August looks like it will be a busy month for Cozy Mystery authors >>> we’ll be getting five new promising-looking series from established Cozy Mystery site authors!
First up will be Mollie Cox Bryan‘s Death Among the Doilies, the first entry in her new Cora Crafts Mystery Series. This will be the introduction to Cora Chevalier, craft shop owner and blogger in Indigo Gap, North Carolina. Leaving a very stressful job as a counselor at a women’s shelter, Cora is moving to small-town Indigo Gap to open her dream craft store. When her friend and local partner, Jane Starr, is implicated in the death of a local librarian, Cora will need to get to the bottom of the mystery if she wants to save her dream shop. Bryan also writes the Cozy Cumberland Creek Mystery Series, starring an ex investigative journalist and current stay-at-home scrapbooking mom in Virginia. (Don’t you just love the bright orange paper doily? Paper doilies bring back memories of my days as a classroom volunteer in my children’s schools for Valentine’s Day crafting!)
Next up is A Story to Kill, the first in Lynn Cahoon‘s new Cat Latimer Mystery Series. Cat has only recently inherited a big Victorian style home from her ex-husband, and has converted it into a bed and breakfast. She’s now hosting a writer’s getaway – but when one of the writers turns up dead in his hotel room, Cat will need her connection to the local police chief (her uncle) to help solve the crime and clear her new business’s good name. Lynn Cahoon also writes the popular Tourist Trap Mystery Series, starring Jill Gardner, the owner of a “coffee, books and more” store in California.
The last full Cozy series we’ll be getting will be Carolyn Haines‘s Pluto’s Snitch Mystery Series, which will have its first entry, The Book of the Beloved. Raissa James, a young woman who was recently widowed by WWI, is invited to Mobile, Alabama, by her uncle. An aspiring author, she decides to use the trip to soak in some of the dark history surrounding her uncle’s estate. Unfortunately, the estate is about to get another dark story for its history, as one of her uncle’s other guests falls to their death. She gets Reginald Proctor (a medium) to help her uncover the mysteries that cling to the estate, which include the ghost of a Confederate soldier, and more. Haines also writes the very popular Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery Series, starring a southern belle in Mississippi.
That may be it for pure Cozy series >>> but if your interests stretch a bit further into mysteries than just Cozies, you’ll likely be interested in the thriller Curious Minds, the first entry in the Knight and Moon Mystery Series, written by Janet Evanovich and Phoef Sutton. Emerson Knight is a brilliant eccentric, and Riley Moon is the Harvard Law graduate unfortunate enough to have been sent to babysit him. When a relatively minor matter of some misplaced funds starts to grow to include missing persons and a possible conspiracy, the pair will need to get past their differences to make sure the perpetrators are brought to justice. Evanovich also writes the Stephanie Plum Series, the Lizzy & Diesel Mystery Series, the Barney Barnaby Series, and cowrites the FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare Mystery Series, the American Gilded Age Romantic Mystery Series, and the Full Series. Phoef Sutton has written the Crush Series, cowritten one of the Lizzy & Diesel Mystery Series books, and has contributed to the Dead Man Series.
Finally, our other non-Cozy series by traditionally Cozy authors is Elaine Viets‘s Brain Storm, the first entry in her Death Investigator Mystery Series, which is a hardboiled mystery series. Normally confident investigator Angela Richman has suffered a series of strokes, and upon recovering she discovers that the man who originally misdiagnosed her has been murdered – and the prime suspect is the neurosurgeon who saved her life. Though shaken by her ordeal and uncertain if she will ever regain her full faculties, Angela nevertheless is determined to do what she can to save from a death sentence the man who saved her mind >>> unless he actually committed the horrible crime he has been accused of. Viets also writes two very popular series: the Dead-End Job Mystery Series, starring Helen Hawthorne, worker at various dead-end jobs, and the Mystery Shopper Mystery Series, starring plainclothes store detective Josie Marcus, as well as the Francesca Vierling Mystery Series, starring a columnist in Mississippi.
If you’re looking for any other new Cozy Mystery series, these and more can be found on the New Cozy Mystery Book Series page, and on the Soon to Be Released Mysteries page of my Cozy-Mystery site.
Mg says
Looking forward to the Cora Crafts series!
Danna - cozy mystery list says
Mg, I think this sounds like an interesting series, too. I’m glad Molly Cox Bryan’s series is going to be Cozy. It seems like recently, some of the Cozy Mystery authors are starting to write non-Cozy books…
Margaret StashEmpress says
Am I the only one who is not only confused by so many new series to read & keep track of all the characters, etc. (there was a thread about this not that long ago!) but also wish authors would spend more time adding to the series we *already* love so much!!!!! It just seems like once an author goes beyond two series, they start to slow down on the earlier ones.. books become fewer between because they’re concentrating on the newer ones & eventually they get abandoned…. or it just seems that way…. (I know, I shouldn’t complain, new cozies are a *good* thing! But lately I hesitate to add a new series to my TBR pile — which is already threatening to bury me!)
Danna - cozy mystery list says
Margaret Stash Empress, the ones that are irritating me (a little) are the publishers who are dropping Cozy series and having the authors replace them with hard mysteries. I wonder if the authors have a say in these decisions, or if they are merely told it’s that or nothing.