This week’s column features new action, mystery, and thriller titles from our Large Print collection. Remember, you can find additional titles at wcvpl.blogspot.com.

To the Land of Long Lost Friends is the latest in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. Precious Ramotswe is thrilled to have reconnected with an old friend, however, her friend’s daughter is giving her mother a great deal of grief. Even for Botswana’s premier female detective, getting involved in family affairs can be a delicate matter. The young woman is involved with a charismatic preacher whose intentions seem less than godly and Mma Ramotswe is tasked with finding out what is really going on. Elsewhere, poor Charlie desperately wants to marry his girlfriend, Queenie-Queenie, but he is having trouble coming up with a bride price that will impress her father. Of course, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is on hand to offer his wise counsel, Mma Makutsi weighs in with her opinion, and Mma Potokwane is ready with her welcoming fruitcake. In the end, though, it is Mma Ramotswe who will have to sort out motives, family relationships, and lovers’ hearts in order to reconcile the problems with which she is surrounded.

In Always Look Twice (Uncommon Justice, book 2) by Elizabeth Goddard, Harper Reynolds decides to trade her job as a crime scene photographer for nature photography on the advice of her therapist. Her tranquility is short-lived when she inadvertently captures a murder being committed. Heath McKade is a reserve deputy and former Green Beret in a cash-strapped county who has been called in to protect Harper. These two were childhood friends, and Heath is more than a little surprised to see Harper has come back to the area. When the sheriff’s department can’t find any evidence of a murder being committed, Harper decides to investigate herself; determined to see justice done. As Heath and Harper expose deeper lies and machinations, they also grow closer together. Will their new relationship survive the powder keg of secrets set to explode?

Last Stage to Hell Junction is a Caleb York Western by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. Sheriff Caleb York must interrupt his poker game at the Victory Saloon to settle a minor kerfuffle that turns into major trouble. The would-be miscreant he throws in the pokey lets slip the secret behind the disappearance of a stagecoach carrying money, gold, and Denver banker Raymond Parker. More important to York, however, are the other passengers including ex-flame and rancher Willa Cullen, and Rita Filley the comely owner of the Victory Saloon. Sheriff York follows a bloody trail all the way to a ghost town known as Hell Junction where he must infiltrate the outlaws in order to save the passengers all the while praying that no one recognizes him. Relying only on his trusty desert rat deputy, York must free the captives, round up the Hargrave gang, and, whenever necessary, send them straight to hell.

Stealth is the 51st Stone Barrington novel by author Stuart Woods. Stone Barrington’s respite at his English retreat is cut short when he is precipitously sent to the remote reaches of the United Kingdom and straight into a lethal trap. This is only the first part of a much more nefarious plan by a rival power; a plan dead set on destroying the peace of a nation. Stone is joined by two beautiful and brilliant women as he leverages a new position of power to capture the villain behind the plot. As he gets closer, though, it becomes clear that there is a much bigger plan at work and that the true mastermind is most definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Vince Flynn’s Lethal Agent is a Mitch Rapp novel by Kyle Mills. In an all-too-relatable plot, a toxic presidential election is underway in a deeply divided America. The politicians are focused entirely on keeping their own power and privilege while ISIS kidnaps a French microbiologist and forces him to manufacture anthrax. In order to exacerbate the hysteria already gripping the country, the terrorists release polished and professionally produced videos of the process onto the internet. ISIS also gets a Mexican drug cartel to smuggle the bioweapon across the border, but this is all a ruse to keep Mitch Rapp and Irene Kennedy busy while they launch a weaponized version of a virus found in Yemen. If they succeed, they’ll trigger a pandemic and set the foundation for a new world order.

Ben Coes delivers a slick, fast-paced spy thriller with The Russian. The Russian mafia has insidiously and quickly taken over the criminal underworld in the U.S. and law enforcement agencies have been unable to keep their cancer from growing. One of these powerful Russian mob families decides it is time to declare war by publicly executing two high-profile American politicians. The President is left with no choice and he creates a clandestine assassination team to find and eliminate the threat. Former Navy SEALs Billy Cosgrove and Rob Tacoma are recruited as Tier 1 operators by the CIA, but before they can get started, the Russians murder Cosgrove in his home. Tacoma is left on his own against an organization with endless resources and absolutely no boundaries. In order to find and kill the mob boss behind Cosgrove’s death, Tacoma will have to take on an army in a battle with no rules and no limits.