Cozy Fiction

With the arrival of six senior reading group members at the Merry Ghost Inn, the long-awaited grand opening week has finally begun for Melanie West and her grandmother Liza. All is well with the Oregon coast-side B&B until Melanie's dog, Max, finds the dead body of one of their guests.

Hi! I'm Tori Madison, and I hate scrubbing toilets, which is unfortunate because my BFF Hazel and I own Bubbles and Troubles, Blueberry Bay's premier cleaning service. When Mrs. Livingston asked us to sort through the contents of her attic, however, we thought our toilet-scrubbing days were over. That is...until we found her corpse. As if finding our client's body stuffed in a steamer trunk wasn't enough of an upset, someone needed to save her cat from being sent to a local high-kill animal shelter. That person, as it turned out, was me.

Normally, not even drunk on a bet would Violet Parker go to Slagton, a creepy ghost town inhabited by those too stubborn - or deranged - to leave. But a certain bullheaded Deadwood detective has a problem - his informant from Slagton has gone missing. When Violet is shanghaied into taking a hunting trip to the ghost town to search for the missing snitch, she stumbles into trouble that will take more than a double-barreled shotgun to escape. Will Violet survive this new hell that haunts her, or will she end up on Slagton's growing list of those "gutted and hung"?

Three years ago in a large Victorian house on the Jersey Shore in the town of Harbor Haven, fledgling private investigator Paul and his client, Maxie Malone, were murdered. Since then, recent divorcée and reluctant ghost whisperer Alison Kerby and her 10-year-old daughter, Melissa, have moved in and converted the place to a guesthouse, where Maxie and Paul are now checked in for an eternity and ready to solve any case that comes their way - or at least spook the guests (who love it). Alison’s got a lot on her plate at the moment, however, so when Paul discovers the 300-year-old ghost of a small boy in the house, he decides not to involve her in the case.

On 1st of December, renowned puzzle setter, loner, and Christmas curmudgeon Edie O'Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside, six jigsaw pieces. When fitted together, the pieces show part of a crime scene—blood-spattered black and white tiles and part of an outlined body. Included in the parcel is a message: 'Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.' It's signed Rest In Pieces.

There’s a lot going on in Joy Howard’s life. She’s got an ex-husband who starts acting like he doesn’t want to be an ex anymore, a sixteen-year-old daughter in need of a guiding hand and a lot of rides to dance practice, more orders for paintings than she has time to paint, and a roster of tutoring clients who sometimes need far more than she can give.

Although this isn't the life Lexie would have chosen, all is going well. At least until Lexie is fired and her deranged ex-boyfriend tries to kidnap her. Deciding that it's better to accept a mysterious inheritance from a great aunt she's never heard of rather than end up kept in a cage as her ex's pet poodle, Lexie packs up and heads to Kansas. So, what if she has to go by a new name and live in a town that she can't find on a map? Unfortunately, once she arrives in her new hometown, everyone there seems just a tad off-kilter, and Lexie's cousin insists the citizens are magical.

Cooper Lee is at a crossroads. Her boyfriend of five years just left her for another woman, she's living in an apartment above her parents' garage, and her job as a copier repairperson is feeling a little, well, repetitious. Hoping for a fresh start and a new outlook on life, she joins the Bible study group at Hope Street Church. The last thing she expects while studying the Bible is a lesson in murder.

Widow and empty nester Ava Harper never dreamed of turning 40 without the love of her life. Nor did she know she would bury her favorite aunt, who raised her after the death of her mother, a few years later. Then again, she doesn't have the power of foresight. No, her powers are much darker. With her only son off to college and her life savings depleted, Ava returns home to Shipton Harbor, Maine. When an old friend of the family turns up dead, Ava must delve deep into the powers she's repressed all her adult life to find the killer. Now she must open up to her own wells of dark magic.

Anyone growing up in Lobelia Falls is taught to learn the elegant, ancient, and occasionally deadly art of shooting with a bow and arrow. Practicing the craft, freelance secretary Dittany Henbit is strolling through the woods with her bow at her side when she meets a surveyor making surveys where he shouldn't. Dittany is giving him what-for when an arrow goes whizzing above her head. It is sharp enough to kill, and was not fired by accident, but Dittany wasn't the target.

Henrietta Doryn has never enjoyed fighting. She'd rather be in the kitchen baking cookies. But it's her duty as Warrior Princess to face off against the forces of evil. As such, she's unceremoniously shooed from her kingdom to go eliminate the all-powerful Dark Lord next door. Keith Monfort has never enjoyed ruling with an iron fist. He'd prefer to be in his workroom tinkering with practical magic. But it's his duty to lead the Dark Enchanted Forest and the forces of evil. So when Henrietta shows up at his door, he's only too happy to invite her in for tea to talk it out instead.

Welcome to Lemon Bliss, Louisiana, where an abandoned lemon tea factory is the most happening place in town and witches secretly rule the roost. Violet Broussard is busy, really busy. She's running her bakery with her bestie and spinning in circles trying to get up to speed on her, ahem, powers. Life has been a bit crazy all on its own. Throw in Gabriel who's too handsome and charming for his own good, and she's juggling a lot. Despite the madness, she's discovered Lemon Bliss just might feel like home.

The perfect proposal leads to a chilling cold case. Coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi sheds tears of joy when her NYPD detective boyfriend surprises her with an engagement ring. But her bridal bliss is put on hold when a chilling mystery brings a wave of deadly danger to those she holds dear. After everything Clare and Mike have been through, they deserve a little bit of happily ever after. So when Mike decides to put a ring on Clare's finger, Clare's eccentric octogenarian employer is there to help. While the engagement is steeped in perfection, the celebration is not long lived.

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

Despite his trimmer waistline, his girlfriend Lucy's affections for him seem to have inexplicably cooled. So when Lindy suggests the supper club members join a Mexican cooking class, James leaps at the chance to try something new. The Flab Five's classmates include Shenandoah Star Ledger editor Murphy Alistair and twin sisters with supermodel physiques. When one of the sisters is murdered during a school field trip to Luray Caverns, the amateur sleuths set out to catch the killer.

While out on a walk, Eleanor Trewynn, her niece Megan, and her neighbor Nick spot a young, half-drowned Indian man floating in the water. Delirious and concussed, he utters a cryptic message about his family being trapped in a cave and his mother dying. The young man, unconscious and unable to help, is whisked away to a hospital while a desperate effort is mounted to find the missing family in time.

Mystery author Rachel Goldman is getting used to the idea that her fictional creation, Duffy Madison, has somehow taken flesh-and-blood form and is investigating missing person cases not far from where Rachel lives. Wait. No. She's not getting used to it at all, and the presence of this real-life Duffy is making her current manuscript - what's the word? - lousy.

Private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney and her friends are celebrating New Year's Eve at the party of the year, a smashing Winter White Garden party at the newly renovated King Cotton Boutique Hotel. It's a dazzling success, until Frangelica "Sister" McFee walks through the door. Sarah Booth knew Sister in college, before Sister became a best-selling author and moved to New York, and fame and fortune don't seem to have tempered her arrogance and cruelty.

There's big trouble in Quincy's Gap when the "Diva of Dough" arrives to bake the wedding cake for Milla and Jackson's Christmas Eve wedding. The Diva, a celebrity television chef and cookbook author, is Milla's younger sister. And while her cakes are delectably sweet and incredibly beautiful, the Diva makes enemies wherever she goes. When one of the Diva's enemies decides to take her out, and Deputy Lucy Hanover finds the famous chef's body covered in cake batter, the Supper Club members find themselves up to their necks in suspects.

Winner of both the Harper Lee Award and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, Carolyn Haines has thrilled countless readers with her Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries. Here, Sarah investigates when two wealthy heiresses claim a four-million-dollar family necklace was stolen. All the evidence points to insurance fraud, but when Sarah starts poking into the family’s dark secrets, one of the heiresses disappears.