A Cruise to Die For (Alix London #2), by Charlotte Elkins (author), Aaron Elkins (author), Kate Rudd (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2013

Alix London, after not hearing from Ted Ellesworth for much longer than she expected, gets a call from him at last.

He wants her to do another job for the FBI, and this one is undercover. Well, not really, he says. She'll be going on a luxury cruise with a Greek financier and art investor. The Greek tycoon, Panos Papadakis, is auctioning off twenty-three highly valued art works, and he wants someone to talk to his guests/customers about art in general and these works and artists in particular. The FBI wants her to just listen for any tidbits about his fractional investment scheme, which they suspect of being in reality a Ponzi scheme. What could be easier?

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy #1), by N.K. Jemisin (author), Casaundra Freeman (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2010

I keep telling myself that N.K. Jemisin's work is exactly the sort of dark stuff I don't like.

And I keep loving it.

Yeine Darr is the ruler of a small kingdom in the north, a kingdom slowly dying from the hostility of her grandfather. Yet after her mother's mysterious death, her grandfather summons her to the fabulous city of Sky, where to her shock she is named one of his heirs.

This is not the good fortune it appears. It locks her in a death struggle with two cousins she had never met before--and she soon realizes she is supposed to lose, and die in the process.

The Lilac Bouquet, by Carolyn Brown (author), Brittany Pressley (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, March 2017

With a family history that includes three generations of Massey women having children out of wedlock, Emmy Jo Massey is determined to have a big, formal wedding with as much as possible of the town of Hickory, Texas in attendance. Raising the money for the big wedding includes taking a two-month job as a home health aide to town recluse Seth Thomas.

Her great-grandmother, Tandy, is absolutely opposed. She wants the child she raised when her granddaughter died going nowhere near Seth Thomas. Of course, she's also dead set against Emmy Jo marrying Logan Grady, too, and that's not stopping Emmy Jo. But Tandy won't tell her why she's so opposed. The only answer she'll give is that she refuses to talk about the past--an answer that quite reasonably doesn't sway Emmy Jo to her point of view.

Voice of the Whirlwind (Hardwired), by Walter Jon Williams (author), Don Leslie (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, ISBN 9781433252990, January 2012 (original publication May 1987)

Steward is a clone, the clone of a man who spent years as a member of a military polycorp called Coherent Light. The original, or "alpha," was murdered, and the clone, or "beta," is determined to find out who and why.

Unfortunately, he's been revived with fifteen years of memory missing. Nor is this an accident. It's a deliberate choice his alpha made, and chose not to explain. Steward has a lot of information to recover before he can hope to complete his mission, and every step of the way is dangerous. He's chasing through the solar system, one space habitat after another, and the history he missed includes the arrival of a significantly more advanced alien species known as the Powers.

Eternal Empire, Vol. 1 (Eternal Empire #1-5), by Sarah Vaughn (writer), Jonathan Luna (artist)

Image Comics, ISBN 9781534303409, November 2017

In a world where the Eternal Empress has ruled for a thousand years, she's on the verge of conquering the last parts of it still not under her control. Into this world, two unusual young people have been born. Tair is white-haired and very pale; Roin is oddly orange in color.

When they find each other, they discover they have the power to control fire. Events soon convince them they have no choice but to use this power to fight the empire, but how?

Tair and Roin are both likable and interesting, with plausibly different points of view. The world is definitely not our world; it has three suns.

It also has dragons, and that turns out to matter a great deal.

The story doesn't seem terribly original, but it's enjoyable, and our protagonists are likable. I also enjoyed the art, which helped me slip into the story. It's a pleasant way to spend some down time.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

The Drug Hunters: The Improbable Quest to Discover New Medicines, by Donald R. Kirsch (author), Ogi Ogas (author), James Foster (narrator)

Tantor Audio, January 2017

Donald Kirsch is a drug hunter--a scientist who works for pharmaceutical companies working to develop new drugs. He's worked for several different companies over the course of his career, and has lived through finding new drugs, having the quest to develop a new drug end in failure, or in the development of something entirely different from what they were after. He's lived through employers not thinking a promising new potential drug was promising enough, and the frustrations of getting drugs through the regulatory approval process.

This started out as a book about why drugs are so expensive. It wound up being about the excitement, tedium, adventure, frustration of drug development. And, oh yes, why it makes the end products so expensive.

The Year of the Hare, by Arto Paasilinna (author), Herbert Lomas (translator), Simon Vance (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, ISBN 9781441772169, December 2010 (original publication 1975)

Vatanen, a Finnish journalist, is out on assignment with a photographer when they hit and injure a wild hare. Vatanen decides to rescue the hare, and the photographer, after waiting and calling for some time in increasing exasperation, drives off.

The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, by Lyndsay Faye (author), Simon Vance (narrator)

Highbridge, March 2017

These are the Sherlock Holmes stories that Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote--stories from before he met Watson, stories that couldn't be told because they would have harmed innocent people, stories told from Holmes' point of view. What, for instance, was he doing in when he stayed in London during the first part of The Hound of the Baskervilles? There's even one story that concerns an experience Watson had during his time in San Francisco, long before he met Holmes.

And they are, from my perspective, good, solid, enjoyable stories, close enough in tone to Doyle that I wasn't annoyed or frustrated or kicked out of the stories.

An enjoyable read or listen.

I bought this audiobook.

Seven Days of Us, by Francesca Hornak

Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 9780451488756, October 2017

The Birch family is going to spend Christmas all together for the first time in several years. Older daughter Olivia, a doctor, is coming home from Liberia after working on relief for the Haag epidemic. Haag sounds a great deal like Ebola, except that being fictional, it has an incubation period of just seven days, making it more convenient for a a contained family drama.

The Birch family will have to share Olivia's quarantine, starting December 23, and ending December 30. Emma, mother of Olivia and her younger sister, Phoebe, is thrilled that they will all be together. Quite determinedly thrilled.

Emma gave up her intended catering career when the second baby, Phoebe, was born. With two children, she pushed husband Andrew to give up his war correspondent career. He's now a restaurant critic. He's always doted on Phoebe, who is bright, cheerful, goes with him to restaurants he's reviewing, and pursuing a tv career. Phoebe and Emma are close in other ways, but perhaps not as close as Phoebe and Andrew.

Olivia seems distant to all of them. This is the first time in years she's come home for Christmas.

The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World, by Abigail Tucker (author), Arden Hammersmith (narrator)

Simon & Schuster Audio, October 2016

Such a promising title.

And such a disappointment.

Tucker says she's a cat lover, and I think she probably is. Yet she conveys an impressively negative tone in this book, as if she feels guilty about liking our favorite little carnivores. She's very insistent that cats serve no real, practical use in human settlements, citing for instance studies that seem to show that cats are not very effective ratters. Nowhere does she mention that in fact cats are primarily thought of as mousers. For serious rat killing, yes, you mostly want the smaller terrier type dogs.