I just read Sarah Beth Durst's "Vessel" - YA fantasy about a desert-culture girl who has been raised to sacrifice herself as a "body" for her goddess to come down into - but then the ritual fails, her goddess doesn't arrive, and after her people (reluctantly) abandon her for her failure, she sets out to discover what went wrong. A very interesting take on what a god is, a desert culture, etc... I was also fascinated to realize, halfway through the book, that the heroine was what WE would call "black" or "african", but the author was so subtle in her description that it wasn't painfully obvious. A nice change from "LOOKIT my heroine! She's ETHNIC." And the romance (which was integral to the plot) was neither instalove nor disempowering. A good solid YA fantasy that I will reread at some point.
I'm also reading an 1817-historical mystery series called "The Captain Lacey Mysteries". He's a half-pay Captain, a veteran of the Peninsular campaign, now broke and living in London; he gets involved in a shooting incident and tries to solve the kidnapping of a young woman, leading to several further adventures. I REALLY like the portrayal of the characters; they're both accessible to a modern mind and yet true to their period.