The Ticklemore Christmas Toy Shop, by Liz Davies

Lilac Tree Books, October 2020

Hattie Jenkins is nearly eighty, a widow for fifteen years, but still active, social, and working in the Bookylicious cafe and bookstore. She has friends, but she and her husband never had children, and she has no family.

Alfred Miller is about the same age, a widower, but for not quite three years. He's depressed, lonely, and even more unhappy now that his daughter, Sara, has insisted that he come live in her house. She's married, newly retired, and convinced that her father is in the early stages of dementia. She tries to manage every detail of his life, in order to keep him safe. Sara has decided it's time to sell Alfred's house, the one he lived in with his wife, Dorothy, for many years.

One day, on one of his not really authorized walks, Alfred goes into Bookylicious and meets Hattie.

Machine (White Space #2), by Elizabeth Bear

Gallery Books, ISBN 9781534403017, October 2020

This is a standalone novel, the second set in the "White Space" universe of Bear's Ancestral Nights. There are some recurring characters, but no spoilers.

Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a rescue specialist on SPV I Race to Save the Living, better known by the shipmind's name, Sally. They operate out of Core General, a large, multispecies hospital, and have been dispatched to a site from which a distress signal has been received.

They arrive to find two ships, a centuries-old generation ship, and a current high-speed packet ship, SPV I Bring Tidings From Afar, shipmind name Afar,  crewed by methane breathers. The generation ship, Big Rock Candy Mountain, is from Terra, and traveling at relativistic speeds really shouldn't have been able to get this far in the time since it left. Yet here it is. Nor should the packet ship have had any reason to dock with it--and yet here it is.

No one on either ship is responding to hails.

You Make It Feel Like Christmas, by Louise Marley

Louise Marley, October 2020

Elizabeth Holly is a book editor, and the younger daughter of the Holly family. That's the Holly family of "Holly Jolly Christmas," Britain's longest-running Christmas program. 

Agatha Holly has been determined for the last two decades or so to teach everyone how to have the perfect Christmas--even if drives her family to insanity.

Lucy Holly, the older daughter, has grown up to found her own production company and produce her mother's Christmas extravaganza. In pursuit of her mother's continued success, she hasn't hesitated to use Elizabeth's, or rather "Beth's, as she's known on air, clumsy moments and awkward missteps and unsuccessful attempts at rebellion as hilarious laugh moments--making her the star of thousands of hilarious, but humiliating, gifs and memes.

That's why Elizabeth has refused to participate for the last several years, and this year, after a disastrous date resulting in a quite public unwanted marriage proposal, is heading for a not-yet-opened hotel to be a test-run guest for a traditional Christmas. Or at least, that's what she thinks.

Once More Upon a Time, by Roshani Chokshi (author), Rebecca Gibel (narrator), Shiromi Arserio (narrator), Vikas Adam (narrator)

Audible Originals, June 2020

Imelda was one of the famous Twelve Dancing Princess, until her sisters began to get married off. She falls in love with a princce--but not the heir--of a neighboring kingdom. The prince's name is Ambrose, and they marry and are granted by her father the little land of Love's Keep. The King and Queen of Love's Keep must be in love, and remain in love, and will be exiled after a year and a day if they are not in love.

Then Ambrose sacrifices their love to save Imelda's life after she is poisoned.

For a year and a day, no longer remembering why they got married, they live in Love's Keep, and avoid each other. Then their time is up, and Imelda must return to her father's kingdom, while Ambrose will be a wandering exile. And they both want something different. Then the witch who took their love from them in exchange for saving Imelda's life, returns to promise them she can grant them their true wishes, in exchange for going on a quest together to recover a potion for her, a potion that turns people to stone.

Exit Interview With My Grandmother, by Lily Meyersohn (author, narrator)

Audible Originals, April 2020

Lily Meyersohn is a young, Jewish, gay woman working through her grandparents' relationships, her own queer relationships, her family's Jewish history, and life in a world of endless uncertainty.

For her, one way of doing that is an "exit interview" with her grandmother. It's an intimate, personal conversation, about their family history, the slow loss of Lily's grandfather to the ravages of Alzheimers, and the depth and complexity their marriage had developed before that. Lily also talks about her own relationships, one with a woman who is never identified except as "the woman from Maine," but who was clearly important to her.  Another relationship is with Sophie, which is, as this memoir begins, current, but in various ways clearly moving toward its natural end.

What Meyersohn has to tell us includes not just these relationships, not just her grandparents' relationship, but the stories of how both sides of the family came from Germany to the US not long ahead of the Holocaust, and her own visit to Germany, to places important to her family history.

It's intimate and moving, and revealing and enlightening. A very good listen. Recommended.

I got this audiobook as part of the Audible Originals program, and am revieiwng it voluntarily.

Shadows in Death (In Death #51, by J.D. Robb (author), Susan Ericksen (narrator)

Macmillan Audio, September 2020

Dallas and Roarke are back with another difficult case to solve.

Roarke's highly questionable past occasionally comes back to haunt him and Eve in awkward ways. The latest is exceptionally awkward. A rival and enemy from his hard childhood years in Dublin has arrived in New York and intends to kill him--after first killing everyone else who matters to him.

And Lorcan Cobbe is a skilled, professional assassin.

Cobbe claims to be Roarke's older half-brother, but Patrick Roarke, while employing him as an enforcer, never acknowledged him as his son. For all the elder Roarke's abuse of him, he did acknowledge the younger Roarke as his son. And that's what Cobbe, obsessed with Patrick Roarke as his hero and idol, can never forgive the boy that Patrick did acknowledge.

A Bend in the River, by Libby Fischer Hellmann

 The Red Herrings Press, ISBN 9781938733680, October 2020

It's 1968, and Tam and Mai are two teenage girls living in a small village in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The war is raging, though they are, they think, in an out of the way spot. Their village hasn't been directly affected--yet.

And then it changes. The girls are out gathering fruit, maybe the only two not in the village, when an American unit moves in, and massacres the inhabitants. The girls see everyone they know, including their parents and baby brother, die.

Tam is a little older, a little more possessed of a personality that can make decisions in the face of the tragedy. Once the Americas are safely gone from the village, she steals a sampan, and gets them moving down the river, toward Saigon. They may be able to get jobs there, and survive.

Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5), by Sherry Thomas

Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 9780451492494, October 2020

Charlotte Holmes continues to pursue her profession of consulting detective, posing as assistant to her invalid, and entirely fictional, brother Sherlock.

She and several firends and allies have just returned from a trip to Europe and an act of grand theft to retrieve some priceless art which is exposing a friend of Mrs. Watson's to blackmail. They haven't been home long when Mrs. Treadles, wife of Inspector Treadles, a frequent collaborator of Charlotte's, arrives with a desperate plea for help.

Inspector Treadles has been found in a locked room with two dead men, holding the gun used to kill them. The two dead men, Mr. Longstead and Mr. Sullivan, worked with Mrs. Treadles at Cousins Manufacturing, a respected firm that Mrs. Cousins recently inherited from her brother, Barnaby Cousins. Barnaby was a lax manager, but Alice Treadles is determined to be active and responsible, and in different ways, these were the two men she worked most closely with. Was Inspector Treadles suspicious? Jealous?

The Contractors, by Lisa Ko

Amazon Original Stories, September 2020

Sandra Guzman in New Jersey, and Sandie Guzman in Manila, get accidentally connected by a careless journalist. Soon they are exchanging emails, seeing each other's problems and advantages--and changing their lives.

The two women are contractors working as contract moderators for "the largest social media company in the world." As contractors, not direct employees, they don't get the company salaries, don't get the company benefits, and are overworked and struggling to make ends meet.

As content moderators, they have to look at a lot of really vile stuff.

Sandra is a single mother, living with a boyfriend who isn't a bad guy but whom at this point she'd rather leave if either of them could afford it. 

Sandie is a few years younger, with the university degree Sandra never got, living with her family in an apartment smaller than she grew up in. 

Minnie's Orphans, by Lindsey Hutchinson

Boldwood Books Ltd., ISBN 9781838893927, October 2020

Minnie and Billy Marshall run a children's home in 19th century Wolverhampton, England. Minnie has her own troubled background, and the Marshalls started the home with Minnie's own children from a previous marriage. Her husband had, after learning a dark secret about Minnie, sold them for five shillings each to Reed House, a rather stark, harsh orphanage. The children had to be rescued from the orphanage and its abuse, and they brought a few of their friends--and the Marshalls found an empty house that the city couldn't find an owner for. It became Marshall's Home for Children, and more children found their way there.