A Distant View of Everything (Isabel Dalhousie), )by Alexander McCall Smith (author), Davina Porter (narrator)

Recorded Books, July 2017

Isabel and Jamie have a new baby, another boy, named Magnus. They and their housekeeper, Grace, are thrilled. Their older boy, Charlie, not so much. He's certain he can come up with good arguments for excluding Magnus from the family!

But that's just a normal parenting challenge, and they'll cope as most parents do. Bigger puzzles include Cat's new part-time shop-assistant, Peg, whom Cat seems unusually enthusiastic about. Where did Cat meet her? Why is she so vague about her background?

Alice (The Chronicles of Alice #1), by Christina Henry (author), Jenny Sterlin (narrator)

Recorded Books, January 2016 (original publication August 2015

Alice is a young woman living in an insane asylum in a city divided.

She grew up in the New City, and at sixteen, she went with a friend, Dor, on an adventure into the Old City. The Old City is completely surrounded and contained by the New City, and contains all that the New City would like to deny. That includes dirt and poverty, but also crime and magic.

The adventure did not go well, and Alice is returned to the New City talking only of a tall man with long rabbit ears. Soon she is hospitalized, and is fed powders with every meal that dull her senses and awareness.

In Farleigh Field, by Rhys Bowen (author), Gemma Dawson (narrator)

Audible Studios, March 2017

I've read several of Bowen's Her Royal Spyness books, and found them silly and superficial enough that it made me reluctant to try In Farleigh Field. The description and the sample moved me to try it anyway, and I'm glad I did.

With World War Two starting, the five daughters of Lord Westerham are all faced with their separate challenges. The eldest, Livy, is married and has a baby, and her husband has been sent off to the Bahamas, as part of the "security" for the Duke of Windsor. Lady Margaret is in France, trapped there when she chose not to leave her French lover as the Germans advanced. As he's part of the French resistance, she's in real danger.

It's the third daughter, Lady Pamela, who is most central to the story. She's been more or less in love with neighbor Jeremy Prescott, bad boy & RAF flyer. Unfortunately, he's now been shot down and captured by the Germans. Neighbor and local vicar's son Ben Cresswell was injured in a flying accident--with Jeremy as the pilot--just prior to the war, and is now doing a dull, government office job in London, as is Pamela.

What neither their families nor any of their friends know is that Ben is an MI5 agent, and Pamela is a Bletchley Park code breaker.

What Pamela doesn't know is that Ben is in love with her.

Meanwhile, back at the Sutton family home, Farleigh, a parachutist whose chute never opened has fallen and died in a nearby field. He's wearing a British uniform, but it's not quite right, and he doesn't have identification.

Margaret, known as Margo, is arrested by the Gestapo. Jeremy returns to Britain, with a heartwarming story of escaping from the Germans. Pamela and Ben have each been giving mysteries to solve.

Youngest daughter, Lady Phoebe, befriends the young London evacuee, Alfie, with whom she found the dead parachutist.

There's a plot afoot, related to the planned German invasion, and no one is safe and no one knows where the danger is coming from.

This is rich, well plotted, tightly paced, with interesting, well-developed characters.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Charm (A Cinderella reverse fairytale) (Reverse Fairytales Book 1), by J.A. Armitage

Armitage, September 2017

This is a modern retelling of Cinderella.

Princess Charmaine is the second daughter of King Aaron of Silverwood, with no worries about ever being the heir and eventually the queen. At least, not until her elder sister, Grace, dies suddenly of an unsuspected heart defect. Quite abruptly, she's thrust into the plans made for her sister, which include a large ball in just a few weeks, at which she will meet one hundred eligible men.

And from those eligible men, she must select five to stay and "date" her, with the goal of selecting one to be her bridegroom, at the already-planned wedding which will take place in just six months. Some young women might welcome this as terribly romantic. Charmaine is horrified, even apart from her grief for her sister and the fact that she'd rather not be queen.

Aesop's Fables, by Aesop (author), Jonathan Kent (narrator)

Tantor Audio, August 2005

This is an enjoyable, quick (under three hours) reading of all of Aesop's fables. There are a few where I thought that this must not be the same translation I read as a kid, but that was a long time ago, and I don't read Greek, so who am I to argue? Regardless, it's well done and worth a listen.

I bought this audiobook.

Secrets in Death (In Death #45), by J.D. Robb (author), Susan Erikson (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2017

Eve Dallas is back again, and this time the murder victim almost literally drops at her feet. She's reluctantly having a drink with Garnet de Winter at a bar Roarke owns, a French-oriented bar called Du Vin. She's noticed that a well-known gossip columnist, Larinda Mars. She barely notices when Mars heads downstairs to the ladies' room, but everyone notices when she comes back up into the bar.

Mars' arm is soaked in blood, and she is staggering and seemingly barely aware. It's not long before Dallas, Roarke, and Peabody are tracking down her killer, a search which gets ever more interesting when they discover she's been blackmailing the well-heeled.

Soon they find she was choosing her targets very carefully.

Also, that her background may not be the one her official records show.

I'm impressed that even 45 books in, J.D. Robb is still keeping the In Death series, fresh, interesting, and completely absorbing.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Little Girl Lost (DI Robyn Carter #1), by Carol E. Wyer (author), Emma Newman (narrator)

Bookouture, January 2017

DI Robyn Carter is just about to return to work on the police force after an extended leave following the death of her husband and unborn child. During her leave, she's worked temporarily with a friend, Ross Cunningham. He's a former police officer who now runs a private detective agency. For her last case with him, he hands her a woman, Mary Matthews, whose husband has disappeared. There's no apparent reason, and also no apparent evidence of foul play, and initially very little to go on.

Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities, by Amy Stewart (author), Coleen Marlo (narrator)

Tantor Audio, June 2011

If you need to research some clever poisons for your next murder mystery, you could do worse than start your search for candidates here. It's a quick and readable introduction to the wide world of dangerous plants, with the fun and exciting (well, if you share some of my gallows humor) basics on the major ones plus the relatives of these dangerous plants.

But that's not all this book offers. It's not just clever murder methods. It's also the stuff won't kill you (probably), but will make you sick and very uncomfortable. It's the stuff it would never occur to you to eat, but might kill your animals.

It's the stuff you probably don't want to plant in your garden, especially if you have allergies, or care about people who do.

It's the invasive plants that are choking waterways.

It's the nasty stuff that global warming will help invade areas currently free of it.

It's those fascinating carnivorous plants.

Did I mention it's a lot of fun?

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

The Shark (Forgotten Files #1), by Mary Burton (author), Christina Traister (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, May 2016

Riley Tatum is a Virginia state trooper now, but twelve years ago she very nearly died at the hands of a serial killer in her childhood home of New Orleans. It was a painful lesson in the dangers of the streets she had fled to when her mother died and her stepfather proved to be a predator, and she still has no idea how she escaped and wound up at a bus stop in Virginia.

Riley is a topnotch investigator who had the chance to be promoted to agent, but turned it down to stay with her search dog, Cooper. She's also in the process of adopting a former runaway, Hannah, and is just a couple of weeks away from the adoption being finalized. The last think she needs, she feels, is her carefully concealed past to come out now, and possibly mess up the adoption.

A Strange Scottish Shore, by Julianna Gray

Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 9780698176492, September 2017

Emmaline Truelove, Lord Silverton, and their friend Max Haywood, now the Duke of Olympia, are once again seeking the answers to the strange events in Greece last year. No longer the Duke's secretary, Truelove is now the
Director of the Haywood Institute, created to be the organizing force in the Duke's research into history, archaeology, and anachronisms--and last year's events, recounted in A Most Extraordinary Pursuit, are currently a major focus.

And a puzzling adversary, a ginger-haired man who seems determined to stop something the new Duke of Olympia will do at some point in the future, is becoming ever more dangerous.

Silverton disappears--just disappears--while he and Truelove are traveling north to meet up with the Duke, who is meeting a possible new Duchess. In Scotland, at the castle of Thurso, Truelove and the Max negotiate tricky social waters created by the rumors they are lovers, and also the puzzling reasons for the ginger-haired man's pursuit.