Witchy cozy mysteries for October
Spells and nosy cats: six series to start this month, light on gore and long on small-town gossip.
October is when cozy readers go looking for a witch. These are the series I point people to when they ask, and none of them leans on gore. Most are first books in long series, so if one suits you there's a whole winter of reading behind it.
Brownies and Broomsticks
Bailey Cates · Magical Bakery Mysteries, book 1 (2012)
Katie Lightfoot leaves a bakery job in Ohio to help her Aunt Lucy and Uncle Ben open the Honeybee Bakery in Savannah, and finds out that Lucy's recipes do more than taste good. When a customer is killed outside the shop and Ben becomes the suspect, Katie has to learn some magic in a hurry.
Find it on Amazon →Secondhand Spirits
Juliet Blackwell · Witchcraft Mysteries, book 1 (2009)
Lily Ivory is a witch who runs Aunt Cora's Closet, a vintage clothing shop in San Francisco. She can pick up the history of an old dress or a brooch just by handling it, which is useful in her line of work and gets her into trouble in this one. A good pick if you like your magic tied to objects.
Find it on Amazon →It Takes a Witch
Heather Blake · Wishcraft Mysteries, book 1
Darcy Merriweather is a Wishcrafter, a witch who can grant wishes (with rules attached), and she lives in the Enchanted Village, a neighborhood of Salem, Massachusetts. A self-styled high priestess is found strangled, the man found kneeling beside her is the obvious suspect, and Darcy is asked to look into it.
Find it on Amazon →Witch Way to Murder
Shirley Damsgaard · Ophelia and Abby Mysteries, book 1
Ophelia Jensen is a librarian in Summerset, Iowa, and a psychic who wishes she weren't. She lives with her grandmother Abby, a warm and slightly eccentric witch, plus a dog and a cat. A reluctant granddaughter and a grandmother entirely at ease with her gifts is the heart of the series.
Find it on Amazon →The Trouble with Magic
Madelyn Alt · Bewitching Mysteries, book 1 (2006)
Maggie O'Neill loses her job at a collection agency in Stony Mill, Indiana, and takes one at Enchantments, an antiques shop on River Street. Her new boss, Felicity Dow, tells her she's a witch. Maggie isn't sure what to make of that, and the mystery starts from there.
Find it on Amazon →Falls & Familiars
Hazel Whitmore · Whispering Falls Cozy Magical Cat Mysteries, prequel
Evie Blackwood is sixty and keeps the wards that protect Whispering Falls, Pennsylvania, from a Victorian house on the ridge above town, which she shares with seven cats. Her oldest, Obi, sits at the boundary every night listening for something she can no longer hear. A prequel you can read before or after book one. Hazel and I are swapping newsletter features this autumn; she didn't pay to be here.
Find it on Amazon →
No spells, but she knows her poison plants
Claire Willowbrook · The Foxglove Nursery Mysteries, book 1: A Body in the Bee Balm
Marta Pettibone isn't a witch. She's a retired hospice nurse who inherits a plant nursery above the harbor in Gullwater, Washington, and half the town is sure her late aunt sold poison plants. Out October 25. Join the letter below and you'll hear the morning it goes live.
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