Black Crow, White Snow by Michael Livingston (author), Janina Edwards (narrator)

Audible Studios, May 2019

Bela is shipmistress of the Sandcrow, leading her ship and crew on a mission to find possible power to save their people from conquering, destroying foreign forces. That mission has taken them to the far north, and Sandcrow is now trapped in ice.

That's bad enough. But then a bear attacks and kills some of the crew, and then the ice moves and crushes the hull of the ship.

They're down to seven survivors, one of whom is a man, the Reader, their scholar who knows the most about where they were headed and what they're seeking.  Because this is audio only, I'm not sure of all the names, especially the spellings, but the Reader's name is something like Tuorog, sometimes called Tu.

The Black God's Drums, by P. Djeli Clark

Tor.com, August 2018

Young teen Creeper, a.k.a. Jacqueline, is making her living as a thief in Free New Orleans, some decades after a Civil War that didn't end quite the way ours did. She has thus far resisted her late mother's former madam's attempts to send her to school, though she doesn't reject the occasional hot meal and safe place to sleep.

But one night she is watching the airship dock from her favorite hidey-hole when a Haitian scientist meets with some Confederate soldiers, promising them "Shango's Thunder" is exchange for "my jewel."

This is big news, and possibly disastrous for New Orleans. "Shango's Thunder is the weapon Haiti and the Free Islands used to keep their independence. It would be a disaster for New Orleans if the Confederates get it.

The Deadly Art of Deception (Caribou King Mysteries #1), by Linda Crowder (author), Michelle Babb (narrator)

Audible Audio, August 2017

Caribou King, a.k.a. Cara, runs the  Broken Antler Art Gallery in Coho Bay, Alaska, and cruise ship season is the only season that matters, business-wise. When old college friend Taylor Snow, shows up, she's happy to put her to work, but also puzzled. Taylor had married local artist Jonathan Snow, but when he was killed by a bear two years later, she had left, heading south to Seattle.

Why is she back?

Given the lack of local ties other than Cara, and the hostility of Jack, her former father-in-law, it seems a bit strange.

Smitten by the Brit (Sometimes in Love #2), by Melonie Johnson

St. Martin's Press, ISBN 9781250193056, May 2019

English professor Bonnie Blythe is happy, engaged to be married to her childhood sweetheart, and helping her friend Cassie to plan organize her upcoming wedding to Logan, the hot Scotsman whom she met when Bonnie, Cassie, and their friends took a magical UK vacation the previous summer.

Then Bonnie goes home unexpectedly early from a theater event, and finds her fiancé in their bed, on her grandmother's quilt, having sex with another woman. She's stunned, outraged--and sadly aware there were signs she maybe should have noticed.

Meanwhile, Logan's friend and best man for his wedding with Cassie, Theo Wharton, is in town. They'd all met Theo, too, on that UK vacation. He's a handsome and charming guy, but at the time, Bonnie was happily engaged. Now she's not.

Theo's almost irresistibly attractive, but Bonnie doesn't want to make the mistake of a rebound romance. And besides, he's going back to the UK in a few days.

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism, by Naoki Higashida (author), KA Yoshida (translator), David Mitchell (translator)

Random House, August 2013

Naoki Higashida is a Japanese boy with autism, a boy who has real problems with spoken language, and therefore seemed completely shut in and non-communicative.

But due to his own determination and his parents', he learned to communicate using an alphabet grid and a computer. With tools he can use, he is anything but "non-communicative."

This book, written when he was thirteen, is one of the longer-term results. He talks about what autism is like from the inside, and what millions of parents would like to know: what things really help him master his own behavior, understand the rest of us, and what helps him communicate.

Inside that silent, often seemingly unresponsive exterior, is a smart, capable, well-spoken young man.

The Case of the Pretty Lady (Inspector Graham #6), by Alison Golden

Alison Golden, May 2019

Inspector David Graham and Gorey's new librarian, Laura, are attempting to date, but his job keeps getting in the way. With a hurricane bearing down on Jersey, he's called away from dinner at Laura's house by the need to rescue an elderly couple refusing to evacuate their very exposed home.

After the storm, the body of a missing marine scientist washes up on the beach, and he wasn't a drowning victim. Someone bashed him on the head, and he was dead when he went into the water. There isn't a lack of suspects. Indeed, there's an excess of them.

He had an argument with his research partner & girlfriend right before going out on his boat, and their relationship has been increasingly tense. An environmental activist regards the researchers as a threat because he thinks even fairly passive research places the marine life at greater risk. The local fishermen, already affected by conflicts with French fishermen, declining fish stocks, and reductions in catch limits, are deeply suspicious that the research will only bring more restrictions.

The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections, by Tina Connolly

Tor Books, ISBN 9781250296993, July 2018

Saffron is a food taster to  Duke Michal, regent for the infant prince, popularly known as the Traitor King. This is not a position she ever sought or expected; she is married to a baker, Danny, who is now the pastry chef to the Duke--also an unsought position. While building his successful bakery business, Danny had experimented with "special" pastries, using an herb his grandmother had introduced him to. These pastries bring back memories, in full force, and different formulations bring back different kinds of memories.

The Duke heard of them, and came, and sampled.

Within days, Danny and Saffron are installed in the palace, separated from each other, one as the pastry chef for special banquets, and the other as the food taster to remove any temptation to poison the Duke.

The Thing About Ghost Stories, by Naomi Kritzer

Uncanny Magazine, November 2018

The thing about ghost stories, our narrator tells us, is that they aren't really stories. There's no beginning, middle, end; there's just a weird event that happens, perhaps one, perhaps repeatedly, and then it either stops, or the person who experienced it leaves that place.

Our narrator is a folklorist, and she's researching ghost stories. Not ghosts. The stories we tell about them, the different kinds of stories, the roles those stories play for people.

At first, her mother, a retired romance editor, acts as proofreader and editor as she works on her thesis. Then, her mother descends into Alzheimer's. When her mother dies, and she resumes traveling for her research, occasionally mediums approach her, and tell her she has a ghost with her.

Time and Again (History Mystery #1), by Deborah Heal (author), Michelle Babb (narrator)

Write Brain Books, June 2014

Abby Thomas is in a small town in southern Illinois for the summer, tutoring a very resistant preteen named Merrideth, as part of her teaching degree program. Merrideth is defiant, her mother makes no real attempt at discipline, and the house, once beautiful, is now old, rickety, and has few modern conveniences.

But there's John Roberts, a handsome and really nice local guy, a spiffy new computer from Merrideth's absent, divorced, possibly drug-dealing father, and a computer program called Beautiful Houses that turns out to have some really interesting features.

STET, by Sarah Gailey

Fireside Quarterly, February 2018

STET is in the form of a scientific paper interspersed with editorial suggestions from the journal editor, to remove or modify content they consider inappropriate. To each of these, the author responds, "STET," i.e., leave it as is.

It's about the reliability and trustworthiness of Artificial Intelligence as drivers of self-driving cars. When a crash can't be avoided, which lives are to be valued more highly? Who lives and who dies?

Over the course of the story, we learn the background of this research for the author of the paper, and it builds to a heart-wrenching climax.

Recommended.

I received this story as part of the 2019 Hugo Voters Packet.