There are not enough novels with awesome old ladies as their protagonists. Speaking as someone who wishes to be an awesome old lady some day, I consider this a gap in the market. At the start of Remnant Population, the members of a failed colony have been ordered to pack up and leave the planet that has become their home. Widowed Ofelia decides the hell with it, she's staying put; her grown son doesn't need her, her daughter-in-law can't stand her (it's mutual), and she's fed up with living her life to please other people.

Meanwhile on another part of the planet, a new colony is wiped out by a previously unsuspected group of indigenous inhabitants. Ofelia must figure out how to communicate with them, and how to explain them to the human colonists, before the two sides attempt to wipe each other out.

I am a sucker for stories about first contact and miscommunication and culture clash (something C. J. Cherryh does so well) and in this book there is plenty to go around: we get the indigenes' attempts to communicate with Ofelia from their point of view and Ofelia's frustration at being treated by the new colonists like an ignorant, confused old woman from hers. I'm happy to report that everything works out OK -- a bit unrealistically perhaps, but it's terribly satisfying just the same.