I enjoyed the Pride of Chanur series - had them all at one point. The Faded Sun trilogy was good, as were most of the others I remember reading.

I liked Margery Allingham; I think her best was Tiger in the Smoke. You might try Josephine Tey as well - her best known book is The Daughter of Time, which isn't a traditional mystery.

Josephine Tey I have read most if not all of. I will try skipping to Tiger in the Smoke for Allingham. I guess Peter Davison played Campion in the BBC series, maybe I'll give that a watch although what resemblance those bear to the books is always an open question.

ETA: Kindle Unlimited has "The Essential Margery Allingham" which is three books including Tiger in the Smoke so I will give that a try. Thanks for the pointer, Toddson!

One thing to watch out for - after Allingham died, her husband (I think it was) tried to continue the Albert Campion series. I didn't like those, although I did enjoy most of the others.

And there's Dorothy Sayers, who wrote the Lord Peter Wimsey books, which I liked. One of them - The Nine Tailors - explained change ringing, which was a help when listening to the bells in the cathedral.

I was very excited a few years ago when I was in the UK and heard change-ringing on a Sunday morning.

I was obsessed with Wimsey for a while in high school, fortunately the public library where I regularly waited for rides after soccer practice had all the novels so it was easy enough for me to feed the obsession. I have in the back of my mind that it would not be a good idea to reread but I have no idea where that came from...

Allingham is the only one of the Queens of Crime that I have not read at all and it's a curious omission, although I don't think there's an actual reason for it.

It's the same with me. I own pretty much everything by Sayers, Christie, and Marsh.

I tweeted this question but asking here also: are there any stories in which magic exists sort of like technology does IRL and becomes obsolescent due to new and better magic, social changes, etc?

I will try the Chanur series. I think I tried to read something by Cherryh before and it was a little too alien because I just couldn't keep track of what was going on. I may have picked up a book in a series but not the first book.

I didn get An Empire called Memory today. It came in the same time as the first book in Daniel Abraham's fantasy series. I'm not as into fantasy as sci fi but since I liked The Expanse and he co wrote it I wanted to try it

I just couldn't keep track of what was going on

I remember having this trouble too. I finally realized that what I wanted was some sort of a little visual hint, like a a line of asterisks, between the paragraphs where scenes/locations/viewpoints changed.

I tweeted this question but asking here also: are there any stories in which magic exists sort of like technology does IRL and becomes obsolescent due to new and better magic, social changes, etc?

In the Borderlands shared story universe they engineered magic to work like technology so they could make motorcycles run etc. I don't know if they lasted long enough to have a Cartesian shift to Magic Based Information Technology.