True Deception by Patricia Waddell
Kala Char’ari wants nothing more than freedom for her world from the Conglomerate, while Aedon Rawn’s own world collapsed when his wife and children were killed by Conglomerate pirates. Now fighting together, can Kala shake the Conglomerate’s iron grip on her world or will she be sidetracked by the handsome agent bent on revenge?
I loved how Patricia fashioned an interesting world of oppression and created a couple with the ability to shake it lose. Add in a complex collection of characters to deepen the mystery and suspense you’ll find you can’t put this book down.
Details: Tor, December 2007
Excellence Rating: Very Good
Sofie Metropolis’ career as a private detective is going about as well as can be expected for someone with only a few months experience. Now Sofie faces the most challenging case of her career. One of the local mobsters appears to be behind the disappearance of a local businessman and mobsters don’t appreciate anyone, looking into their business. To make matters worse, Sofie’s mother engages her services to follow her father and find out if he’s having an affair. Will Sofie survive the mob and her father and that hot bounty hunter who always manages to show up in the nick of time or will she end up as a victim of her job? 
Sofie Metropolis is a private investigator - or at least that’s what’s written on her business card. She joined her Uncle Spyros’s detective agency shortly after dumping her fiancé, who decided that Sofie wouldn’t mind if he had quicky with the maid of honor at the church shortly before the start of the wedding. Now Sofie takes pictures of cheating spouses and finds missing pets. Yet when the latest cheating spouse case lands on her desk, Sofie finds herself assulted for taking pictures, chased by the FBI when the spouse turned up missing and targeted by a killer. Fortunately, a mysterious Australian pops up just in time to save her body and to steal her heart. 
Take two young people, Stan and Estrella, from different places on Earth, under educated with little hope for the future and give them each a small windfall of money that enables them to travel to Gateway in search of even greater fortunes. Watch them travel to the black hole center of the galaxy to live with an alien race known as the Heechee. Then observe how the rest of the galaxy changes, since for each day inside the core, 40,000 days passes in the rest of the galaxy. Finally, see the role that Stan and Estrella play in saving the universe from the madman Wan Enrique Santos-Smith, who's sole purpose in life is the destruction of the Heechee race.