Zen Cho’s collection of short stories is absolutely delightful. Quirky, humorous, and filled with the practical philosophy that even if you don’t believe in the spirits it’s only good manners to be polite to them.
The stories are all contemporary and located in Asia or the UK, but the protagonists are either Malaysian or Malaysian spirits, so unless you’re Malaysian, it’s probably best to read the ebook so you can translate the Malaysian scattered throughout the dialog when necessary. Most of the dialog is Manglish and most of it is understandable in context, but there are occasional times when you’ll want to know what that particular word means that caused people to react, or when the protagonist is one of the Malaysian spirits and you want to know what it is.
Just realized I haven’t mentioned any of Intisar Khanani’s books yet. She has two series (is two books a series yet?), one that’s a reimagining of the german fairytale of the “goose girl.” There are a number of these out by various authors (Shannon Hale’s is a more exact retelling), but Thorn is a good version and The Theft of Sunlight answers the question “what happened next?” by pulling in some of the threads that weren’t wrapped up in the first book. 
Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire is the book I came here to review today, before I got distracted by the Western Fantasy entry below. Mahit Dzmare is sent to the Teixcalaanli Empire as an ambassador for her mining station, with the primary purpose of convincing the Teixcalaanli to leave them alone, and the secondary purpose of finding out what happened to the last ambassador. She has the memories/personality of the late ambassador implanted in her brain to help her out, but the memories are years out of date, and shortly after she arrives they fritz out.
The Frontier Magic trilogy, by Patricia Wrede, starts with Thirteenth Child. Eff is the 13th child of a seventh son and learns at an early age that this means that she is destined to be evil. (Her twin brother, on the other hand is the seventh son of a seventh son and therefore destined to be a remarkable magician.) After her uncle tries to have her arrested for being evil her parents decide to move the family out to the western frontier, where her father has accepted a position at a new college, and where she can make a new start without anyone knowing that she’s a 13th child. Eff volunteers at the college’s wildlife area and becomes fascinated with the western wilderness across the river. The story is told from Eff’s perspective and is a delightful combination of western and fantasy. 
Laura Ann Gilman’s Silver on the Road has some surface similarities, but an entirely different feel. Isobel has been indentured to the Devil as a small child by her parents in return for helping them leave the Territory. She works in his saloon in the town of Flood until her sixteenth birthday when she completes her service and agrees to work for him as his left hand, “the strength of the Territory, the quick knife in the darkness, the cold eye and the final word.” The Devil protects the Territory and its residents, but he needs someone to travel its Roads and enforce the rules. 
Somewhat reminiscent is Charlaine Harris’ Gunny Rose series starting with An Easy Death. Lisbeth “Gunny” Rose and her crew safeguard travelers in the wild west. After bandits kill all of her crew in a raid she is hired by a couple of grigoris (russian magicians) from the Holy Russian Empire (California) to protect them as they track down a descendent of Rasputin, whose blood is needed to keep the czar-in-exile alive. Gunny is remarkably even-keeled and practical, but there are some twists you won’t expect.
I just listened to the audiobook, read by Joan Walker, and was blown away. This is a wonderful tale about a girl named Elsa, 7 going on 8, who lives in a big house in a big city. She spends most of her time, when she’s not in school, with her granny, who used to be a doctor before she became a grandmother. Granny used to travel the world saving other people, which is ironic because Elsa lives across the hall with her mother, who’s a hospital administrator and doesn’t spend much time at home because she’s very busy. George also lives with them. He wears jogging shorts and everyone likes him, so Elsa tries not to, because that’s only fair. Granny can be a bit of a shit, so when she dies she leaves Elsa a treasure hunt of letters to deliver, to let people know she’s sorry.
The Alecto Initiative – Jordan Leah Hunter and Owen R. O’Neill. Good enough that I actually bought the next two in the trilogy. This is military sci-fi with a strong female lead character, but instead of your usual put-upon cadet trying to uphold (or redeem) the family military tradition, Kris starts off as a slave who so brutally murders her master during her rescue that we don’t even find out the details until the third book.
Ann Leckie has a military sci-fi series that I enjoyed. What makes this series unique is that the protagonist is the last surviving component of The Justice of Toren, a starship AI that has been destroyed under mysterious circumstances. As a result, Breq has to get used to having only one body, as well as seeking vengeance. Ancillary Justice is the first of the trilogy.
The Golden City – J. Kathleen Cheney. This is the first book in a trilogy about various magical beings living in secret in the Golden City. Not because they’re secret, but because they’ve been banned by a paranoid prince whose death has been prophesied to be at the hands of one of them. I started reading this with some doubts about whether I’d finish, but it kept me interested and I ended up reading the entire trilogy.
Serafina and the Black Cloak – Beatty, Robert. Serafina lives in the basement of a large estate with her father, the handyman, but no one knows that. This is a fun and spooky book – who is Serafina and why does her father keep her hidden away? What will happen if she reveals herself to help the children who have gone missing? There’s as much of a mystery about the characters as there is in the plot.
Jack Reacher has been wandering the U.S. for years now, stumbling into one mess after another and out-thinking and out-punching the bad guys every time. In Make Me he steps off the train in the prairie town of Mother’s Rest because he’s curious as to how the town got its name. He has two working theories, either a mother died or a mother gave birth during the long wagon-train ride West, but he figures there’ll be a small plaque somewhere that will solve the mystery. “He had no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there…”
Bibliolibri 