Holiday Cozy

When Everleigh Beckett sets out to solve a Christmas mystery, she doesn’t give up, especially with P.I. Isaac Stern at her side.

This year, Juniper has invited most of Crescent Cove to her Thanksgiving feast. Even that annoying Detective Mallard and his gang of ducklings. The mansion is decorated. The table is set. The cooks (both living and ghostly) are trying new recipes. Everything is perfect until someone ends up face-down in the pecan pie.

Winter in Sea Harbor is a feast for the senses—crackling bonfires, the scent of snow in the salty air, carols ringing out on the village green. This year, the Seaside Knitters have a sack full of obligations in addition to their usual Christmas preparations. Meanwhile, the holidays are kicking off in style at Mayor Beatrice Scaglia’s holiday party, where a well-dressed crowd admires the mayor’s new home and celebrity chef. An additional treat for Ben and Nell Endicott is reconnecting with a dear college friend. But it’s not just reunions and the appetizers that are to die for.

The Halloween Parade is coming up, and former CIA agent-turned-suburbanite Merry Wrath's Girl Scout Troop hopes to repeat a 1st place trophy for the 3rd year in a row. But when they find a dead woman dressed as a witch, a mysterious treasure, and face a ruthless kidnapping, it looks like Merry's in for a different kind of triple threat. To add fuel to her bonfire, Mom's in town—meaning Merry has to replace all that bullet-riddled furniture in the guest room—and with her wedding date approaching, her groom-to-be's twin taxidermist sisters are insisting on doing the decorating.

The cast of Donna Andrews’ New York Times best-selling Meg Langslow mystery series is back for an unforgettable holiday story in The Twelve Jays of Christmas.

Christmas is bad enough without all the music, frantic shopping sprees, and holiday parties. So many parties… with people you couldn’t stand in high school and definitely can’t stand now. Top of the list? Patty Harrison. She made my teen years miserable and, now that we’re adults, she’s trying to get me banned from the Christmas market. Even so, I’m not going to commit literal murder.

Have yourself a very Merry Witchmas in Holiday Haven, where the magic and mystery of Christmas is snow joke! Lumi Northrop is a powerful guardian of the north—the North Star Reindeer Sanctuary, that is. But when trouble strikes and Santa's favorite reindeer goes missing, it's up to her to save Christmas!

Everleigh Beckett’s plans for Christmas are simple: Forget her ex is getting married to another woman, keep her cat Roscoe in the lifestyle he’s accustomed to, and hunker down until all the Yuletide cheer is over. Hoping to forget the season, she agrees to work extra shifts in the Missing Persons Division so her partner can spend time with his family. What Everleigh doesn’t realize is that one of the most infamous baby-snatching cases of 1986 is about to land in her lap.

When twenty-three-year-old Hannah Kelly finds out that the beautiful rolling hills around her hometown could be destroyed by a new building development, she rushes back to Emerald Bay to rally the community. But arriving home at The Shamrock Inn, there’s another shock in store… the handsome and sparkling-eyed lead developer, Tom Flynn, has checked in as a guest. Is this Hannah’s chance to save the village?

Rachel's plans to spend Christmas with her fiancé are in tatters after he is called to Italy at short notice. Rather than spend Christmas with her parents, Rachel decides to take a last-minute Canary Island cruise. Sarah, cruise ship nurse and Rachel's best friend, is only too pleased to have her along, as Sarah's parents are taking their first cruise. With her mother keen for her to settle down, she is glad of the moral support.

With help from the Seaside Knitters, Mary Pisano converts her charming inherited home into a B&B, and the first week is booked by her very own family in town to discuss their grandfather's will. Mary is hoping the tranquility of the setting will smooth over ill feelings among them. But when her cousin Pam is found murdered, she realizes she was dead wrong. With the holiday cheer severely disrupted, Mary relies on the Seaside Knitters to set things right.

When the townspeople of Harrogate almost riot over the Christmas décor thievery committed by the chair of the Elf on the Shelf Committee, I know I’m not going to survive the holiday season unless drastic action is taken. Biddy Jefferson turning up dead in my Christmas market stall is not exactly the type of drastic measure I had in mind. With no alibi and a town obsessed with pinning the murder on me, I have to clear my name. This is on top of planning the upcoming holiday ball, dealing with quirky stall owners in the Christmas market, and corralling confused tourists.

Maggie Crozat is back home in bayou country during the most magical time of the year. In Pelican, Louisiana, Christmastime is a season of giant bonfires on the levee, zydeco carols, and pots of gumbo. Except, this year, the Grinch has come to stay at the family-run Crozat Plantation B&B. When he floods travel websites with vicious reviews, Maggie thinks she's identified him as rival businessman Donald Baxter. That is, until he's found stabbed to death at Maggie's workplace. And Maggie and her loved ones become top suspects.

Enjoy the holiday season with three festive mysteries set in coastal Maine. This anthology includes "Yule Log Murder" by Leslie Meier, "Death by Yule Log" by Lee Hollis, and "Logged On" by Barbara Ross.

Knitting an ugly Christmas jumper at Cardinal Woolsey's knitting shop in Oxford is supposed to be relaxing. Until a knitter keels over. It's soon clear to amateur sleuth Lucy that murder's in the air and that the culprit is one of the knitters. This is a fun take on a classic closed-room mystery. Of course, no room is every closed when vampires live downstairs. But are the undead knitters to blame? Or is there more to this Oxford knitting circle than lumpy Santas and light-up reindeer?

It’s autumn in New England and Truly and her fellow Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes are gearing up for the annual Halloween Festival. Aunt True and her new husband, Rusty, have bought Ethel and Elmer Farnsworth’s dilapidated old farm on the edge of town, where they’re going to raise sheep and where Truly and her grandparents have volunteered to farm- and sheep-sit while the newlyweds are on their honeymoon. But as always, there are mysteries and secrets afoot in Pumpkin Falls. Jack-o’-lanterns outside the shops downtown are going missing—in broad daylight!

Meg's husband has decided to escalate his one-man show of Dickens's A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production with a large cast including their sons Jamie and Josh as Tiny Tim and young Scrooge and Meg helping as stage manager. When a famous, although slightly over-the-hill, actor comes to town to play the starring role of Scrooge, no one expects that he's bringing a lot of baggage and enemies with him.

It's the Christmas season and veterinarian Kate Turner is not feeling very jolly. She's overworked, unappreciated, and dealing with two dissatisfied clients. Throw in a very complicated personal life and Kate's definitely got a case of the holiday blues. To make matters worse, Kate's ex-boyfriend, Jeremy, is mugged and robbed after they have a heated argument in the hospital parking lot. Then, two of her dissatisfied clients turn up dead (which really gets Kate's tinsel in a tangle). All of these events seem like coincidences, but they add up to something much more venomous.

In Rudolph, Christmas in July heralds Santa's arrival by boat to begin his summer vacation at the lake, and Merry Wilkinson, owner of Mrs. Claus's Treasures, is looking forward to a busy weekend. But she's caught off guard when her ex-fiance, Max Folger, arrives with a team from a lifestyle magazine wanting to do a feature on the July festivities. It's clear that Max's visit has less to do with business and more to do with winning back Merry's heart. Merry has too much on her plate to deal with an old flame, but when Max is found strangled to death, she must find out who wanted him dead.

Lori Shepherd and her family spend Christmas in the cottage willed to her by her late Aunt Dimity, but when she discovers a stranger barely alive in the snow, she teams up with a priest and together they unveil the tragic secret that led the stranger to her door.