This column was submitted by Evangeline Cessna, Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library Local History Librarian. This week’s column features new large print fiction titles for your enjoyment. Please check our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pg/WCVPLibrary/posts to stay up-to-date on when we will be reopening and any modification to our hours.

 

Bloody Genius is a Virgil Flowers Novel by John Sandford. The science and medical departments of the local university have squared off against one another and have turned the campus into a battleground. These are reasonable and educated minds, so they should be able to reasonably disagree, right? Apparently not, because Virgil Flowers is called in when one of the renowned and confrontational scholars winds up dead. As Virgil probes the recent unrest and the secrets the dead scholar kept, he realizes that he is dealing with a group of people that are, on this issue, functionally crazy. Virgil must find a murderer among this group of mere maniacs to find justice for the dead academic.

S.I. Soper delivers a Circle V Western story with Hot Metal. Ben Hawthorne was born in Nacogdoches, Texas, but was orphaned when Comanches killed his parents when he was ten. The Comanches then took him and gave him the name Newcomer. After spending an unspecified number of days caged, chained, and tortured in a root cellar by a group of men wearing dark hoods, Ben is rescued by four men. The “rescuers” are in fact bounty hunters who believe he is the son of a rancher named Arch Locklin. When Ben is delivered to the Locklin household, the rancher, his daughter, and a spitfire named Caitlin Black all recognize him as Seth. Ben is most definitely confused. He knows who he is, but when shown a picture of Seth, it’s like he’s looking in a mirror. Ben is going to have to use every trick he knows to not only convince everyone he is not Seth, but also to stop a water rites war between Arch and Caitlin.

Breaking News is a novel by Susan Page Davis. Editor Kurt Borden’s star reporter, Mick Tyler, has been struggling with depression, so when Mick takes an interest in a senator who disappeared forty years ago, Kurt bought the lake cottage next to the one that was owned by the senator. Mick never returns from his research mission and Kurt is mystified. Meanwhile, Kurt’s wife, Janet, finds an elderly neighbor dying in his lake house. The old man, Elwood Fairmont, begs Janet to deliver a cryptic dying declaration to his children. When the children gather, however, they are as clueless to the meaning of the message as Janet. Kurt assigns Dave Carpenter to write about Mick’s disappearance, but as soon as he does, Kurt’s life is threatened. Are the two disappearances related? Both Janet and Kurt are determined to unravel these mysteries and it may just take all their wits and cunning to do so.

Author Siri Mitchell delivers a thriller with State of Lies. Physicist Georgie Brennan is devastated when her husband is killed by a hit and run driver. To add insult to injury, she finds out that he lied about where he was going that day. She begins hearing strange noises under her house, finds a cryptic notebook, and notices there is a computer missing from her husband’s things. All this seems to be taking a toll on her sanity and she questions everything she thought she knew. With her four-star general father set to be the next Secretary of Defense and her job hanging in the balance, Georgie finds herself in a tangle of political intrigue. She can’t trust anyone, not even her parents. Maybe not even herself.

Whisper Network by Chandler Baker is the story of Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Rosalita who have worked together for years at Truviv, Inc. With the sudden death of Truviv’s CEO, the women’s direct boss, Ames is set to step up, but there are whispers about how Ames treats his female employees. Whispers that have been ignored by those at the top. The women find out that Ames is making unwanted advances on another female colleague and they decide to take the matter into their own hands. Their decision causes a radical and catastrophic shift in the office. Lies and secrets are about to be exposed and the lives of these four women will be drastically changed.

Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul offer another Isaac Bell Adventure in The Titanic Secret. In 1911, Isaac Bell investigates a tragedy in Colorado’s Little Angel Mine. The death of nine people has led to a larger mystery centering around a powerful, rare, and valuable element found in the mine. Bell knows there are powerful people who would do anything to control this element, so he must tread carefully. A hundred years later, NUMA Director Dirk Pitt makes a daring water rescue inside an antiquated submarine. Pitt also recovers a document left by Isaac Bell and reopens the case he was working on. Two detectives, living a century apart, must unravel a mystery.