Lowell, Nathan. Quarter Share.

Np: The Autor, 2007.

I recently read The Wizard’s Butler and really enjoyed it, so I went looking for the author’s earlier work and found this first episode in a six-volume space opera series called “Trader’s Tales” (apparently a sub-series of “The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper” stories) set a few centuries from now and featuring eighteen-year-old Ishmael Wang, living with his single mother, an academic, on Neris, and whose death in a flitter crash leaves him in a tight situation. Neris is a “company world” and since he’s no longer the dependent of an employee, and since they have no unskilled jobs available for him, he can’t stay. He was about to enter the university, but now he finds himself with ninety days to find a way off-planet, which comes down to a choice between the military (which isn’t for him) and signing on as very junior crew with a freight-hauler.

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Blount, Kelly Ann. I Hate You, Fuller James.

Np: Crush Books, 2020.

This is kind of a generic YA rom-com, but it’s not bad. Half the narrative is from the POV of Wren Carter, the smartest kid in her high school, as she starts senior year, while the other half of the focus is on Fuller James, the best basketball player in the school’s history, to the delight of his coach (who also happens to be Wren’s uncle). Fuller is not quite a bully, but he’s arrogant and full of himself because of his star athlete status. Back in middle school, Wren embarrassed herself at a dance, Fuller loudly branded her with an insulting nickname as a result, and she has despised him ever since. Moreover, he’s been tightly linked ever since with Marissa, who used to be Wren’s best friend until she decided Wren wasn’t cool enough.

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North, Ryan. How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler.

NY: Rivrehead Books, 2018.

The author is a Canadian graphic novelist and artist, not a scientist or even a technical writer, but he does a good job with what amounts to an overview of the five technologies that underpin absolutely all other types of human endeavor — and neither fire nor the wheel is even on the list. In fact, all five are “intellectual inventions,” but you’ll quickly understand why they’re key to everything else. The conceit here is that you’ve rented a commercially-produced time machine but it malfunctions on your journey into the past and you’re stuck. (Time machines can’t be repaired by the user, so sorry.)

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Cherryh, C. J. Defiance.

NY: DAW, 2023.

I first met Carolyn Cherry in 1976, when I was a reference librarian in Dallas and she was still teaching Latin in the Oklahoma public schools, and had just published Brothers of Earth, her first novel, She attended AggieCom in College Station (her first con, too, I believe), and was startled at being mobbed by a horde of enthusiastic new fans. I was one of them, and I’ve read and enjoyed everything she’s written in the nearly half-century since then. Of course, she’s now a Grand Master and is regarded as having inherited the mantle of Ursula LeGuin when it comes to alien worldbuilding. Cherryh’s coauthor on this, as well as several other recent novels, is Jane Fancher, her partner for many years and her wife since 2014. You won’t really be able to tell which of them was responsible for which parts of the book, though, their joint effort is so seamless.

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McDermid, Val. Past Lying.

NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, Nov 2023.

McDermid has written several varieties of crime fiction over the years, both in multiple series and in standalone novels, and has won a number of awards doing it. She’s especially good at police procedurals, all set in and around Edinburgh, with emphasis on “procedural.” She does a first-rate job in her descriptions of the detectives of Police Scotland, both junior and senior, doing their day-to-day jobs, while the reader follows along behind, observing. My favorite of her series is the one featuring DCI Karen Pirie, a rather hard-nosed and occasionally prickly searcher-out of truth. She doesn’t suffer fools, which has gotten her in trouble with some of her less talented and more bureaucratic superiors, and which has now ended up with her running the Historical Cases Unit (what are called “cold cases” in the U.S., but Karen doesn’t think of them as “cold” at all).

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Beka, Caroline & Bertrand & Maya [Martina Mura]. The Love Report.

np: Astra Books, 2022.

This graphic novel aimed at middle school readers (more or less) was originally published in French, and it’s a lovely piece of work. Lola and Grace are BFFs and both are a bit nerdy, so when they run into the stone wall of boy-girl relationships, they decide to approach the problem scientifically: They’ll interview the couples they see at school about why they’re together, analyze the results, and write up a report of their findings. Of course, neither of them has ever actually connected with a boy (it takes them a while to admit that to each other), so it’s kind of the blind leading the blind. Lola has a huge crush on Noah, though, and she really wants to figure out why he won’t talk to her or even look at her.

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