Next Reads: Cozy Mysteries: Home

After graduating from culinary school, Juliet Capshaw returns to her quaint hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to heal a broken heart and help her mom at the family bakery. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is bringing in lots of tourists looking for some crumpets to go with their heroic couplets. But when one of Torte's customers turns up dead, there's much ado about murder. The victim is Nancy Hudson, the festival's newest board member. A modern-day Lady Macbeth, Nancy has given more than a few actors and artists enough reasons to kill her...but still. The silver lining? Jules's high school sweetheart, Thomas, is the investigator on the case. His flirtations are as delicious.

Lori Shepherd thought Aunt Dimity was just a character in a bedtime story...Until the Dickensian law firm of Willis & Willis summons her to a reading of the woman's will. Down-on-her-luck Lori learns she's about to inherit a sizable estate--if she can discover the secret hidden in a treasure trove of letters in Dimity's English country cottage. What begins as a fairy tale becomes a mystery--and a ghost story--in an improbably cozy setting, as Aunt Dimity's indominable spirit leads Lori on an otherworldly quest to discover how, in this life, true love can conquer all.

The merry atmosphere in Pickax is dampened by the death of an out-of-town actor and the theft of a rare book. Qwill finds himself distracted from the events by his finicky pal Koko, who's been acting more fishy than feline. Has Koko gone bananas, or is he trying to let the cat out of the bag to solve the dual mysteries?

Hannah already has her hands full trying to dodge her mother's attempts to marry her off while running The Cookie Jar, Lake Eden's most popular bakery. But once Ron LaSalle, the beloved delivery man from the Cozy Cow Dairy, is found murdered behind her bakery with Hannah's famous Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around him, her life just can't get any worse. Determined not to let her cookies get a bad reputation, she sets out to track down a killer. But if she doesn't watch her back, Hannah's sweet life may get burned to a crisp.

For Molly, the weekly crochet group at Shedd & Royal Books and More was just another event to manage. Then she stumbled across the body of group leader Ellen Sheridan. Her complicated past with Ellen has made her a prime suspect, and after being cuffed and questioned, she could use a little diversion. Never mind that she doesn’t know how to crochet. Granny squares don’t look that hard to make. But while Molly’s fending off a detective with a grudge and navigating crochet group politics, the real killer is at large. And it’s up to Molly to catch the culprit—before she winds up in a tight knot.

Answering tricky reference questions is excitement enough for library director Lindsey Norris. Until a murder is committed in her cozy hometown of Briar Creek, Connecticut, and the question of who did it must be answered before someone else is checked out--for good.

The scene opens with an obscure death in Washington's Foggy Bottom, home of the State Department, shifts to mass murder in the downing of aircraft, and then moves on to mayhem in the streets of the new Moscow.

At the high-end designer consignment shop Snapdragon, Helen Hawthorne must cater to the whims of snobby-yet-frugal customers like Chrissy, who comes in to sell a purse and ends up causing a scene. But when Chrissy is found dead in a dressing room with a hand-painted scarf around her neck, Helen goes from being low on society's totem pole to high on the police's suspect list.

Deborah Knott, an attorney attempting to infiltrate the old boy network of tobacco country by running for district judge, is distracted from the race, and almost eliminated, when she finds new evidence to an old small-town murder

Unchecked urbanization has begun to eclipse the North Carolina countryside. As farms give way to shoddy mansions, farmers struggle to slow the rampant growth. In the shadows, corrupt county commissioners use their political leverage to make profitable deals with new developers. A murder will pull Judge Deborah Knott and Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant into the middle of this bitter dispute and force them to confront some dark realities

Miss Julia masterminds a makeover in New York Times bestselling author Ann B. Ross's latest installment in her popular series It's summer in Abbotsville, and Miss Julia has visions of enjoying a life of leisure. But before she can even sip some iced tea on her front porch, a letter from her long-lost cousin Elsie informs her that Elsie's granddaughter is on a bus headed to Abbotsville that very day. Reminding Miss Julia of an old family debt, Elsie proclaims that she is sending Trixie to Miss Julia's to learn to become a lady. The nerve of some people! When the rude and unkempt Trixie arrives, even Sam and Lloyd agree that Miss Julia faces quite a challenge. Meanwhile, Sam has decided to run for state senate. But when he has a fainting spell and has to go into the hospital for tests, who will run his campaign? Is his no-good rival going to cakewalk into office? No sir, not if Miss Julia has anything to say about it-and indeed she does, including up on the stump. In this marvelous addition to the popular series, Miss Julia is sure to have a summer that she-and Abbotsville-will never forget!