The 17 Best Cozy Mystery Books to Read This Winter

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Winter is the ideal time to read a cozy book, and if you're looking specifically for a cozy murder mystery, we have you covered. As writer Anthony Horowitz told Town & Country, "Murder mystery is an opportunity to close the shutters, to draw up the bed clothes, to make yourself that hot chocolate with marshmallows and sit back and like Sherlock Holmes, just revel in the intellectual pursuit of truth." That doesn't sound like summer—mystery is definitely a wintertime genre. (If this list doesn't suffice, check out classic murder mystery books and classic winter books.)

Here, 20 of the best cozy mysteries to read this winter:

The Murder at the Vicarage: A Miss Marple Mystery

Is Miss Marple the queen of cozy mystery? Agatha Christie's crime solver is an unassuming older woman who lives in St. Mary Mead. But don't underestimate her! The Murder at the Vicarage is the first in the series.

Read more: The Best Agatha Christie Books, According to Agatha Christie

The Golden Spoon: A Novel

Think: The Great British Bake Off, but set in Vermont, and throw in a murder mystery. What results is The Golden Spoon, where six bakers arrive in Grafton, Vermont for "Bake Week" at baker Betsy Marton's childhood home. But soon, things begin to go awry—and when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect.

Magpie Murders

Book editor Susan Ryeland gets the latest copy of Alan Conway's murder mystery, and doesn't think much of the newest Atticus Pünd story. But when Conway turns up dead, the Ryeland must turn to his unfinished novel for clues. It's a delightful mystery-within-a-mystery that will leave readers guessing until the very end.

Read more: Anthony Horowitz Thinks Murder Mysteries Can Make the World a Better Place

The Postscript Murders: A Mystery

After a 90-year-old woman named Peggy dies, the police have no reason to be suspicious. But Peggy used to be a "murder consultant" for authors, and Natalka, her home health aide, says Peggy was worried someone was been following her. Natalka sets out to solve what happened, teaming up with a former monk and an elderly ex-BBC employee, as a detective also begins an investigation.

Arsenic and Adobo (A Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery)

The first book in a culinary cozy mystery series, Arsenic and Adobo finds 0ur protagonist, Lila, moving back home from a horrible break-up. But when her ex-boyfriend, a food critic, drops dead, Lila is the only suspect, and must work to prove her innocence.

The Windsor Knot: A Novel

In The Windsor Knot, Queen Elizabeth secretly solved crimes during her reign. As she's preparing for her 90th birthday party, a guest atWindsor Castle dies, and she ropes in her Assistant Private Secretary, Rozie Oshodi, to help solve the murder. It's a delightful royal mystery.

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

Finlay Donovan, a single mom and novelist, is talking about her mystery novel in a coffee shop when someone overhears her and mistakes her as a killer-for-hire. Finlay inadvertently accepts, and has to figure out how to get rid of this woman's husband. It's the first in a very fun, silly mystery series.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Vera Wong, a lonely widow who lives above a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown, finds a dead man in her shop one morning, holding a flash drive in his hand. After she calls the cops, she decided to steal the drive, knowing her investigation skills are better than the police.

The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club series (there's four) feature a group of friends at a retirement village who discuss unsolved murders—and then find themselves solving live cases. The fourth (and possibly final) book in the series, The Last Devil to Die, came out this fall.

Mother-Daughter Murder Night

This book is advertised as "Think: Gilmore Girls, but with murder," so we were obviously immediately in. In Mother-Daughter Murder Night, businesswoman Lana finds herself stuck in her daughter Beth's sleepy coastal town. When Beth's daughter discovers a dead body while kayaking and becomes the prime suspect, Lana springs into action to protect her grandchild.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Novel

In this fun page-turner, narrator Ernest Cunningham's family gathers at a ski resort to celebrate Ernest brother Michael's release from prison. But when someone turns up dead, Ernie knows that everyone in his family could be the murderer. Ernest breaks the fourth wall throughout the novel, which is filled with references to the Golden Age of British mystery fiction (think: Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham).

The Cat Who Caught a Killer

Conrad is a cat, and he's also a detective. You're either in or you're out from that summary, as that's basically the plot of The Cat Who Caught a Killer, where Conrad helps newly widowed Lulu Lewis solve the suspicious death of her mother-in-law.

A Murder of Crows

Nell Ward didn't intend to solve crimes. But when she overhears a murder, and becomes the main suspect, she sets out to clear her name—using her training as an ecologist. (A classic cozy mystery set-up is the reluctant detective.)

The Appeal: A Novel

This creative murder mystery takes the form of a series of letters, emails, messages that lawyers are combing through to figure out who killed a member of a local theater group. As the publisher writes, "the evidence is all there, between the lines, waiting to be uncovered"—but can you, the reader, figure it out?

The Mystery Guest

Nita Prose's The Maid was a bestseller, featuring Molly Gray, a hotel maid, who ends up a lead suspect in the murder of a wealthy hotel guest. Molly returns in The Mystery Guest, when a famous mystery author dies in the hotel's tearoom. He has links to Molly's past, and Molly must solve the mystery before anyone else can figure out her secrets.

Murder in an Irish Village

Carlene O'Connor's entire Murder in an Irish Village series is cozy and delightful, so it's best to begin with the first one, where 22-year-old Siobhán O'Sullivan runs her family's bistro with her five siblings. When they open one morning and find a man dead at a table, it's up to Siobhán and her siblings to find the murderer and clear the O'Sullivan name.

Midnight at Malabar House

It's New Year's Eve in Bombay in 1949, and Inspector Persis Wadia, India's first (and only) female police detective, is on the midnight shift. When the murder of English diplomat Sir James Herriot occurs, Persis takes the sensational case, and must prove herself.

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