This column was submitted by Evangelina Cessna, local history librarian at the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library.

This week we are featuring Mystery titles from our New Large Print collection.

The third book in Laurien Berenson’s Senior Sleuths series is titled Peg and Rose Play the Ponies. Peg Turnbull and Rose Donovan are rival sisters-in-law turned (almost) friends. Peg drags Rose to Kentucky in September for a week-excursion. She is bringing her canine expertise to several conformation shows and is selling her Thoroughbred broodmare’s offspring at a yearling sale. From the time they arrive at Six Oaks farm, something seems off, especially the yearling manager, Jim Grable, who seems to have a heap of anger issues. Peg settles in to begin judging the pedigree pups over the Labor Day Weekend while Rose stumbles upon a shocking new set of events. It seems that Mr. Grable is found dead on the farm and the young employee is in desperate need of help convincing the police that she didn’t kill him. Everyone at Six Oaks farm tends to agree that Jim Grable had it coming. Peg realizes how much Jim had been manipulating the yearling auctions from behind the scenes. Peg and Rose must rely on each other and their instincts if they are to unravel a dangerous murderer’s web.

Love Letters to a Serial Killer is a dark, twisty thriller by Tasha Coryell. Hannah is thirty-something and recently ghosted by her latest romantic prospect. She is sick of watching her friends find happiness and moving to the suburbs. Her only sense of community comes from a true-crime forum that’s on a mission to solve the murders of four women in Atlanta. A handsome lawyer named William is arrested for the killings and Hannah begins writing him letters. This seems to be the perfect outlet for her pent-up frustrations and anger. This exercise makes her feel healthy at first, but then William writes back. Soon, Hannah’s interest in the case goes from mere curiosity to full-blown obsession which causes her life to implode around her. She decides to head to Georgia after she loses her job and meets up with other true crime junkies to attend the trial. When a fifth woman is found murdered in the same way, the jury has no choice but to find William not guilty. Hannah is the first person he calls upon his release and the two soon move in together and fall into a blissful domestic routine. Well, as blissful as she can while secretly investigating her partner for murder.

The thirty-first entry in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series is titled Now or Never: Thirty-one on the Run. Stephanie Plum has gotten herself into a bit of a pickle. She said yes to Morelli, but she also said yes to Ranger, so now she has two fiancés, and she doesn’t know what to do about it. To stall for time, she takes on a varied group of fugitives to track down. There’s Eugene Fleck, a seemingly sweet online influencer who may actually be Robin Hoodie, a masked hero to the homeless who hijacks delivery trucks and distributes their contents to the needy. Bruno Jug is a wealthy and connected man in the wholesale produce business who is rumored to traffic young girls along with lettuce and tomatoes. Perhaps the scariest of this bunch is Zoran—a laundromat manager by day and a self-proclaimed vampire by night with a taste for the blood of pretty girls. Even with these distractions, Stephanie can’t hold Ranger and Morelli at bay for long, soon they’ll need answers and she’ll have to unload the bombshell that she’s been keeping secret. It’s now or never.

Death by Chocolate Raspberry Scone is the seventh entry in Sara Graves’s Death by Chocolate series. Jake Tiptree and Ellie White are busy with the summer tourists at their bakeshop in Eastport, Maine. The August heat is especially dreary this year and Jake and Ellie could use a break from the bakery ovens. They never thought, however, that they would be spending the last weeks of summer drifting around the bay searching for pirate’s treasure and a dead body. Sally Coates believes her husband was murdered off the coast and begs Ellie—a trusted childhood friend—to find his remains. The skilled fisherman vanished along with the gold doubloon he inherited from his grandfather. Sally isn’t the only one looking for the family heirloom. Jake and Ellie will find themselves caught between hungry sharks and even hungrier treasure hunters—some of whom will stop at nothing to get what they want.

The Great Hippopotamus Hotel is the twenty-fifth entry in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. The Great Hippopotamus Hotel is situated overlooking the Botswanan countryside. It has spacious rooms and a fine and loyal staff who have catered to weary travelers for many years. A sudden and mysterious string of mishaps have plagued the hotel and its guests lately, threatening to ruin the hotel’s reputation—food poisoning, disappearing laundry, scorpion stings. As more incidents pile up, it looks like there is a saboteur and Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are on the case. At first the answer seems clear, especially when they find out that Violet Sephotho is involved, but as they dig deeper, things are not as they seem. Mma Ramotswe and her associates must help restore the reputation of the hotel and prove that even the most difficult situations can be remedied with honesty and compassion.

In The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny, Chief Inspector Gamache is plagued by relentless phone calls while he and his wife are trying to enjoy the peaceful Sunday morning in their back garden. His wife watches as Gamache lets the phone ring and ring though it appears he knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his ire shatters the couple’s quiet morning. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading “this might interest you,” a mysterious scrap of paper containing a list, and finally, a murder propels Gamache and his team into the realization that something more sinister is going on. Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste can only trust one another as old friends begin to act like enemies, and longtime enemies appear to have become friends. As their hunt grows desperate under the weight of this case, they realize that if they fail, the consequences could ripple out into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.