La Zebnik, Claire. Things I Should Have Known.

NY: Houghton Mifflin, 207.

I’ve previously read four of this talented author’s YA novels and all have been above average, but this may be her best so far. Chloe Mitchell is starting her senior year of high school and she’s very popular, with the best available boyfriend, and she’s a good student — stacking up all those AP classes — but she’s conflicted about going away somewhere for college. The thing is, her sister, Ivy, is three years older and she’s autistic. Relatively high-functioning, so she goes to school (in a special program that she will age out of in a few months), but “anxiety is her constant companion” and she’s vulnerable because she tends to believe what anyone tells her.

Hoang, Helen. The Bride Test.

NY: Berkley/Jove, 2019.

This is actually the middle volume of the sort-of trilogy that began with Hoang’s first novel, The Kiss Quotient, so I’ve read the second and third volumes out of order — but it hardly matters. Each volume stands alone, though all three are so very similar in character and plot, it’s difficult to remember which incidents belong to which book. The male protagonist this time is Khai, the younger brother of Quan (who is the featured character in the third book). He’s twenty-six, Vietnamese-American, a very successful Bay Area tax accountant, and he’s autistic. The female lead is My, who makes ends meet as a hotel cleaner in Ho Chi Minh City, helping to support her young daughter, mother, and grandmother. Then Khai’s mother, who owns a restaurant back in San Francisco, turns up to interview potential wives for Khai. She takes a fancy to My and offers her a paid summer in America and the opportunity to convince her younger son that she’s the one for him. And My accepts, changing her name to “Esme” in the process.

Hoang, Helen. The Heart Principle.

NY: Berkley/Jove, ,2021.

This is one of the two sequels to the author’s debut novel, The Kiss Quotient, and it’s very similar to that one in characters types and plotline — too much so, really. Of the two main characters, it’s obvious to the reader that Anna Sun is on the autistic spectrum, though it takes her a while to discover that for herself, and Quan Diep (the best friend and business partner of the male lead in the first book) is a lovable hunk. Except this time, Anna is a concert violinist instead of a near-genius econometrician, and she’s having problems with her music.

Hoang, Helen. The Kiss Quotient.

NY: Jove, 2019.

This is an odd sort of romance novel but it’s original and it’s pretty good. Stella Lane is a Ph.D. in her twenties, a semi-wealthy Silicon Valley girl, and probably the best econometrician in the business, She literally lives for her job, spending all weekend in her office in an otherwise deserted building. When she gets into the data, the rest of the world just disappears. And this is largely because she’s a very high-functioning autistic with what used to be called Asperger’s. She understands her mental disorder very well and mostly copes with the downside of things, organizing her life and habits and keeping it all under control. But there’s one thing she can’t control — her adoring mother’s desire for grandchildren. Stella’s not a virgin but her few forays into attempts at a sexual relationship have been disastrous because being touched intimately by anyone else is excruciating for her.

Cleeves, Ann. The Long Call.

NY: St. Martin, 2019.

I very much enjoyed Cleeves’s “”Shetlands” series of crime novels, and my wife thinks highly of her earlier series featuring Vera Stanhope, but both of those have pretty much run their natural course. So I was interested to hear that she was beginning a new third series — and the first book in it is pretty good.

Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone Does My Shirts.

NY: Putnam, 2004.

I hate to admit that I had never heard of this author until she was recommended to me by a friend, even though I discovered it was a Newberry Honors book and a bestseller as well. And it’s really quite good. The narrator is twelve-year-old Matthew “Moose” Flanagan (he’s already nearly six feet tall), one of the two dozen or so kids who are full-time residents of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

Buxbaum, Julie. What to Say Next.

NY: Delacorte, 2017.

This is a much deeper and more thoughtful examination of high school romance than most I’ve seen. David Drucker is a very high-functioning borderline autistic whose life has long been made hell by classmates sneering at him as a “retard,” when he actually has the highest IQ of any kid in the school. He copes with the outside world by wearing headphones that surround him with music as he walks from one class to another, and by referring regularly to his notebook of rules and character sketches of everyone he interacts with.

Gallagher, Stephen. The Bedlam Detective.

NY: Crown, 2012.

I kind of hate to admit that I’ve never heard of this author, since this is his fifteenth novel, and I confess I picked it up mostly because of the title, but I definitely lucked out. It’s a very original sort of murder mystery, with adroitly painted characters and a thoroughly believable setting. It’s the fall of 1912 in the southwest of England and Sebastian Becker is on a case. He used to be a homicide detective in London, and then went to America, where he became a Pinkerton undercover agent (and learned how to use a pistol because “they’re all gunslingers over there”) and also met and married Elisabeth, a Philadelphia girl. Nowadays, he’s an investigator for Sir James, the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, who takes an official interest in any man of property whose sanity begins to appear questionable.

Lovesey, Peter. Diamond Solitaire.

NY: Mysterious Press, 1992.

I found the first book in this widely lauded series, The Last Detective (1991), to be singularly unimpressive and I frankly wasn’t in a hurry to continue with the adventures of an overweight police superintendent with a bullying personality. A friend whose literary opinions I generally respect, however, urged me not to give up on this character, so I decided to give Lovesey one more shot. And this second volume is a considerable improvement. But it still has problems.

Martin, Steve. The Pleasure of My Company.

NY: Hyperion, 2003.

Anyone who has been paying attention for the past couple of decades knows that Steve Martin is considerably more than a wild and crazy guy with an arrow through his head. Among other things, he’s a very talented author of fiction, though he prefers novella-length to the epic. He’s also rather less interested in action plots than he is in the investigation of unusual characters (not unlike himself, one presumes).