Black Swans - by Christina Kettering

Two sisters face a difficult decision: should they place their mother, who needs care, in a nursing home? The older one is unsure, while the younger wants to take her mother in and look after her herself. It quickly becomes clear, though, that juggling two children, a household, and the new caregiving duties is more than she can handle - and their mother makes things anything but easy.

To help her sister, the older one buys "Rosie" - a humanoid care robot to be programmed around the mother's needs. Despite a rocky start, the younger sister's problems seem solved: she has more time, their mother is content, and the constant overwhelm finally lifts. Gradually, however, Rosie's perfected routines take up more and more space in family life, and her artificial intelligence begins to set the pace for the entire household.

Does artificial intelligence help us - or will it one day be capable of controlling us? That is the central question Christina Kettering builds from a situation many people will recognise. The title "Black Swans" plays on a well-known philosophical metaphor for things we cannot imagine, yet which suddenly occur and become reality.