Catherine Asaro
Catch the Lightning

This is the second book in Asaro's Skolian empire, and it is not a sequel. Instead it deals with, I think, the nephew of the original heroine. The story is told from the perspective of a young woman on an earth very like our own, an illegal immigrant in Los Angeles trying to survive in a world of gangs and guns, who stumbles across a very lost space pilot. The plot goes from there, but it includes Asaro's trademark mixture of serious physics and serious romance.

Asaro is a working physicist - or was, I think she left the lab to write fiction - and her universe contains real math. More, her hyperspace vision is a plausible one that works within Einsteinian relativity. As a result, the science feels real.

Asaro cares about her characters' emotions. Her novels so far have been love stories, complete with the problems of emotional intimacy, personal privacy, and cathartic release that come with a serious love story.

The combination is powerful. I will be reading more of her work.