Cozy Fiction

A teacup, a diary, and a body at the foot of the stairs.... When Ruth Townsend’s job and marriage both end abruptly, she heads home to the mountains for a fresh start. Nine months later, she has a new hobby, good friends, and a potential new romance - but only two dozen subscribers to the weekly newspaper she’s intent on reviving. What she needs is a good mystery...but nothing ever happens in sleepy little Thistlewood. Then Edith Morton is found dead at the bottom of her staircase.

All Pyper Rayne - medium and coffee shop owner - wanted was the perfect vintage dress. What she got was a dead shop owner and a sexy ghost who's suddenly everywhere - at her shop, in her car, and even lounging in her bedroom. But he's not just any ghost. He's a witch and able to appear in solid form...sometimes. If only he'd stop disappearing on her.

Each December, the faculty of Balaclava Agricultural College goes wild with holiday decorations. The entire campus glitters with Christmas lights, save for one dark spot: the home of Professor Peter Shandy. But after years of resisting the school's Illumination festival, Shandy suddenly snaps, installing a million-watt display of flashing lights and blaring music perfectly calculated to drive his neighbors mad. Then the horticulturalist flees town, planning to spend Christmas on a tramp steamer. He returns home to find his lights extinguished - and a dead librarian in his living room.

Welcome to Barton Mallet, a remote village in the Midlands that has been chosen as the unlikely location for a new feature film from Hollywood producer Max Crow. Teenagers from the local drama group are encouraged to audition for a story about the trials and tribulations of growing up. Benjamin Knot, the CEO of a well-known architecture firm, discovers that his children, Lily and Nathan, have each been offered a role. But Barton Mallet has a deep wound that has never truly healed.

In a quiet small town in New Brunswick, old Agatha Treadway makes one last cranky complaint to her niece before dying on her kitchen floor. The cause seems to be a jar of contaminated string beans, which sat on Agatha's basement shelf for years before becoming her final meal. The town doctor calls it a tragic accident - and a warning to all who can their own vegetables - but Agatha's neighbor, the intrepid Janet Wadman, knows better. Agatha was an expert canner, which means the beans must have been placed there by someone else. This was murder.

When a young, struggling screenwriter's greatest dream turns into a nightmare after her script is stolen by an uber-powerful male producer, she forms a surprising alliance with a former soap opera star harboring secrets of her own. Together, these two devise a daring, twisted plan to seek justice against the producer through the long-running soap opera Summer Breeze. They will turn the producer’s monstrosity into their art.

Ever since disgraced associate Orrie Cather’s suicide, armchair detective Nero Wolfe has relished retirement in his Manhattan brownstone on West 35th Street. Two years after Cather’s death, only a visit from Maria Radovich - and the urging of Wolfe’s prize assistant, Archie Goodwin - could draw the eccentric and reclusive genius back into business. Maria’s uncle, New York Symphony Orchestra conductor Milan Stevens, formerly known as Milos Stefanovic, spent his youth alongside Wolfe as a fellow freedom fighter in the mountains of Montenegro.

In between jobs, Olivia Greer is helping residents of the Hello Age retirement community onto their bus when one of their own is found dead. Murdered in the herb garden, a sprig of thyme is clutched tight in his cold, lifeless hand. Worse yet, Olivia's former student, Raleigh Ulrich, is suspected of the crime.

Another murder in small town Cold Creek has tensions rising. Clive Johnson, the groundskeeper at Cold Creek College, is a convenient scapegoat for a police chief when he has the bad luck of finding the body. Although Clive helps the students on scholarship and claims innocence, he’s not helping himself. Convinced Chief Barney Pfeiffe has it all wrong, Sheridan Hendley sets out to help prove Clive's innocence. Her curiosity and questions place her in danger.

Harlow Torrent, part-time journalist and full-time slip witch is hot on the trail of an arsonist. But who is behind the deadly fires? Someone working for their own evil ends or a fire spirit acting according to its nature? Or perhaps a magical power hidden away?

Feisty enchanted hedgehogs with eye-watering gas, a half-dragon with an attitude, and a headless corpse aren't the best things to start the day with! But that's what we encounter in our first week working for animal control in Crimson Cove. We'd only come here to find a missing person but got more than we bargained for. As an enchanted cat, few things phase me, but even I wince when my wonderful witch, Zandra Crypt, finds a body missing its head.

April is busy baking tasty treats to serve in her tearoom while stormy weather threatens outside. She ignores the controversy surrounding the sheriff’s recall and the rumors being spread until she learns about a rumor involving her! When she goes to confront the person she believes is responsible, she finds a dead body instead. Accused of murder, she feels she has no choice but to investigate. There are plenty of suspects, but they all have solid alibis. Meanwhile, disaster strikes for someone close to April. At least she can count on Chef Emile’s presence in her kitchen… or can she?

Wedding bells toll disaster. Ellesworth's resident amateur sleuth is about to tie the knot, but what should be a happy time is marred by a new case to solve. Brides-to-be are under attack, turning up dead missing their left ring fingers. Heartbreak is a powerful motivator and the longer Kalina searches the clearer it becomes that their killer is a scorned lover. Will Kalina solve the series of grisly deaths before the killer finds their ultimate target?

A small town with big secrets. A neighbor who bites. Plus a house with a mind of its own. Welcome to Wisteria.

To get a fresh start away from a bad relationship, Kylie Strange moves across the country to open a shop in a seemingly quiet town in rural Maine. During renovations on Strange Herbs & Teas, she discovers a peculiar and ancient codex, The Booke of the Hidden, bricked into the wall. Every small town has its legends and unusual histories, and this artifact sends Kylie right into the center of Moody Bog's biggest secret.

Secrets of the past are unraveling in pineapple port...Charlotte, the 55+ community's young female sleuth is thrust into a thrilling struggle to survive when her friend Jackie's underground "mature" disco is infiltrated by violent criminals intent on claiming the club as their own. Even more frightening - the ridiculously vengeful Gloria is back and on the warpath after a playful suitor goes missing. Charlotte must search for the connection between the two cases with the help of Declan, whose own secret past with crazy, serial killer-spawn Stephanie is beginning to show....

When real estate tycoon Bucky Bloom is found stuck to the end of a sailboat mast, a land war erupts in Pineapple Port. Amateur sleuth Charlotte Morgan is commissioned to solve Bucky’s murder, but soon finds herself embroiled in a competition masterminded by her boyfriend’s crazy ex, the ever-nefarious Stephanie.

England, December 1927. Arrogant Edward Linton has returned from years of living in Paris. But has he changed? Because, if not, the consequences for him might be deadly. When Mrs. Kate Forbes and her academically minded niece, Lady Jane Scott. are invited to a gathering at Linton Hall, the last thing they expect is to become amateur sleuths pitting their wits against Inspector Ridley of Scotland Yard to solve a shocking murder. Faced with an ensemble of social climbers, eccentrics, and schemers, our daring duo must untangle a web of secrets, lies and deceit if they're to discover whodunnit.

When her childhood best friend is implicated in her own father's murder, Kalina can't help nosing in and uses her newly rekindled relationship with the town's top detective to find the truth. As the facts stack up against her friend, Kalina is left to wonder: is she guilty of patricide or are her fractured memories the result of a more sinister, years' long mind game?

Part human comedy and part mystery, Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told is an enthralling, masterful story about what holds a village together and what keeps people apart. When journalist Patrick Bracken returns to Gohen, the Irish village where he was born, he knows the eyes of the townspeople are on him. He has come home to investigate two deaths that happened decades earlier when he was a child, deaths that were ruled accidental.