The Tell, by David Brin

Published in Future Visions:Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft, edited by Elizabeth Bear, Melchior Media, November 2015

Our narrator is a Las Vegas stage magician with a sideline in identifying fakes, frauds, and the self-deceived making seemingly major scientific "breakthroughs." He's good at it, and enjoys it, and when Sophie Van Took,a regular contact, asks him for help with a related but different job, he says yes.

The immediate goal is finding out if a particular casino has made a major breakthrough in prediction of events or if they've only made an incremental improvement. Predicting the future (whether politics, weather, economic developments, or human behavior) has been a major interest as long as we've been human, and has been getting increasingly scientific and technological in the last century or so.

The Nun's Dragon, by Christine Emmert

Dante's Heart, January 2014

As a young girl, gathering mushrooms for her family in the woods near their village, Margaret stumbles upon a sleeping dragon. Contrary to his kind's ferocious reputation, the dragon, whom Margaret names Wyver, befriends her. Eventually, her father having died, her mother takes her to a convent to become a nun, and Margaret becomes Sister Agnes Dei.

But Wyver continues to visit her.

Wonderment in Death (In Death #41.5), by J.D. Robb (author), Susan Ericksen (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, ISBN 9781501223778, September 2015

Dallas, Peabody, and friends and colleagues are back for a novella about a case that strikes a bit closer to  home than most. Dallas and Peabody are called to the scene of an apparent murder/suicide--it appears that Darlene Fitzwilliams came to the home of her brother Marcus after an argument earlier in the day, stabbed him to death with sewing shears, and then went out to the balcony of his 52nd floor apartment and jumped to her death.

But the siblings' friends insist that Darlene could not have done either thing--and despite clear evidence that she was high, they also insist that she was not a drug user.

And those friends include Louise Dimatto and Charles Monroe.

Ghostly Paws (Mystic Notch #1), by Leighann Dobbs

Audible Studios, December 2015 (original publication March 2014)

Wilhelmina Chance, former crime journalist, after a painful divorce and an even more painful car accident, has returned home to Mystic Notch, New Hampshire. Willa has inherited her grandmother's beautiful Victorian house, as well as her bookstore, specializing in used and antique books.

But one side effect of her near-fatal accident is that she sees ghosts. And when she finds Lavinia, the town librarian, lying dead at the foot of a flight of stairs, Lavinia insists that Willa has to find her killer.

The Forgotten Room, by Karen White (author), Beatriz Williams (author), Lauren Willig (author)

Penguin Group/NAL, ISBN 9780451474629, January 2016

In 1893, Olive, the daughter of an architect who killed himself after a falling-out with a client, takes a job as a maid in the mansion her father designed. She hopes to find proof of the owner's perfidy to restore her father's name.

In 1920, Lucy is looking for the truth about who her father was. Was it the man who raised, the man she loved as her father, or someone her mother knew before marrying Hans Jungmann?

In 1945, Kate, a young doctor, is working in the private hospital that was once the women's boarding house her mother lived in, and before that the grand mansion of the Pratt family. Badly wounded Capt. Cooper Ravenel is brought to the hospital, and for lack of any other place to put him, he's installed Kate's room under the eaves. She can sleep temporarily in nurses' quarters.

And Capt. Ravenel has a portrait miniature of a woman who appears to be--Kate.

Devoted in Death (In Death #41), by J. D. Robb (author), Susan Ericksen (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2015

Dallas is back from a warm, sunny vacation, in the frigid, wet cold after the New Year. And very early on her first morning back, she's called to the scene of a dumped body.

Dorian Cooper was a cellist with the symphony orchestra, popular, respected, and well-liked. There's no apparent reason for anyone to kill him--but someone has. And not just killed; Cooper was tortured over the course of two days before he died. It's not long before Dallas and Peabody realize they're on the trail of a potential serial killer--or a pair of them.

Looking for Gordo, by Robert J. Sawyer

Published in Future Visions:Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft, edited by Elizabeth Bear, Melchior Media, November 2015

It's 2030, and a long-anticipated event has finally come to pass: We have confirmed contact from an intelligent alien species. It wasn't recognized immediately; its discovery had to wait for the resources to search the stored data from years of recording everything picked up by the SETI radiotelescope arrays. But when that happened, they found that intelligent beings 47 Ursae Majoris had sent, not just a contact signal, but the Reticulum--the entirety of their equivalent of the World Wide Web.

From that, Emily Chiu has developed an AI representing an individual of the Ursae majoris species. And now, a mock trial is being held to publicly debate the question of whether humanity should respond in kind, or whether it's simply too dangerous to confirm our existence. Maybe the reason it's taken so long to find intelligent life is because intelligent species that announce themselves get invaded! The AI avatar of one of the aliens that Emily Chiu has created is an important witness in the "trial."

This is a slight but interesting and fun story. Definitely worth the few minutes of your time needed to read it.

Interim Errantry (Young Wizards 9.3, 9.5, 9.7), by Diane Duane

Errantry Press, October 2015

This is a collection of three shorter Young Wizards stories.

Not On My Patch is a Halloween novella. It's a fun holiday for the wizards, because it's one of the few occasions on which they can be relatively open with their magic--and this year, it's Tom and Carl's turn to host the "haunted house" that rotates among the local senior wizards. At the start of the story, Nita is reluctant to cut into the pumpkin that is supposed to be the Callahan family's jack o'lantern, but she finally does what any wizard would do: asks it. Jackie has an entirely different perspective on life and death than animal life, and is happy to be a jack o'lantern. Nita's wizard friends are a little amused when they realize she's named it, slightly concerned when she refers to Jackie as "he," and of course it's inevitable that Jackie will become a key factor in resisting a sneak attack by the Lone Power, who tries to make Halloween really scary again. This was a lot of fun.

The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library #1), by Genevieve Cogman (author), Susan Duerden (narrator)

Audible Studios, April 2015

Irene is a staff librarian of the Invisible Library, and when we meet her, she's just completing a mission--the retrieval, or more bluntly theft, of a unique manuscript on magic from a magic-dominant alternate reality. She winds up having to face down gargoyles and hellhounds to escape with her prize, but escape she does, back the Library.

And her reward is to immediately be sent on another urgent mission, to retrieve a  unique edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales from a world where both magic and technology work, and which is also contaminated by Chaos. The Chaos contamination means that this alternate world is quarantined and normally off-limits to the librarians. This is a dangerous assignment.

The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #16),by Alexander McCall Smith (author), Lisette Lecat (narrator)

Recorded Books, October 2015

Precious Ramotswe's friends and family decide she needs a holiday. One clue she really does need a break may be how ready she is to suspect Mma Makutsi of a wicked desire to take the agency away from her. Sanity prevails, Rra Polopetsi, now working part-time as a science teacher, volunteers to help out while she is gone, and Mma Ramotswe commits to a two-week holiday.

But she's staying home, and the idea is to "do nothing," which Mma Ramotswe is of course incapable of.