our London, and gives us the time setting: It's Regency London, with George III floating in and out of rationality and coherence.