Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV
Here is the list of new releases for June 30 to July 13!
K.J. Emrick and Ellie Emcee: Deadly Checkout (3rd in the English Librarian Cozy Mysteries)
Martha Grimes: The Red Queen (26th in the Richard Jury Mysteries)
David Rosenfelt: Dogged Pursuit (31st in the Andy Carpenter Mysteries)
Wendy Corsi Staub: Toil and Trouble (7th in the Lily Dale Mysteries)
June is over, so it’s time to discuss our favorite Cozies that we read this month!
If you read a Cozy mystery this month and want to recommend it to the rest of us, be sure to post it here! For this month, I read the first entry of Emmie Caldwell’s Craft Fair Knitters Mystery Series. For the reasons I want to recommend it, be sure to check out the blog entry!
So, what have you been reading that you can recommend in June? Please be sure to tell us why you liked these Cozies so much. I know we’re all always on the lookout for more particularly good Cozy Mystery authors! (If you have a lot of Cozies you think are great, please post the ones you like the most at the top of the list.)
As always, please do not tell us about the Cozy Mysteries you did not like.
What really good Cozy Mystery did you read June 2025 that you want the rest of us to know about, and why did you enjoy it?
Tamara Berry: Eleanor Wilde Mystery Series
Verity Bright: Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery Series (first entry A Very English Murder)
Rhys Bowen: Royal Spyness Mystery Series
Leslie Budewitz: Spice Shop Mystery Series
Grace Burrowes: Lady Violet Mystery Series (first entry Lady Violet Investigates)
Emmie Caldwell (Mary Ellen Hughes): Craft Fair Knitters Mystery Series
Colleen Cambridge: American in Paris Mysteries (first entry Mastering the Art of French Murder)
Elizabeth Craig (aka Riley Adams & Elizabeth Spann Craig): Southern Quilting Mystery Series
J.C. Eaton: Sophie Kimball Mystery Series
Peggy Ehrhart: Knit & Nibble Mystery Series
Tara Lush: Coffee Lover’s Mystery Series
PJ Skinner: Seacastle Mystery Series (first entry Deadly Return)
I will list the authors and series that have been recommended, but I urge you to read the comments below so you can see the reasons other Cozy Mystery readers thought these were their best reads of the month.
♦To access more Cozy Mystery Books Recommendations, click on this link♦
P.S. I usually don’t comment on your recommendations since they speak for themselves.
Yikes, I’ve really gotten behind! I believe I mentioned a few posts ago that my daughter and her family have visited recently… well, recovering from that sort of excitement is starting to get harder and harder, so the last few weeks have left both myself and my husband a little behind. I’ll try to get back ‘on track’ as quickly as possible!
Anyway… for ‘this month’ (ie last month, June), I’ll be discussing the first entry in Emmie Caldwell‘s Craft Fair Knitters Mystery Series, A Wicked Yarn. it’s worth mentioning that I don’t usually highlight an author’s other pseudonyms in the name of this sort of book highlight post, but in this case, Mary Ellen Hughes is simply significantly more recognizable than Emmie Caldwell. It’s really unfortunate when authors do this, since I think it really hurts their new series – not to mention makes it harder for readers to find new works by authors they like. This is a relatively new series by Caldwell/Hughes, starting in 2020, so it’s safe to say it’s a very modern Cozy by this site’s standards.
It’s Mother’s Day weekend, and relatively recently widowed Lia Geiger is enjoying herself at the Crandalsburg Craft Fair, including managing the stall where she sells both her own and friends’ knitting products, and checking up with her old friend, Belinda, the fair’s manager. Lia has relatively recently moved to Crandalsburg as part of moving on from memories of her deceased husband, though not particularly far- just from another nearby small town, York. Belinda seems a bit on edge, even more so than normal for a holiday fair opening.
It doesn’t take long for Belinda to explain the problem. The owner of the barn where the craft fair is run is being sold – and worse, to Belinda’s ex-husband Darren, who will certainly shut it down. Well… he would shut it down, but unsurprisingly, he turns up dead before he can do so… right after Belinda and her ex exchange ambiguous, vaguely threatening phrases in front of the entire craft fair.
Well, fortunately, Lia isn’t about to let little things like an obvious motive and menacing phrasing keep her from believing in her friend’s innocence. Even more fortunately, there seems to be no shortage of suspects for Darren’s death, as is so often the case.
As with so many modern Cozies, this is definitely the sort of series where you’re really going to enjoy the series more if you’re interested in the hobby that is integrated into it. There are significant portions of the book where the goes into specifics regarding knitting projects, her time with her knitting circle, the stock and management aspects of Lia’s booth, and other crafting elements. That said, it also does one thing that I know many site readers will know, and that’s get right to the murder. The amount of pre-crime content is exactly what I like to see in a Cozy – a few pre-murder scenes to set the tone and establish the setting, then the sleuth stumbling across the crime scene.
All in all, I would call A Wicked Yarn a very solid modern Cozy with a good mix of mystery and theme-specific elements. If you’re looking for a mystery involving knitters, this is definitely a great pickup for any modern Cozy fan.
As always, if you want to read more of these brief discussions of some of the more popular Cozy Mystery Series that I’ve written in the past, you can find them at the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page.
Here is the list of new releases for June 9 to June 29!
Ellie Alexander (aka Kate Dyer-Seeley): A Body at the Book Fair (6th in the Secret Bookcase Mysteries)
Christy Barritt: If You’re Reading This (10th in the True Crime Junkies Mysteries)
Catherine Bruns: Death of the Hula Girl (25th in the Aloha Lagoon Mysteries)
Anna Lee Huber: A Tarnished Canvas (13th in the Lady Darby Mysteries)
LynDee Walker: The Pastor’s Wife (Stand Alone Novel)
