A Debt to the Stars

A Kirkus "BEST OF 2023" selection!
"... a journey of healing and heroism... " - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"... uproarious... scifi that gets readers thinking." - Publishers Weekly (BookLife Editor's Pick)
With space-faring predators circling the planet, Earth's only hope is an aged heiress with faltering prosthetics, and her foul-mouthed, extaraterrestrial forensic accountant.
Diana Roark, heiress, scientist, and adventurer, never wanted to end up as the richest person in human history. But she inherits her father's fortune, and tries to spend her wealth to benefit humanity. Then First Contact - with the alien Known Economy - utterly changes life on earth, and she's left with a business empire worth almost nothing, and emotional debts she can never repay.
Thirty years after First Contact she's managed to rebuild her empire, almost by accident, when the Known Economy returns. This time they've come for payment on Earth's debt - and their price is the harvest of human sentience. Diana, now aged and sick with a disease the rest of humanity is immune to, teams up with a gelatinous purple Neoooxcolu who's been assigned as her alien Account Representative. Together they must find a way to buy the planet's freedom.
The aliens will kill to stop her, if her own terrible debts don't finish her first ...