The Bakeshop Mysteries open in Ashland, the (real!) home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Juliet ‘Jules’ Capshaw is a pastry chef returning to her family bakeshop after a hard year…and finds murder. The bakery scenes are the heart of this series! The descriptions of croissants and tarts will have you eyeing the bakery aisle on your next grocery run. Ashland’s a real city, and this depiction feels especially lived in. And Jules is the right kind of protagonist: capable, not infallible, observant without being conveniently clever. With more than twenty books now, you have plenty ahead if it clicks.

Laura Childs started the Tea Shop Mysteries in 2001, and it’s passed its twenty-ninth book! That’s the longevity you only get when a series delivers, book after book. Theodosia Browning runs the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston’s historic district. The genteel-Southern setting, with its cobblestone streets and garden parties, is done with affection, not parody.

The tea details are a gift. She’s spent decades steeped (pun intended!) in tea culture, and folds blending, brewing, and history into the mysteries without it feeling like homework. If you’ve ever spent a Sunday afternoon with a pot of Darjeeling and a skein of yarn, you already know the texture of these books.

This is a different cozy. Nora Pennington runs Miracle Books in the tiny resort town of Miracle Springs, North Carolina that draws visitors seeking healing. Nora practices what she calls bibliotherapy, prescribing books the way you might tea or rest.

When one of her customers is found dead, Nora and three women form a secret society, each required to share a painful truth to join.

The friendships feel earned rather than convenient, and the scone recipes throughout are tested. If you want a cozy that doesn’t shy away from real feelings, but still delivers a satisfying puzzle, this is a wonderful place to start.

Disclosure: this one’s mine! Surprise! The Silver Springs Mysteries are my contribution to culinary and craft cozies. I’m including this because I thought you might enjoy it. 😊

Set in a fictional Vermont small town, it follows Laura Evans, a burned-out Boston restaurant manager who’s moved for a quieter life running the General Store’s café.

Then a food critic is murdered ahead of the Summer Cheese Festival. With help from her landlady Evelyn and coworker Jasmine, can she solve the case?

I wrote these books with accessibility in mind. Every novel is available in regular, large, and dyslexic-friendly print, (paperback and hardcover,) plus eBook and audio. If you’ve been frustrated by the lack of recently-published cozies in large print, this series exists partly because of it.

For craft-cozy readers, this is one to settle into. In an upstate New York village, Katie Bonner inherits a share of Artisans Alley, a struggling crafters’ cooperative.

Before she can sort out the books and leaky roof, the previous owner turns up dead. Katie has to keep the building standing while figuring out who killed him.

I appreciate cozies that treat crafting right! (We’ve seen enough ‘knitting’ with one needle. This author doesn’t do that.) The series has nine books. Plenty of crafting joy!

If you’ve somehow missed the sheer sensation that is this series: four friends in an upscale English retirement village meet every Thursday in the jigsaw puzzle room to discuss unsolved murders, until one Thursday a real murder lands on their doorstep.

It even got a Netflix adaptation!

I adore the writing and especially appreciate how it takes older characters seriously. Each protagonist is sharp, funny, and competent. They”ve lived long enough to know how the world really works. Just how they should be portrayed.

Lana Lee is in her late twenties, fresh off a bad breakup, and back at her family’s restaurant, Ho-Lee Noodle House, in a Cleveland mall called Asia Village.

When the landlord dies from shrimp dumplings (prepared in Ho-Lee’s kitchen, delivered by Lana, despite a known allergy that should’ve stopped the whole thing) Lana sleuths to clear the family business.

This series brings what the cozy genre needs more of: a Taiwanese-American protagonist, an urban-suburban Asian-American community setting, and well-written family dynamics. The food writing is excellent!

If you want a different setting without losing the cozy charm, start here.

For readers who love an English village and the smell of a hot oven, this one’s worth picking up. Holly Holmes runs a café in the quaint village of Audley St. Mary, bakes irresistible treats, and lives alongside her corgi, Meatball.

Then the village undertaker turns up dead in an open grave, and Holly is, awkwardly, on the suspect list. Time to put the piping bag down and start asking the questions the police aren’t.

This is a prequel to a long-running series, so once you’ve finished, plenty more village mischief waits. The baking scenes are lovely, and the corgi is, well, a corgi. Cozy in the proper English sense, perfect with a real cup of tea.

Jenny King has been dumped by her cheating husband, and she’s starting over in the tiny seaside town of Pelican Cove. Her cakes and muffins are filling the display case at the Boardwalk Café, and a queue is forming at the counter. A nice, quiet new chapter. Until her aunt, a local artist, is accused of killing a stranger nobody can identify.

Jenny puts the apron down and starts asking questions, despite a cranky local sheriff who’d prefer she didn’t.

This is the first of more than a dozen Pelican Cove books, so if it clicks, you’ll have plenty of seaside summer afternoons ahead.