Holiday cozy mysteries
Christmas parades and snowed-in buffets: six holiday cozy mysteries to read before the decorations come down.
Some readers save one kind of book for the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year: a mystery with snow outside, a crowd of relatives or neighbors, and somebody in charge of the decorations. These are the holiday cozies I'd hand to a friend. A few are first in a series; the others read fine on their own, and I've said which.
Mistletoe Murder
Leslie Meier · Lucy Stone Mysteries, book 1
Lucy Stone is a young mother in Tinker's Cove, Maine, working nights on the phones for a mail-order catalog company during the Christmas rush. The first book in a long series that keeps coming back to small-town holidays, so there's plenty more if Tinker's Cove suits you.
Find it on Amazon →Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen
Vicki Delany · Year-Round Christmas Mysteries, book 1 (2015)
Rudolph, New York, is a town where it's always Christmas, and Merry Wilkinson runs Mrs. Claus's Treasures on the main street. A journalist in town to write about the holiday spirit is found dead, a gingerbread cookie from her best friend's bakery is suspected, and Merry starts asking questions.
Find it on Amazon →Six Geese A-Slaying
Donna Andrews · Meg Langslow Mysteries, book 10
Meg is organizing Caerphilly's holiday parade, themed on The Twelve Days of Christmas, complete with a live nativity and camels from the zoo. Then the town curmudgeon who was playing Santa turns up dead. Funny and crowded in the best way; you don't need the earlier books to follow it.
Find it on Amazon →The Twelve Clues of Christmas
Rhys Bowen · Royal Spyness Mysteries, book 6
Lady Georgiana is a minor royal who is perpetually short of money, and she takes a job helping run a country house Christmas party in the village of Tiddleton-under-Lovey. Bodies start turning up, and her grandfather, a retired policeman, is close enough to help. Best enjoyed with some of the earlier books behind you.
Find it on Amazon →Sugar Cookie Murder
Joanne Fluke · Hannah Swensen Mysteries, book 6
Lake Eden, Minnesota, holds its Christmas buffet at the community center, a blizzard shuts everyone in, Hannah's mother's antique cake knife goes missing, and then a guest is found dead. A snowed-in mystery with a town full of suspects and the recipes in the back. It works fine as a first visit to Lake Eden.
Find it on Amazon →Hercule Poirot's Christmas
Agatha Christie · Hercule Poirot (1938)
Simeon Lee, a rich and spiteful old man, gathers his family at Gorston Hall for Christmas mostly to make them miserable, and is found dead in his locked room. Darker than most of this list, but it's the classic Christmas country-house puzzle and the solution is a good one.
Find it on Amazon →
Not a Christmas book, but a good one for the dark evenings
Claire Willowbrook · The Foxglove Nursery Mysteries, book 1: A Body in the Bee Balm
A retired hospice nurse inherits a plant nursery above the harbor in Gullwater, Washington, and finds her neighbor dead in the display garden. The county calls it his heart. Marta has sat with four hundred deaths and thinks the timing is wrong. Free to read in Kindle Unlimited.
See it on Amazon →More lists like this, the week's Kindle Unlimited finds, and a free short mystery when you join.
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