Cozy Fiction

Summer is busy season for Mackenzie "Mac" Almeida's bicycle shop, nestled in the quaint, seaside hamlet of Westham, Massachusetts. She's expecting an influx of tourists at Mac's Bikes; instead she discovers the body of Jake Lacey. Mac can't imagine anyone stabbing the down-on-his-luck handyman. However, the authorities seem to think Mac is a strong suspect after she was spotted arguing with Jake just hours before his death. Mac knows she didn't do it, but she does recognize the weapon - her brother Derrick's fishing knife.

Jill Gardner has volunteered her Coffee, Books, and More to host a Christmas adopt-a-pet party. Among the potential forever friends is a male terrier named Baby, whose owner died of a heart attack. With few clues to go on, even finding the name of Baby's human is a daunting task. But there's no challenge too big for Jill this holiday season. Playing Santa's Little Helper, Jill is determined to find out what happened - and to fulfill a long-time coming Christmas wish.

Brighton Longfield is kinda bad at life. She's divorced, childless, and she just got fired...again. With dwindling savings and few prospects, she packs her possessions into a U-Haul and sets out for the little town of Coventry, where she inherited a dilapidated old house from her Great Aunt "Mad" Maude Tuttlesmith. Coventry is supposed to be a stop in the road for Brighton. The plan is to fix up the house, sell it, and then figure out what to do with her life. You know what they say about the best-laid plans.

Marian Stamford moves to her dream home: a snug little cottage in a Dorset village where nothing ever happens. She only wants a quiet life, a home for her unlikely family of two nieces and one troublesome kitten. Before long, things take a darker turn. A man breaks out of prison, leaving the villagers rattled. What are they afraid of? Marian isn’t one for idle gossip. But she can’t ignore the telltale signs that someone has been sneaking into her garden at night.

Known as the Brighton of the North, Nairn is both a charming Scottish town and a popular seaside resort - but to Paislee Shaw, it's simply home - unfortunately to a murderer....

Agatha Raisin thinks she’s in for a treat when her ex-husband, James Lacey, invites her on a holiday. But to her horror, his idea of an exotic destination is a small, rundown resort of Snoth-on-Sea. Needless to say, the break doesn’t go as planned. When a fellow guest in their hotel is found murdered, Agatha herself becomes a suspect - and it looks as if she will be solving this particular case from the confines of a prison cell....

Reports of a haunted house soon have amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin snooping around, only to discover the victim of the haunting is a universally disliked old biddy on whom someone is playing a practical joke. But then the old lady is murdered and, for Agatha, solving a crime is much more fun than ghost-busting. Very soon she’s up to her usual tricks, involving the villagers, local police, and, naturally, her handsome new neighbor.

Penniless graduate Blair Wilkes has always felt one step behind everyone else. Unemployed and out of luck, with the uncanny ability to cause havoc wherever she treads, when she receives a job offer from a strange town called Fairy Falls, she's certain it's too good to be true. It turns out Fairy Falls isn't just eccentric: it's magical...and so is Blair.

Addie Greyborne loved working with rare books at the Boston Public Library - she even got to play detective, tracking down clues about mysterious old volumes. But she didn't expect her sleuthing skills to come in so handy in a little seaside town....

Promoting her latest books brings best-selling mystery writer Jessica Fletcher to New York for Christmas. Her schedule includes book signings, chat-show appearances, department store shopping...and murder. But it all begins with a sidewalk Santa staring at Jessica with fear and recognition.

When a local heiress goes missing, Danielle discovers it's not always possible to distinguish the living from the dead. To complicate matters, it seems Danielle is not the only one who communicates with spirits. Her new guest claims to hear Walt. But, something's not quite right with Marlow House's newest medium. Danielle must move quickly before her best friend joins the spirit world.

Jessica is invited to join other crime writers at an interactive murder mystery weekend in a historic mansion turned resort. A theatrical troupe presents a play for the paying guests, but a young actor's death during the actual performance isn't part of the script. The local sheriff has never investigated a murder before and enlists Jessica's help and expertise. As she begins to put the pieces together in her folksy fashion, Jessica recognizes that this could well be her last performance.

Can the feisty Agatha Raisin cut it as a private investigator? She soon learns that running her own detective agency in the Cotswolds is not quite like starring in a Raymond Chandler movie. But then in walks wealthy divorcée Catherine Laggat-Brown, and presents Agatha with her first real case. Death threats, blackmail, and worse quickly follow, and once again Agatha is off scouring the countryside for clues and showing friends and enemies alike what Raisin Investigations can do!

Spending Halloween in a haunted house is nothing out of the ordinary for Danielle and Lily. After all, Marlow House Bed & Breakfast has its own fulltime ghost. But there is another haunted house in Frederickport, Oregon. Yet, its ghost only shows up on Halloween. Why just once a year? And how is this frightening spirit connected to all that's happened to Danielle since she arrived in town?

Delaney Nichols has settled so comfortably into her new life in Edinburgh that she truly feels it's become more home than her once beloved Kansas. Her job at the Cracked Spine, a bookshop that specializes in rare manuscripts as well as other sundry valuable historical objects, is everything she had dreamed. Her latest task includes a trip to Castle Doune to retrieve a hard-to-find edition of an old Scottish comic, an "Oor Wullie", in a cloak-and-dagger transaction that Edwin has orchestrated.

Everything is right on track for Danielle as she prepares for the grand opening of her bed and breakfast. All that changes when her cousin, Cheryl, shows up to claim her share of the inheritance - housemate Lily figures out there is a ghost in the house - and the million-dollar necklace goes missing. There is blood on someone's hands, and if Danielle isn't careful, she'll be moving from Marlow House to the Big House.

Peta Gore is the bane of her friend’s otherwise successful life. Maria Worth has come to hate her old friend - a noisy, vulgar glutton. There is no other way to describe Peta. She doesn’t just “have a good appetite” - she sucks and chomps and chews with relish. Not only are her table manners horrifying, but she has a habit of showing up at Maria’s carefully planned singles’ gatherings and spoiling everything by flirting with all the men.

Jessica Fletcher finds herself in an incredibly compromising situation, awakening on a lobster boat adrift in Cabot Cove to discover she's not alone: there's a dead body aboard. Jessica soon finds herself in a swirling investigation that involves the sleepy town of Cabot Cove and its lobstermen.

New witch Emma Hart is at her wit's end and, this time, it's not the result of her vampire ghost roommate, her snarky owl, or her feelings for a certain fallen angel. Key members of Spellbound society are acting like children and it's wreaking havoc on the town's regulation-happy infrastructure. When Emma is turned invisible during the investigation, she realizes that the spell was no accident and that someone is out to silence her - permanently.

At a crossroads between a cringe-worthy past (Todd the Toad) and an uncertain future (she's not exactly homeless, but it's close), Lucy Swift travels to Oxford to visit her grandmother. With Gran's undying love to count on and Cardinal Woolsey's, Gran's knitting shop, to keep her busy, Lucy can catch her breath and figure out what she's going to do.