The Cozy Mystery List Blog

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

Favorite Summer Cozy Mysteries!

summerWow, it feels like it’s already summer down here in San Antonio! But at the same time >>> the year seems to be going so quickly that I can’t believe summer’s almost here! Whenever the weather starts getting hot (and here in Texas it gets pretty doggone hot pretty quickly), I’m sure to start thinking about reading summer-themed Cozies.

I was thinking maybe we could compile a list of our ultra favorite Summer Cozy Mysteries.

As you all might be aware, we do already have a Summer Cozy Mystery Theme page. So what I’m talking about isn’t necessarily just every possible summer themed Cozy Mystery you can think up >>> that’s what the theme page is for after all! Instead I’m just looking for a short number of your “personal favorites” so to speak, so just one pick (or maybe two or three) would be great! And yes, considering that all three are squarely within the summer time frame, some of your favorite Fourth of July Mystery Cozies, Father’s Day Mystery Cozies, and Labor Day Mystery Cozies would definitely be appropriate recommendations! (Of course, feel free to recommend Cozies that aren’t already on those lists!)

I’ll put up a few quick recommendations of my own, just to get things started. Please leave a comment to add your favorites.

FAVORITE SUMMER COZY MYSTERIES:

Donald Bain & “Jessica Fletcher”: Murder on Parade (I couldn’t stop myself and read this holiday Cozy out of chronological order!)

Donna Andrews: Some Like It Hawk

Susan Bernhardt: Murder by Fireworks

Nancy Coco (aka Nancy J. Parra): Oh Say Can You Fudge

Cleo Coyle (aka Alice Kimberly): Murder Most Frothy

Isis Crawford (akaBarbara Block): A Catered Fourth of July

Kathi Daley: Bikinis in Paradise

Joanne Fluke: Lemon Meringue Pie Murder 

Shelley Freydont: Independence Slay

Victoria Hamilton (aka Amanda Cooper & Donna Lea Simpson): Bowled Over

Lee Harris: 

Leslie Meier: Tippy Toe Murder

P.S. If you want to see a whole bunch of Cozy Mystery themes, visit the Cozy Mysteries by Themes page on my site. But, if you’re only interested in Cozies with holiday themes, visit the Holiday Mystery Book List page on my site.

Cozy Mystery News – June 2016

I hate to start this Cozy Mystery tidbit entry with bad news >>> but it is! Some of you have told us about CBS’ new Nancy Drew television show. Apparently CBS had the pilot made, but decided against buying it. There are conflicting stories about why the pilot wasn’t bought by CBS, one of which is that it was just too feminine. (Imagine that! A show based on a female sleuth was just too feminine!) In all fairness,  the president of the network later said they also passed on other shows, and that the feminine factor wasn’t the reason they chose to pass on this project.

On to the good news points of interest…

 Susan Furlong (aka Lucy Arlington) will be writing a new suspense series with a sleuth who was once a police in the military and is now an “Irish Traveller”. As a lot of you know, Susan writes both the Georgia Peach and the Pippi O’Brienthe mysteries as well as the Novel Idea mysteries which she writes as Lucy Arlington.

It looks like Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins will be busy in yet another of their sleuthing situations! D.E. Ireland (aka Sharon Farrow & Meg Macy) will be featured in their third: Get Me to the Grave on Time. But wait, that’s not the only good news! There will then be two more mysteries that follow this one! (Sharon Farrow also writes the Berry Basket Mystery Series.)

Here’s some terrific news for Cozy Mystery readers who love cats, pets, or simply love Cozies! T.C. LoTempio (aka Toni LoTempio) will be starting a new series called the Cat Rescue Mystery Series. Purr M for Murder (how about that for a clever title?) will be the first book in this series which is set in a shelter for animals. LoTempio currently writes the Nick & Nora Mystery Series.

 Jenn McKinlay (aka Josie Belle & Lucy Lawrence) will be releasing the ninth Cozy in her Cupcake Bakery Mystery Series, titled Caramel Crush. Now that’s great news! (McKinlay also writes the Library Lover’s series as well as the Hat Shop Mystery Series. As Josie Belle she writes the GoodBuy Girls mysteries, and as Lucy Lawrence she writes the Decoupage Mystery Series.)

Some of us have followed the exploits of Lucy Stone for years! Leslie Meier writes the very popular Lucy Stone (holiday) Mystery Series, and she will be releasing the 24th in the series, Turkey Trot Murder. However, the good news doesn’t stop here! She has just been green-lighted for at least three more mysteries in this series. Yahoo!

Here’s some more good news: Dorothy St. James (who writes the White House Gardener Mystery Series) has just been given the go-ahead for a new Cozy Mystery series: the Chocolate Shop series. The sleuth will own a gourmet shop in an “artsy” community in South Carolina.

And for those of you who read Maggie Toussaint‘s Dreamwalker Mystery Series >>> her sleuth, Baxley Powell will be featured in two more mysteries as she communicates telepathically with the pets she takes care of in Georgia. Dadgummit and Counfound It will be the next two in this series. Toussaint also writes the Cleopatra Jones and the Moss Bog mystery series.

And, that’s a wrap!

Lorna Barrett: Booktown Mystery Series

Murder Is Binding (A Booktown Mystery Book 1) Lately I’ve been going through some of the most recommended Cozy Mystery series among this site’s visitors. Some of the earlier posts on these topics covered the Kate Carlisle Bibliophile Series and the League of Literary Ladies Series by Kylie Logan. This time I’m focusing on Lorna Barrett‘s Booktown Mystery Series. As long time visitors might know, I’ve been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to interview Lorraine Bartlett (aka Lorna Barrett & L.L. Bartlett). (It was a WOW occasion in my life!)

So I finally got around to rereading Murder is Binding, the first book in Lorna Barrett’s Booktown series. This book is the introduction to Tricia Miles, owner of the Haven’t Got a Clue mystery bookstore, in the town of Stoneham, New Hampshire. Tricia is a big city former upper class woman who has moved to Stoneham following her amicable divorce >>> to start-up her dream shop, a mystery bookstore. (Something I’m sure a lot of us would love doing!)

Tricia opened her store on the main street area of small town Stoneham as part of an effort to revitalize the town’s flagging economy to help develop the town as a stop for local tour buses. She wasn’t the only one, though. There were others who follow suit and opened book-related shops as well. Unfortunately, not all the locals are pleased to have so many out of towners coming in to take over prominent real estate area >>> and this conflict is an important part of some of these early books, and part of the reason Tricia finds local law enforcement less than cooperative when she finds an unpleasant neighbor dead.

Tricia’s problems aren’t limited to dying neighbors though, as she also has to contend with her sister (Angelica) coming to town. Tricia and Angelica never got along terribly well as children, so Tricia is less than completely happy when Angelica’s stay turns out to be a more or less indefinite duration. Fortunately Angelica does turn out to give some helpful advice and help in getting to the bottom of the recent murder >>> including suggesting actually getting a lawyer, a completely reasonable step to consider when potentially faced with a serious murder charge!

Another interesting touch to this particular series is that since the protagonist is an unabashed fan of mystery novels, she also does often bring up other mystery authors that the reader might already read – or might be interested in reading afterward! And from the names that she lists, it does sound like Tricia might be a fan of Cozy Mysteries in particular…

If you’re interested in reading more of these brief revisits 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 on my site.

Mystery Novel vs. Mystery BookShot

Those of you who have been with me for a while know that I am not crazy about this new “300 page” (or equivalent word count) quota that authors seem to have now. When I look at my Agatha Christie books, I can see that she didn’t have a certain word/page limit imposed on her. Don’t get me wrong, I still read 300 page Cozy Mysteries >>> but I do wonder why authors’ seem to write only 300 page Cozies. I don’t mean to imply they have a 300 page quota, because I don’t know if they do. However, if an author’s books all have 300 pages (+/-) then I start to wonder… I’m just not crazy about artificial 300 page book limits.

In my Saturday entry I mentioned that James Patterson was going to appear on the CBS News Sunday Morning show. (Although James Patterson doesn’t write Cozy Mysteries, he does write some mystery series that I know a lot of us read.) I hope some of you were able to watch that segment. I was delighted to hear James Patterson talk about his new idea for books: BookShots.

If you didn’t see the segment, you may be asking: What’s a BookShot? Well, they’re books that are 150 (+/-) pages long that cost less than $5.00. Yep, that’s right! Less than $5.00 for both the Kindle format AND the paperback editions! The BookShots official website touts these as “ALL THRILLER. NO FILLER.” (Don’t worry though >>> he’ll continue to release his regular length mysteries, too!)

(I currently have sixteen of his BookShots posted on the Soon to be Released page of my site, and I see that he will also be releasing James Patterson’s BookShot Flames which will be 150 page romance novels by other authors. He’ll also have a line of non fiction BookShots such as his September release: Clinton vs. Trump: In Their Own Words.)

With this in mind, I am posing this question: Would you like to see some of your favorite Cozy Mystery authors adopt the BookShots idea? Do you think you’d be interested in reading your Cozy Mysteries even if they were only half as long, (as well as a lot cheaper)? Obviously, if the author changed her/his books from 300 pages to 150 pages (or equivalent word count quota), there would have to be less of something such as descriptive passages or perhaps subplots. >>> Would you miss those?

P.S. These are not novella length novels. Usually you’re lucky if a novella is 90 pages long!

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