Bookish Cozy Mysteries You Need to Read

[00:00:00]Hey book lovers, welcome to While I Read. I'm Katie. Here on my channel, I mainly talk about mystery and thriller books. Today, I am going to be talking about my favorite bookish cozies. These are cozies that have to do with books in some way. I've kind of divided it into categories. I've got a few cozies that take place in libraries like the sleuth is a librarian. Then, I've got some that take place in bookstores where the sleuth is a bookstore owner. I've got some cozies where the sleuth is a writer.

[00:00:44]I love those. And then, I've also got one that takes place at a book retreat.

[00:00:49]So, let's go ahead and get started. The first one that I want to tell you about is actually one that I haven't read yet, but I plan to soon. And that is a Blue Ridge Library Mystery series by Victoria Gilbert. I have read the first book in her Campus Sleuth Mystery series and loved it. And everybody has said, "You need to read the Blue Ridge Library series." So, this series is following a former university librarian named Amy as she solves crimes in a small Virginia town often with the help of her neighbor and love interest, Richard. So, the first book in it is a Murder for the Books. And it says that Amy is fleeing a disastrous love affair. She moves in with her aunt in a quaint historic mountain town in Virginia. And she starts managing this charming public library. It has a lack of funds. It has eccentric patrons. Perfect setup for a cozy mystery. She has this kind of handsome new neighbor named Richard, but then some inexplicable murders plunge the quiet town into chaos. So, Amy and Richard end up working together to solve these murders.

[00:02:15]Takes place in a library in a quiet mountain town. I am definitely there.

[00:02:20]So, this may be the next cozy series that I start.

[00:02:24]The next bookish cozy set in a library that I want to tell you about is the Cat in the Stacks series.

[00:02:32]If you've watched this channel for very long, you knew I was going to talk about the Cat in the Stacks series. This is a very long-running series by Miranda James. It's about a librarian named Charlie and his Maine cat Diesel.

[00:02:50]Charlie has retired, but he's moved to his hometown of Athena, Mississippi, and he works part-time at the Athena College Library. So, he also has this Maine cat, this huge cat named Diesel. Diesel goes everywhere with him, including to work with him. And Diesel and Charlie end up solving mysteries. So, sometimes it's a patron of the library who ends up being murdered. Sometimes it's somebody else in town. Sometimes it is someone who's involved with the college in some way. I love the academic atmosphere of this series. I love the southern charm.

[00:03:31]I love Diesel the cat. So, I can understand why this series is so long-running. I haven't read all the books in it yet, but it's one of those that I am working my way through.

[00:03:41]Definitely a fun bookish cozy. The last cozy [clears throat] set in a library that I'll tell you about is the Library Lovers Mystery series by Jin McKinley.

[00:03:53]This is another long-running series. I believe there've been six book or sorry, 16 books in this series so far. And this is about a librarian named Lindsey. She is a librarian in the small town of Briar Creek, Connecticut. And of course, murders occur around her library. The first book in this series is Books Can Be Deceiving. I have not read all of the books in this series. It's one of those like The Cat in the Stacks that I'm working my way through. One of the things I love about it is that this is a coastal town. And one of the things that Lindsey ends up doing, she um takes books to people on the islands that kind of there's some small islands around um this town like, you know, in the the off the coast of the town. And so she'll go out in a boat. She ends up um getting a love interest who is a boat captain. And he'll take her around to some of the islands, some to deliver books.

[00:04:55]Sometimes she ends up solving mysteries on some of these outer islands. So, it's a really fun series. I It talks about her having crafternoons at the library where the patrons come to craft and discuss books and sometimes solve mysteries. So, I've really enjoyed this series. Next, I want to talk about bookish cozies that are set in book stores. So, one of those that Again, if you've watched this channel for very long, you know I've got to talk about it and that is the Secret Book Case series by Ellie Alexander.

[00:05:30]This series is set in an Agatha Christie-inspired bookshop and it's housed in this converted [clears throat] manor house.

[00:05:40]It's in a small town in California. And whenever I read this series, I just want to go and live in the bookstore where it's set. The covers are always so pretty with some room from the bookstore. And the the bookstore is Agatha Christie themed. The whole manor house has different rooms that are themed after like parts of Agatha Christie's life or, you know, from her books. And our sleuth is Annie Murray who is a former criminology student. She ended up having a tragedy that caused her to get out of criminology and she's managing this bookstore. But she does end up kind of getting back to her criminology roots because it's a cozy series, she has to solve murders.

[00:06:27]This series only has six books in it, but they are all such good books. And then there's a spin-off series called The Novel Detectives that, I believe, has four books in it so far. I think I'm about to read the fourth book. Might just be the third book, but I'm not sure. But both of the series are really good.

[00:06:46]Another bookish cozy set in a bookstore is The Starlet Book Shop Mystery series by Cynthia Kuhn. So, this is about a family bookstore in Silver Crest, Colorado.

[00:07:01]Our sleuth in this book is Emma and she thinks that she's going to have a career as a professor in a university, but right after she gets her PhD, her sister calls her and tells her that their family book shop is in trouble. Their parents were both killed. Um, I I don't think it's like a recent thing in the books. I think it's something that's happened quite a while back. And so Emma's sister is managing the bookstore on her own with the help of their aunt Nora who is also a mystery writer and a college professor. So, of course, Emma comes home to help manage the bookstore and kind of serve as an an planner for the bookstore. There are I know two books that have been published how to book a murder in this one Emma is where she returns home to the bookstore and she gets involved in planning an event for her like a former kind of high school mean girl from her past and it's like an Edgar Allan Poe themed event so it's really cool and then the second one is in the event of murder. The third one is save the date for murder. I don't believe that that one has been published yet but I have really enjoyed this series and then the third books bookish cozy set in a bookstore that I want to tell you about is the Booktown mystery series by Lorna Barrett. This is an extremely long-running series. I'm not sure how many books are in it but it has been it started in 2008 so it's been around for quite a while.

[00:08:39]So it's about a woman named Tricia Miles who runs a mystery bookstore in the fictional town of Stoneham, New Hampshire. It's called the Booktown mystery series because the planners for this town had the idea of making this a book town so it's got lots of different independent bookstores in it. I don't know how well that plan would really work for encouraging tourism but seems to work in these books and I am all for it. I would love to live in a town that had that so it's like a a book centered community. So of course Tricia ends up solving murders that happen in her bookstore and around the town. She's got a sister named Angelica. They do have a bookstore cat. His name is escaping me right now but it's a fun little cozy mystery series set in a bookstore.

[00:09:36]And then I want to tell you about some cozy mystery series that involve writers because those are definitely bookish.

[00:09:45]So, one of those series is the Pacific Northwest cozy mysteries that Kim Griswell. The first book in that series is Murder at Last Chance Cove. So, these books follow a writer named Saffi Greenwood.

[00:10:00]She lives and writes in an RV and she travels around the Pacific Northwest.

[00:10:08]So, that's how it gets the name the Pacific Northwest mystery series.

[00:10:12]Uh she lost her husband like a couple of years ago as the series starts and so she's still kind of dealing with her grief over that. She writes this series of like bedside reader books with short articles about interesting subjects. So, there are three books in the series so far. In Murder at Last Chance Cove, she ends up at this very small town and RV park in that town called Last Chance Cove and there ends up being a murder in the RV park that she solves. She gets to know some people in town. Like there's a um restaurant in town where she goes all the time and makes some friends. Of course, she gets a love interest. The second book is Death in the Haunted Wood. This is a Halloween themed book.

[00:10:56]She actually travels to a different area in this book and she ends up solving a mystery at this haunted theme park which is really cool. And then in the third one it's Silenced at the Book Show and she has gone to this book show in another town. I can't remember the name of it and there ends up being a murder there. So, the cool thing about these books is that they take place in different locations in the Pacific Northwest. We do still have some of the same characters in all of the books because some of her friends from the town will travel with her or come to visit her and she always kind of has that Last Chance Cove as her home base, but I've really enjoyed this series and I've enjoyed the writer aspect of it.

[00:11:42]Next, the By the Book Mystery series by Tamara Berry. And the first book in this is Buried in a Good Book. So, this series is about a thriller writer named Tess and she moves with her daughter, she's got a teenage daughter, to her grandfather's cabin in Oregon. So, it's this very primitive cabin and so of course, like as soon as they get there, um someone is murdered. There's actually like uh somebody is putting dynamite in this pond and the explosion basically blows body parts everywhere, um which doesn't sound like it, but it's really hilarious. These books are so funny and they really have a lot of action in them, like more than what you would find in most cozy mysteries, I think, and that's what I enjoy so much about them. The second one is On Spine of Death and in this one, Tess and her daughter are opening up a bookstore in town, so definitely fits in that cozy mystery theme. The third one is Murder Off the Books and I believe that that is the last one in the series and um so I'm sad that that'll be the end of it. I haven't read that last one yet, but it's a really good bookish mystery series about a writer. The last series that features a writer is the Vacation Mysteries by Katherine Mack. And these are not exactly cozy, but definitely cozy adjacent. So, we're following an author named Eleanor Dash and she writes the Vacation, I think it is called the Vacation Mystery series, just like the actual name of this series. And in her series she writes about a man named Connor Smith who even though the books are fictionalized, Connor Smith is a real person. Eleanor was in love with Connor. They had an adventure together in Italy. She wrote the book about it and then kind of discovered that Connor was really sort of a jerk, but she couldn't stop writing about him because he was so popular with the fans. And so there are three books in this series so far. The first one, Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies. And in this one Eleanor is on a book tour in Italy.

[00:14:01]Connor is there, too. Her sister is there because she's her manager. There's all these kind of rabid fans and there's some other authors who are also on the tour. And there end up being murders on the tour that Eleanor has to solve. The second one is No One Was Supposed to Die This Wedding. This one is set in an island off the coast of California where Eleanor's best friend is getting married. Of course Connor is there, her sister is there, and there are also some different characters in this one.

[00:14:31]There's a storm rolling in ahead of the wedding. And guess what? Murders happen that they have to solve. The third one is This Weekend Doesn't End Well for Anyone. And in this one Eleanor is at um a book conference. It's in Let me see.

[00:14:49]Maybe I didn't write it down, but it's somewhere like the Bahamas or like a tropical location. And they're at a writers conference and some writers end up being murdered. I haven't read that one yet, but I'm so looking forward to it. I love the writerly aspect. And I also love that each one of these books takes place in a different kind of fun location. The last book, Bookish Cozy, that I want to tell you about is another one that I have not read yet. This is a long-running series by Ellery Adams.

[00:15:22]It's the Book Retreat Mysteries. So, this series is centered on Jane Stewart, who is the manager of a book-themed resort called Storyton Hall, where she solves murders that occur among guests.

[00:15:38]Does that not sound like the most fun thing? I would love to go to a book-themed resort. So, the first book is Murder in the Mystery Suite. "Tucked away in the rolling hills of rural West Virginia is the storybook resort of Storyton Hall, catering to book lovers who want to get away from it all.

[00:15:58]To increase her number of bookings, resort manager Jane Stewart has decided to host a murder and mayhem week, so that fans of the mystery genre can gather together for some role-playing and fantasy crime solving. Nothing's going to go wrong there, right? When the winner of the scavenger hunt is found dead in the mystery suite and the valuable book he won as his prize is missing, Jane realizes one of her guests is an actual murderer. So, there's all these fake detectives in the hotel or the resort, and they have to actually solve a murder. So, that just sounds so fun. This is another one that I want to start really soon.

[00:16:35]All right, filming this was really fun, and it made me really excited about reading some of these books and even starting a couple of new series. What is your favorite bookish cozy mystery series? Please let me know in the comments. Thank you for watching. If you like content about books, mainly about mysteries, cozy mysteries, thriller books, please subscribe to my channel.

[00:17:02]Thanks for watching. Now, you go to a book resort while I read.