Cozy Mystery Fiction

Former English professor Cat Latimer is back in Colorado, hosting writers' retreats in the big blue Victorian she's inherited, much to her surprise, from none other than her carousing ex-husband. Now it's an authors' getaway, but Cat won't let anyone get away with murder. The bed-and-breakfast is open for business, and best-selling author Tom Cook is among its first guests. Cat doesn't know why he came all the way from New York, but she's glad to have him among the quirkier - and far less famous - attendees.

The body that turns up in Bron's garden has been there for decades, and he died of natural causes. Just rebury him and carry on as normal, right? But it's kinda hard to be normal when the ghost of the dead man has been disturbed, and now he want...well, just what does he want? It's down to Bron, a traditional hedge witch, to find out. If she doesn't, that ghost is going to be lingering in corners and upsetting kitchen chairs for the rest of her life. Creepy, tedious, and noisy, all at the same time.

Welcome to Whispering Falls where magic and mystery collide!

A stingy ex-husband, a teenage daughter, and a rusted-out Ford Escort have multiplied her troubles. Tripping over a dead body while on her morning jog seems like another incident for the minus column. But then her new editor at the newspaper gives her a regular column detailing the investigation. He's handsome, single, and just a bit mysterious. Suddenly, Colleen's life is on the plus side.

Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the fictional Val de Follet in the Loire Valley. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the exotic Valérie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance. Richard remains a dazed passenger in the case until things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hen...and you don’t mess with a fellow’s hens!

Everyone knows the dead woman under the lighthouse, but no one seems to know why she died. What brought the folk-rock star back to Exham on Sea after so many years? Who wanted her dead? Does the key to her murder lie in the town, or far away across the Atlantic? Libby Forest arrives in Exham to build a new life making cakes and chocolates, and discovers a talent for solving mysteries, helped by Bear, an enormous Carpathian sheepdog, and a cast of local characters.

Portland is famous for its rain, hipsters, craft beers...and coffee. Sage Caplin has high hopes for her coffee cart, Ground Rules, which she runs with her business partner, Harley - a genius at roasting beans and devising new blends. That's essential in a city where locals have intensely strong opinions about cappuccino versus macchiato - especially in the case of one of Sage's very first customers. Sage finds the man's body in front of her cart, a fatal slash across his neck.

Lee Barrett has agreed to attend a storage auction with Aunt Ibby - even though she suspects the forgotten rooms will yield more junk than treasure. Her skepticism vanishes once the two win a bid on an overlooked locker and uncover a trove of beautiful curiosities, including a stunning wooden carousel horse with gentle eyes and fading paint. But just before Lee leaves the fairground relic at a local repair shop, the sight of a silver samovar awakens her psychic abilities and conjures visions of murder.

Emma Hooper thought coming home to small-town life and the family farm would give her a chance to rest and recover from a traumatic accident. But that was before she started seeing ghosts. It was before Grandma Hooper started singing on the roof, and it was way, way before anybody spotted a ghost in a 19th-century cavalry uniform coming out of an outhouse. Can Emma learn to handle her newfound ability to see spirits, while figuring out a confusing relationship with the handsome local doctor? All while solving the ghastly murder of Preacher Jacob?

There's never a good time for a ghost crisis. However, it's particularly inconvenient while I'm trying to tackle my first wedding season. Between 12-hour days, an assistant with a case of butterfingers (not the chocolate kind), and the flood of tourists in town, I'm struggling to keep a grip on my sanity. All I want is three months of peace from the spirit world. But when local ghosts start going missing, I have to do something.

Daisy McCrae's life is in tatters. She's lost her job, broken up with her boyfriend, and has been reduced to living in the attic above her family's store, the Union Street Bakery, while learning the business. Making things worse is the constant feeling of not being a "real" McCrae, since she was adopted as a child and has a less-than-perfect relationship with her two sisters. Then a long-standing elderly customer passes away, and for some reason she bequeaths to Daisy a journal dating back to the 1850s...

It has only been a few months since Sarah Kelling's elderly husband passed away, and she is struggling to adapt to life as a penniless young widow. To make ends meet, she converts her stately Boston home into a boardinghouse, a decision that brings something even better than money: the company of art-fraud-investigator Max Bittersohn. The budding couple is standing on a balcony, recovering from a second-rate concert at a third-rate museum, when something plummets past them. The museum has been robbed, and a guard has fallen to his death.

Hadley Hunter is about to find out the island's biggest secrets...if she can stay alive long enough to dig deep and absorb a bevy of different answers. Come along for the ride with Hadley, hunky sheriff Galen, mysterious Booker, and congenial Lilac - along with a multitude of other colorful characters - as they engage in one adventure after another.

Before she started hosting dinners for Indiana University's Sociology Department, Robbie never imagined scholarly meetings could be so hostile. It's all due to Professor Charles Stilton, who seems to thrive on heated exchanges with his peers and underlings, and tensions flare one night after he disrespects Robbie's friend, graduate student Lou. So when Robbie and Lou go snowshoeing the next morning and find the contentious academic frozen under ice, police suspect that Lou might have killed him after their public tiff.

Sawyer Davis, a chef who inherited her mother's mystery bookshop, is hosting her first book signing for the world's biggest diva. Between juggling the author's lofty demands, learning how to be a surrogate mother to a 15-year-old, and dealing with the sheriff who once broke her heart, Sawyer's menu is full. She longs for the good old days when the worst thing that happened was a flopped souffle. But when the author's husband ends up dead in Sawyer's best friend Renee's ice cream shop, things really heat up. Sawyer believes her friend is being framed.

A bundle of A Murder in Paris (Book 1) and Death in Florence (Book 2) in Blake Pierce’s A Year in Europe Mystery series! This bundle offers books one and two in one convenient file, with over 100,000 words.

Only a few weeks into her new job as a private investigator, Lexi Graves thinks she may have bitten off more than she can chew with her first solo cases. In between going undercover as a plush pony at a "Bronie" conference and following her cheating brother-in-law, she's got a saboteur-turned-killer to catch and a missing woman to find. Two of her cases may be connected, but how? Her boss, the mysterious Solomon, meanwhile, hopes to get her between the sheets....

Newly divorced Alison Kerby wants a second chance for herself and her nine-year-old daughter. She's returned to her hometown on the Jersey Shore to transform a Victorian fixer-upper into a charming-and profitable guest house. One small problem: the house is haunted, and the two ghosts insist Alison must find out who killed them.

As if a run-in with an old flame and a failed marriage proposal weren't enough to horrify Krissy for one night, a woman is found strangled to death in a room filled with ominous jack-o'-lanterns. All signs suggest a crime of passion - but when the hostess's jewelry disappears, malevolent intentions seem way more likely.

Between trying to get her gluten-free baking business off the ground and helping her aunt remodel her old Victorian into the Butterfly House Bed and Breakfast in Cape May, New Jersey, Poppy is ready to call "Mayday"! And now Aunt Ginny - who's a handful wide-awake - is sleepwalking on her new sleeping-pill prescription and helping herself to neighbors' snacks and knickknacks. Even more alarming, a local humanitarian who worked with troubled teens is found murdered, and the police suspect the "Snack Bandit".