Cozy Crime Fiction

1930: Miss Clara Vale, chemistry major turned detective, is taking a night off from sleuthing to attend the launch party of a new exhibition at the Hancock Museum in Newcastle. But when the piece de resistance, a rare ornate sarcophagus, is finally opened and it turns out the mummy inside it is a fake it looks like there is no rest for Clara after all... Later that night, she is summoned back to the museum and asked to investigate a series of stolen Egyptian artefacts.

It’s December in Cornwall, and Mousehole harbour is illuminated with its famous Christmas lights. Ally Bright is among the crowd listening to the carol singers—and then to the piercing screams that rip through the darkness. A body has been found, brutally murdered and dumped in a fisherman’s boat.

When amiable old village eccentric Quentin Andrews dies, the good folk of Cherringham are astonished at the crowd that turns up to his funeral. But even more astonished are the beneficiaries of his will: Quentin has left a veritable fortune to whomever is the first to solve an intricate "Cherringham crossword". That puzzle is only the first of many that Jack and Sarah will uncover as they follow the treasure hunt for clues and learn the truth about who Quentin Andrews really was... and the biggest mystery of them al... was he - in fact - murdered?

The lives of the inhabitants of Swevenings are disrupted only by a fierce competition to catch the Old Un, a monster trout known to dwell in a beautiful stream which winds past their homes. Then one of their small community is found brutally murdered; beside him is the freshly killed trout. Both died by violence - but Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn's murder investigation seems to be much more interested in the fish.... Scales of Justice was first published in 1955.

Ngaio Marsh returns to her New Zealand roots to transplant the classic country house murder mystery to an upland sheep station on South Island - and produces one of her most exotic and intriguing novels. One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband’s wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears.

A famous writer is found murdered at the Victorian baths in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate. In a crime worthy of one of his novels, Damian Penrose, who was appearing at the town’s crime writing festival, has been ruthlessly strangled. But with no trace of the murderer and no apparent means of escape, how did the killer simply vanish from the scene of the crime?

An aging art scholar and a visiting student, haunting echoes of France's colonialist past, and a delicious navarin of lamb - Bruno is back, and his latest case leads him from the Renaissance to the French Resistance and beyond by way of a corpse at the bottom of a well. When Claudia, a young American, turns up dead in the courtyard of an ancient castle in Bruno's jurisdiction, her death is assumed to be an accident related to opioid use. But her doctor persuades Bruno that things may not be so simple.

When local nobleman Étienne de Bremont falls to his death from the family château, it sets the historic town of Aix-en-Provence abuzz with rumors. The once-idyllic town suddenly seems filled with people who could have benefited from Bremont's death - including his playboy brother, François, who's heavily in debt and mixed up with some unsavory characters. But just as the list of suspects is being narrowed down, another death occurs. And this time, there can be no doubt - it's murder.

After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks.

When the penniless FitzHenrys, proprietors of the rundown Combe Castle Heritage Site, find themselves victims of a threatening campaign to oust them from their ancestral home, Jack and Sarah are called in to track down the culprit. But nothing is what it seems at this castle - from the curious and unnerving waxwork displays of the 'Odditorium' to the in-laws and neighbours who can't wait to see the last of aristocratic couple. Soon Jack and Sarah discover that truth is often stranger than fiction, and in Combe Castle things do indeed go bump in the night.

Any wedding is a big deal in the small village of Kilbane - even more so when the bride is a famous fashion model. It's also good for business; Siobhan O'Sullivan's bistro will be catering the three-day affair. When the drunken best man is disinvited, Siobhan's own beau, Macdara, gladly steps in. But finding the original best man murdered in the woods casts a pall over the nuptials. And when a second member of the wedding party is poisoned, Macdara goes from being best man to prime suspect.

The town of Sarlat is staging a reenactment of its liberation from the British in the Hundred Years’ War when the play’s French hero, Brice Kerquelin, is stabbed and feared fatally wounded. Is it an unfortunate prop malfunction—or something more sinister? The stricken man happens to be number two in the French intelligence service, in line for the top job. Bruno is tasked with the safety of the victim’s daughter Claire, as well as her father's old Silicon Valley buddies, ostensibly in town for a reunion.

Meg and Hawk are part of the FBI's elite K-9 unit. Hawk can sniff out bodies anywhere - living or dead - whether it's tracking a criminal or finding a missing person. When a bomb rips apart a government building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., it takes all of the team's extensive search-and-rescue training to locate and save the workers and visitors buried beneath the rubble.

Edinburgh is mourning the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II when bookseller Delaney Nichols's boss comes to her with a most unusual assignment. An old friend of his, living in an estate in the village of Roslin, has found what could be a priceless relic on her property, and Delaney is tasked with investigating. Could Jolie possibly have an item of breathtaking Scottish historical significance in her possession? But when Delaney arrives at Jolie's estate, she is greeted by a legal team with a vested interest in the property.

Ari Thor returns to investigate a chilling series of crimes that are rooted in tragic events from the past. Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village on the northernmost tip of Iceland, accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a local policeman whose tumultuous past and uneasy relationships with the villagers continue to haunt him.

When the lifeless body of crime journalist Tom Pinder is fished out of the river near Jack's barge, it seems that the hardened old drinker may just have had one too many... and accidentally slipped to a watery death. But Pinder's young colleague doesn't buy that explanation, and asks Jack and Sarah to investigate. As they dig deep into the stories that Pinder was working on, Jack and Sarah soon discover that he had made some very dangerous enemies prepared to stop at nothing to keep a dangerous truth buried.

Between her work in Cornwall’s oldest library and catching up with old friends over tea and chocolate biscuits, Jemima Jago is spending the season the only way she knows how: sunbathing, swimming, and sailing. But her postcard-perfect summer is turned upside down when the body of well-to-do businessman Hermie Castleberry is found on the sweeping white sands at the foot of Candlewick Castle.

Meet Jenny Starling: travelling cook and reluctant amateur detective. Please note this book was first published as Just Not Cricket under Faith Martin’s pen name Joyce Cato. Jenny Starling is doing the catering for the village cricket match. But she’s not expecting one of the players to turn up dead. Everyone from the village has turned out to watch the match, and with this being the club’s centenary, Jenny Starling has been hired specially to provide her stunning food for the event.

When the Zakro Corporation attempts to build a mammoth supermarket outside Cherringham, the whole village is up in arms. But the accidental death of lead environmentalist Sam Lewis seems to hand victory to the developers. Could Sam's opposition to the project be the real reason he died? When Jack and Sarah take on the case, they will learn that what looked like an accident was - in fact - one very wild murder.

Date with Poison is the brilliant fourth novel in Julia Chapman's Dales Detective Agency series and is perfect of fans of M C Beaton's Agatha Raisin series and Gervase Phinn. A young teenager has gone missing. Can Samson O'Brien and Delilah Metcalfe find him? Spring is in the air in Bruncliffe. But not everyone is filled with the joys of the season. Implicated in the murder of a man in Leeds, the Dales Detective Agency’s Samson O’Brien is facing tough questions from the police....