Cosy books looking for recommendations

[Sagealicious]

I've recently started to get into cosy type books and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations? I'm not into romance type books although I don't mind if it has romance in it as long as it's not the main storyline. Cosy mysteries is more my style and in case you're not sure what a cosy book is think Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman or Agatha Christie. then there are cosy tv shows such as Agatha Raisin, Death in Paradise, Hamish Macbeth, Murdoch Mysteries, Miss Fisher's murder Mysteries and many more and of course the books these shows are based on.

Cozy mysteries are some of my favourite books to read. The majority are American! My favourite authors are Denise Swanson, Kate Carlisle, Lorna Barrett, Ellery Adams and so many more!

No mystery but the people on platform 5 I really enjoyed. Very cosy (to me)

But I did think Thursday murder club was too twee for me so its all just opinions.

'What you are looking for is in the Library ' by Michiko Aiyama.

It's very cosy.

Have you tried any of the writers from the Golden Age, like Dorothy L Sayers? Also, Lucy Worsley wrote a great book on Agatha Christe and another called A Very British Murder which looks at why the British public lives murder mysteries so much. There's also fantastic series to go along with the books (I do adore her too, so not sure if I am biased here 🤣)

Carola Dunn , the Daisy Darymple series

Catherine Coles writes cosy mysteries.

This is my historical detective fiction list that I posted fairly recently. Some are more cosy than others.

Pre-Tudor
Paul Doherty - Brother Athelstan (1300s)
Ellis Peters - Cadfael (1100s Shrewsbury)

Elizabethan
Fiona Buckley - Ursula Blanchard
P F Chisholm - Sir Robert Carey (Cumbria/Northumberland)
Edward Marston - Nicholas Bracewell
S J Parris - Giordano Bruno
S W Perry - Nicholas Shelby
C J Sansom - Shardlake

Restoration
Edward Marston - Christopher Redmayne
Andrew Taylor - James Marwood & Cat Lovett

Georgian
Douglas Skelton - Jonas Flynt (late 1700s)
Chris Nickson - Simon Westow (1820s Leeds)

Victorian
Anna Katharine Green - Mr Gryce, Amelia Butterworth (contemporary, American, very melodramatic writing style)
Chris Nickson - Tom Harper (Leeds)
Ambrose Parry - Raven & Fisher (Edinburgh)

Edwardian/WWI
Edward Marston - Home Front
Jacqueline Winspear - Maisie Dobbs

1920s
Cora Harrison - Reverend Mother (Cork)

1930s
Margery Allingham - Albert Campion (contemporary)
Elizabeth Daly - Henry Gamage (contemporary New York/East Coast USA)
C H B Kitchin - Malcolm Warren (contemporary)
E C R Lorac - Macdonald, Rivers (contemporary with particular warning for antisemitism. Even when sympathetic to the character her words can be quite hard to take)
Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver (contemporary, late 1920s thru to early 1960s)

1960s
Patricia Hall - Kate O'Donnell (Liverpudlian in London)

1980s
Sue Grafton - A to Z (California)

Then on the present day side there's Rebecca Tope's Cotswold series about a house sitter and her Lake District series about a florist .

Have you read any Liane Moriarty? Not crime mysteries but books that make you wonder what has happened

I really enjoyed Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce books - a series set in around a rather eccentric family in the 1950's, including the precocious pre-teen Flavia who loves chemsitry and solving mysteries. You do need to read them in the correct order for best effect - you can now get a box set of the first five and I think there are 11 or 12 in all.

Following for ideas

I was going to say Miss Silver. They're all on FadedPage.com.

Not mystery, but very cosy: Miss Read's Village School series, aka Fairacre Series. The first book, Village School, was published in 1955. Everyday life in a fictional school and village, narrated by the headmistress, 'Miss Read'.

I really enjoy Ruth Ware’s mystery novels, but I’m reading Weyward at the moment and it’s different but similarly paced and keeps you invested. Particularly if you’re into witchy/folklore stuff!

I’ve just started the Pumpkin Spice Cafe. Not sure if I think it’s cosy yet, but the cover is! It might be rubbish!

The Forgotten Book Club
Harold Fry & the sequel, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
The Invisible Women’s Club
Gentleman in Moscow
The Rosie Project
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Lianne Moriarty books
Marian Keyes books

Patricia Fisher books - Steve Higgs - superb series if cozy mysteries (plus his other series)

Cadfael mysteries - medieval mysteries

Have you read any Elly Griffiths? Her Ruth Galloway books are good, there's 15 of them in the series, start with The Crossing Places!

Barbara Pym books are gentle but fun reads.

Victim of the double posting glitch!

Totally get what you mean about cosy reads. A few recommendations:

Sherlock Holmes
The stories of M R James
Dickens' Ghost and Christmas stories
The Narnia books
The Shardlake Series
P. G. Wodehouse

I wouldn't say the Shardlake books are cosy. Some of them are quite gory, and there's nothing very cosy about Henry VIII in his last years.

They are excellent, but not a Miss Marple village mystery type read.

Oh you need Ann Grangers’s Mitchell & Markby series. There’s loads of them and they fit the bill of cosy murder mystery.

Anything by Heather Webber or Evie Woods

Another vote for the Miss Read books. And my definition of cosy might vary from others, because I can't ever get behind cosy crime, but I do love some of the older children's books, like the Narnia series, the Chalet School, Malory Towers, in fact many of the books that we enjoyed as children (I'm into Moondial at the moment and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase!).

Have you read the many sequels to The Wolves of Willoughby Chase? I read Black Hearts in Battersea, Night Birds on Nantucket and The Stolen Lake (my favourite) as a child but was delighted to find as an adult there were loads more! (Same with What Katy Did above and beyond Next and At School. My mission is to read the prequels/sequels to Charlotte Sometimes if I can ever get hold of them).