Agreed, I would also recommend her Nightfall books. Just for the love of Bayes don't look at any of the other ones, especially the new ones unless you like characters bursting into tears every five pages.

Ok, that's the first wikipedia page on someone that looks like it was written for OkCupid:

Mickey Zucker Reichert is a pediatrician, parent to multitudes (at least it seems like that many), bird wrangler, goat roper, dog trainer, cat herder, horse rider, and fish feeder who has learned (the hard way) not to let macaws remove contact lenses. Also she is the author of twenty-two novels (including the "Renshai", "Nightfall", "Barakhai" and "Bifrost" series), one illustrated novella, and fifty-plus short stories. Mickey's age is a mathematically guarded secret: the square root of 8649 minus the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle with a side length of 33.941126.Mickey's claim to fame is that she has performed brain surgery and my parents really are rocket scientists.She has a heart of warm oatmeal for anything living, and cannot seem to say "no" to helping them. She (and her husband) have been foster and adoptive parents not only to children but also to every animal from mice to horses, including some of the weirder ones like large snakes, llamas, exotic parrots, a squirrel, opossums, foxes, pigs, lizards, hermit crabs, peacocks, turkeys, guineas, finches, songbirds, and even rats. They have drawn the line at elephants, although they did once have a Newfoundland and a Bernese Mountain dog. Most of their animals have come to them as finds, strays, and castoffs.