10 Cozy Mystery Series to Binge Read Now: Part 1!
You just found a cozy mystery series about your favorite hobby - knitting, baking, sewing, and more. It is well written, has great characters, and a charming small town setting that you love visiting every time you open the book. What could be better? Finding out that your new favorite book is a part of a series! Finding out your favorite book has ten more in the series is such a good find! It means you get to hang out with your favorite characters for many times to come.
What is a cozy mystery series?
A cozy mystery series is a collection of books by the same author set in the same fictional town with the same fictional characters. In each novel, the same sleuth that you know and love along with the quirky sidekick characters you love are going to solve a murder mystery and grow in their relationships along the way. I love reading all the books in one series because I get to grow and experience the story with characters that I get to know as friends.
This is a two-part post, so here are the first five cozy mystery series to binge read. Let’s get cozy!
Cozy Mystery Series #1 The Cajun Country Mystery Series by Ellen Byron
This series set in Cajun Country in Louisiana was one of my first ever cozies to fall in love with. I had heard of this book genre that was like watching a Murder She Wrote episode but in book form. I read Plantation Shudders, and I was hooked. I had to read more! So I read all seven in this series. The main character and amateur sleuth is Maggie Crozat, native of Pelican, Louisiana. Along with her friends and family, she runs a b and b and solves murders. This series is so much fun!
Cozy Mystery Series #2 The Vampire Knitting Series by Nancy Warren
This series checks all the boxes for me - knitting, magical characters, and an adorable British setting. Lucy is a twenty something who has lost her way. She doesn’t know what to do with her life, so she does what she always does when she needs guidance - she goes to visit her grandma. Lucy’s grandmother owns a knitting store in charming Oxford, England. When Lucy arrives in Oxford, she finds that her grandmother has passed away without her knowing. She’s shocked and upset until she spies her very own grandmother walking around the streets of Oxford, very much alive. She finds out her grandmother is among the undead, and that’s not the only bombshell to drop. When she decides to run the knitting store in her grandmother’s absence, she finds that a group of knitting vampires live underground underneath her store. Together with her new vampire friends, she solves the crimes sleepy Oxford.
Cozy Mystery Series #3: The Amish Candy Shop Mystery by Amanda Flower
If you want a quintessential cozy mystery, this is it! Bailey is working up the ranks as a chocolatier in New York City. She is all about that big city life, but when her grandparents in small town Ohio need her help running their candy shop, she rushes to the Amish community of Harvest, Ohio. Even though Bailey isn’t Amish, her grandparents are, and this leads to lots of culture clashes and interesting moments. Such a great series!
Cozy Mystery #4 Shady Hollow by Juneau Black
If I recommended a book to you that featured talking animals in a woodland town deep in the forest, what would you say? No thanks, I’m not a kindergartener? Let me tell you that this cozy mystery series is not for kids, and even though the sleuth is a journalist fox and her detective boyfriend is a grizzly bear, this is a sophisticated and well-written mystery novel series.
Vixen, a fox with a penchant for crime solving and investigation, lives in the woodland town of Shady Hollow, a charming town filled with woodland creatures living in harmony, that is until someone gets murdered.
Cozy Mystery Series #5: The Camper and Criminals Series by Tonya Kappes
I recently fell into a reading drought where a started several cozy mysteries and tossed them into a “Did Not Finish” pile halfway through. The Camper and Criminals series changed all of that! I read the first in the series, Beaches, Bungalows, and Burglaries, and I was hooked! This series, set in the Daniel Boone National Park in Normal, Kentucky, is funny, entertaining, and full of quirky characters that you will want to hang out with again and again. A bonus - this series has a ton of books in it, so there is so much to enjoy here!
This is part one, and part two is coming soon! There are so many great cozy mystery series out there, and I can’t wait to share more with you. What series are you loving right now? Check out my Instagram for more, and read my post 3 Cozy Mystery Series I love.
