Elizabeth Moon is my favorite sci. fic. author.  I have read most of her books from cover to cover twice and parts of them 9 or 10 times.

Cold Welcome is a bit different from her other series, yet she keeps the same well developed characters.  Her female protagonist, Ky, is returning to her home world after years away fighting a war.  She is returning  as a hero. But her shuttle is sabotaged by a group that is determined to kill her and all her family. Survival is the name of the game. Ky is strong, both physically and mentally, but her enemy is old, well financed, established, and has a secret they are desperate to keep.  Ky and the passengers she is marooned with must die if the enemy's secret is to be kept.

The passengers are not military and sometime reluctant to follow Ky's leadership. They don't really believe they are in danger from people meaning to actually KILL them dead and cause Ky trouble. The discovery of the enemies' hidden cave proves to be both Ky's possible salvation or her and the group's death warrant.

This is a novel that will be difficult for the reader to put down before the last page is read.

Last weekend I picked up several books at a used book store, one by the late Anne McCafferey titled Acorna The Unicorn Girl.  This is a wonderful read full of greed, mystery, good vs. evil, deception, and a cold blooded villain named, The Piper.

Three space miners rescue a space pod  with a child of unknown origin asleep in it. They play nursemaid to the youngling until they can get back to civilization. At that time all sorts of people want to keep the child, none of them with good intentions. The three miners, bent on saving their ward, must think fast and guess who to trust for help.

On a planet called Kezdet secret child labor are used in mines and factories. They are brutally beaten and starved while the elite of the planet ignore the conditions of the abused children, the source of their wealth. Acorna and others mount an attack on the status quo, but a mysterious someone called,  The Piper, is blocking all their efforts to rescue the children.

As usual, Anne McCafferey gives the reader a thrilling tale full of conflict and mind stimulating adventure. I can recommend this novel to anyone interested in science fiction and those readers willing to entertain visions of a possible life in space.