The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

Holiday Theme Mysteries… Some Christmas Theme Mysteries & a Halloween Theme Mystery

I went to my veterinarian’s office the other day to pick up some antibiotics for our dog (again!), and I was a little startled to see their Halloween decorations already up on the shelves intermixed with various types of pet shampoos and flea/tick tablets. Although I really liked their new decorations, I wondered what the heck they were doing already displayed…. in August.

Some of you might wonder why the heck I’m already talking about Halloween and Christmas mysteries. (I haven’t yet found any Thanksgiving mysteries… or Easter, which of course is less than a year away!) But the bird who gets the worm usually is an early one….

You cannot imagine how excited (and yes, that is the correct adjective for it!) I was to find some of my very own favorite mystery authors putting out new holiday books. So far, these are the ones I have found  and added to my holiday mystery lists… only one in the Halloween Mystery list, but several in the Christmas Mystery book list.)

I am going to do this alphabetically…. and since C (as in Christmas) comes before H (you know the drill!)… here goes:

New Christmas Mystery Books:
Kissing Christmas Goodbye by M. C. Beaton (an Agatha Raisin novel)

A Carol for a Corpse by Claudia Bishop (an/a Hemlock Falls novel)

Mrs. Jeffries and the Feast of Stephen by Emily Brightwell (a Mrs. Jeffries novel)

Peppermint Twisted by Sammi Carter (a Candy Shop Mystery novel)

Sweet Revenge by Diane Mott Davidson (a Goldy Bear Catering novel)

Candy Cane Murders by Joanne Fluke (A Hannah Swensen Cookie Jar novella), Leslie Meier (a Lucy Stone novella), & Laura Levine (a Jaine Austen novella)

Shrouds of Holly by Kate Kingsbury (a Pennyfoot Hotel novel)

New Halloween Mystery Book:
Murder by the Slice by Livia J. Washburn (a Fresh-Baked Mystery novel)

I hope you are as excited by some of these holiday mystery books as I am!

***To access more Cozy Mysteries by Theme click on this link.***

Trying to Update… Taking More Time… What's New…

So, I have been trying to update my authors’ chronological book lists on the site, and it is going rather slowly… I have finally worked my way up to (but not yet including) Nancy Atherton. Yep, that’s right… but at least I am towards the end of the A list! I have only come up with one new book for one of "my authors" (Susan Albert Wittig) and I have absolutely no idea how I missed that 2007 release! 

One of the drawbacks to a site like this is that I have to become aware of (what seems like) a jillion new releases. I was recently very pleasantly surprised when one of "my authors" wrote to tell me about a new book that she is putting out so that I could update my list. That sure made my life a whole lot easier!

I would be remiss to not say that if you see one of your authors on the site who I haven’t updated, I’d love to hear from you! Believe me, I don’t think of myself as the "last word specialist with all-knowing powers"!!!  Actually, I have heard from a couple different site viewers who have let me know of "updates" for some of my authors. That is always appreciated!

Well, I think I have taken a long enough break… I am going to go update Nancy Atherton‘s book list…..

I'm Just In the Mood to Complain… Think Nothing of It!

I know that I have blogged before about preferring to own a book over checking it out from the library. Years ago, all of my books came from the library, but, now it simply takes me longer to finish a book, and sometimes I am not in the right mood to read a particular book. So, actually owning the book just works out better for me… I can pick and choose what I want, when I want it. My library has provided an endless number of hours of reading enjoyment to me, but, as usual, I can find a few things to complain about….

My library probably does what most libraries do… they put that crinkly plastic cover on the books. I absolutely hate those covers! Since I do a lot of reading in bed, I find that those plastic covers make too much noise. And, since my library doesn’t want the patrons to lose the covers, they actually glue/paste the loud plastic covers onto the actual book.  When I own a book, I take the paper cover off of it while I am reading it, which enables me to read while my husband is asleep.

On to my next point of annoyance… and this is by no means the library’s fault….  Do some library patrons really need to eat spaghetti while reading a book that doesn’t belong to them? And when I say "eat spaghetti" I mean right over the book. It really saddens me when I see a virtually new book from the library with stains all over the pages. I am sorry that libraries don’t have the right to simply charge people when they damage a book… But, I guess that there are enough unscrupulous people out there who would say that the book came to them that way… fully knowing that they had damaged the book, but not wanting to pay for that damage.

Another thing that my library tried (for several years) was to put a white sticker on the back of the book’s cover where they would stamp the due date. That was probably the most effective way for the patrons to be able to see the due date quickly, but I always wondered why the person adhering the sticker to the back of the book (on to the crinkly plastic cover) didn’t use some judgement and not put the white label onto the book’s description.

As I proof read this blog I see one thing is sure… Libraries are great places where we can get hours of entertainment, and people (like me!) tend to look gift horses in the mouth and actually try to find problems! The local libraries of all of the places my family has lived have been pretty terrific, and, I guess that when I can think of nothing bigger than crinkly plastic covers and a few words hidden under a white sticker, then… shame on me!

Busy with Added Recommendations…

I guess you could say that I have (again) gotten the bug to add new cozy mystery writers to the site…. which is not to say that these authors are new to writing cozies… they are just new to me.

Every once in a while I get a cozy mystery author’s name from a viewer who I have just got to add to my list of authors, even though I haven’t read that particular author yet. Some of the authors might be new to you, too!

I really appreciate the recommendations from viewers of the site. When I first started reading cozy mysteries… years ago… I had a very difficult time coming up with new authors to try. I have to admit to being disappointed with a new author several times, but, I have been pleasantly pleased with many of the authors I try.

Unfortunately for me, as this site takes more and more of my time, I find that I am reading less and less. (What’s that movie title?… Something’s Gotta Give …)

As I was looking up the authors today, I found myself wondering how I had missed reading some of these authors… Why hadn’t I heard of them before?!? 

These are the authors I just posted today:

Lori Avocato… the Pauline Sokol Mystery series
Dana Cameron… the Emma Fielding series
Caroline Cousins… three cousins (together) write this series about cousin sleuths
Peggy Darty… the Cozy Mystery series
Alesia Holliday…the December Vaughn Mystery series
Rita Lakin… the Gladdy Gold series
Martha C. Lawrence… the Elizabeth Chase Mystery series
Peg Marberg… the Interior Design series   
Stefanie Matteson… the Charlotte Grahame Mystery series
Susan McBride… the Debutante Dropout series
Suzanne Price… Grime Solvers Mystery series
Wendy Corsi Staub… not cozy, but her mysteries look very good…
Winona Sullivan… the Sister Cecile Mystery series

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