Here are 14 books that Hat Shop Mysteries fans have personally recommended once you finish the Hat Shop Mysteries series.
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I’ve been addicted to reading and writing mystery novels since I picked up my first Nancy Drew. But in addition to a good puzzle, I also love a good laugh and grew up watching classic screwball comedies. I’ve written a dozen funny cozy mysteries now with more in the works. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
Zany family members and weddings gone wrong provide page-turning laughs in the first book in the Meg Lanslow series. The heroine is smart, funny, and… a blacksmith. The small-town shenanigans just keep coming in this laugh-out-loud mystery, but the heart comes from the familial relationships. (No peacocks are harmed in the making of this mystery, but they do provide plenty of laughs.)
Bad things happen to good people every day, and it seems unfair. I’ve lost friends to cancer, heart disease, and accidents, and I always wonder why it had to be someone who was decent and good and kind. At the same time, other people get away with all sorts of crimes, including murder. I can’t change the way the world works. So, in my own books and the books I like to read, the good guys might have some tough times, but in the end, they win. And the bad guys get what they deserve.
I laugh out loud at the awkward social situations Lady Georgina, 34th in succession to the throne of England, gets into.
Although she has been trained in all the proper graces, she is impoverished, and I find her creative, muddled attempts to figure out who murdered the body in her bathtub while meeting royal expectations endearing and amusing. I also enjoy glimpses into the mores of the royal family in 1930.
The New York Times bestselling author of the Molly Murphy and Constable Evan Evans mysteries turns her attentions to "a feisty new heroine to delight a legion of Anglophile readers."*
London, 1932. Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, 34th in line for the English throne, is flat broke. She's bolted Scotland, her greedy brother, and her fish-faced betrothed. London is a place where she'll experience freedom, learn life lessons aplenty, do a bit of spying for HRH-oh, and find a dead Frenchman in her tub. Now her new job is to clear her long family name...
I am the Agatha-winning author of the Rare Books Cozy Mystery series. My first in the series, below, won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery Novel. I’ve worked for more than twenty years in museums and symphonies and have the great fortune of being married to a librarian. When not writing, I’m drawing and painting. I live in Maryland with her family. Although I’m not much of a baker, I won’t ever turn down a sweet lokshen kugel.
Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile Mystery series is what made me fall in love with cozy mysteries. I wanted to restore the book bindings on old books like her main character, Brooklyn Wainwright.
Since that wasn’t going to happen, I loved living vicariously through her adventures, learning more about how she works and how that knowledge can be used to solve crimes.
Book expert Brooklyn Wainwright discovers that murder is always a bestseller in the first novel in the New York Times bestselling Bibliophile Mystery series.
Brooklyn Wainwright is a skilled surgeon. Sure, her patients might smell like mold and have spines made of leather, but no ailing book is going to die on her watch. The same can’t be said of Abraham Karastovsky, Brooklyn’s friend and former employer.
On the eve of a celebration for his latest book restoration, Brooklyn finds her mentor lying in a pool of his own blood. With his final breath Abraham leaves Brooklyn with a…
Mysteries are fun to write, but it’s never just the central mystery that interests me. I want the relationships, the people, sometimes even the place to fill my books with their own smaller puzzles and hidden truths. I have long believed that all novels are, in fact, mysteries: if you’re not wondering what will happen next, or where the truth lies, why bother? The suspense of wondering what a character will do next, or what past experience has led to an aspect of their personality, is at least as important as who committed the murder. I hope that my readers will feel the same.
Tough, even prickly on the outside, but with hidden softness that leads her to unexpected places. She doesn’t know herself well and often stumbles over her own stubbornness…until she embraces vulnerability and accepts herself as she is.
That’s Agatha Raisin right down to the ground. Clearly intelligent, highly motivated, dedicatedly independent, strong to her core, yet when she strikes out on a new life path, she fumbles nearly everything and has to learn the hard way how to start over.
There is humor in her journey, too, keeping things light even when murder and social discord show up. And, as with Ruth Galloway, tantalizing hints at an unlikely romance kept me coming back for more.
'Every new Agatha Raisin escapade is a total joy' ASHLEY JENSEN
'No wonder she's been crowned Queen of Cosy Crime' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'A Beaton novel is like The Archers on speed' DAILY MAIL
The first Agatha Raisin mystery from bestselling author M. C. Beaton
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Revenge is a dish best served warm...
High-flying public relations supremo Agatha Raisin has decided to take early retirement. She's off to make a new life in a picture-perfect Cotswold village. To make friends, she enters the local quiche-making competition - and to make quite sure of first prize she secretly pays a visit…
Until recently, my lovely in-laws kept a home in southern France near where my father-in-law grew up. Their hilltop village was everything my summer-in-France fantasies could imagine: red-tile roofs, overflowing flower boxes, croissants on every corner (or at least four), bustling markets, and palm trees framing a snowcapped peak. Downsizing in their eighties meant selling the house, but some of my fondest memories will always reside there. This summer most of my travels will take place from my garden in Colorado. I plan to trek the world through books. These are some of my favorite reads for an armchair trip to France through romance, mysteries, exploration, and cooking.
This book is a delicious food memoir, travelogue, and two-wheeling adventure around France. London-based food writer Felicity Cloake sets out on her own Tour de France: a cycling tour to taste France’s iconic regional delicacies. Now, I’m an ardent Tour de France fan—from my sofa!
As for cycling, I stick to quiet bike paths. I’m in awe of Cloake’s tour and bravery. She cycles long distances on motorways. She crests mountains. She lugs camping gear. She camps! I felt right there with her, rolling through gorgeous places, struggling uphill, savoring stunning meals, and envying every croissant, even those she rated less than ten out of ten.
I enjoyed the audio version so much that I bought a paper copy for the included recipes.
'Joyful, life-affirming, greedy. I loved it' - DIANA HENRY
'Whether you are an avid cyclist, a Francophile, a greedy gut, or simply an appreciator of impeccable writing - this book will get you hooked' - YOTAM OTTOLENGHI
The nation's 'taster in chief' cycles 2,300 km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes.
A green bike drunkenly weaves its way up a cratered hill in the late-morning sun, the gears grinding painfully, like a pepper mill running on empty. The rider crouched on top in a rictus of pain has slowed to a…
Until recently, my lovely in-laws kept a home in southern France near where my father-in-law grew up. Their hilltop village was everything my summer-in-France fantasies could imagine: red-tile roofs, overflowing flower boxes, croissants on every corner (or at least four), bustling markets, and palm trees framing a snowcapped peak. Downsizing in their eighties meant selling the house, but some of my fondest memories will always reside there. This summer most of my travels will take place from my garden in Colorado. I plan to trek the world through books. These are some of my favorite reads for an armchair trip to France through romance, mysteries, exploration, and cooking.
This delectable cookbook is my sneaky way of recommending the entire Bruno, Chief of Police, mystery series by Martin Walker, set in southern France.
Bruno fits his detecting in between leisurely meals, good wine, and visits with his neighbors. Thanks to this cookbook by Martin Walker and his wife, Julia Watson, I can picture him and his village even better now and taste his delicious meals.
The recipes come from their home kitchen. Photos show the glorious Dordogne region. Anecdotes and stories tell of Bruno, cooking, village life, and the authors’ time in southern France. I want this book for my coffee table, kitchen, and soothing bedtime reading.
From the author of the internationally best-selling "Bruno, Chief of Police" series, comes a sumptuous French cookbook that immerses readers in the delectable countryside cuisine of Bruno’s beloved Périgord region, featuring favorite meals from Roasted Tomato Tapenade and Tarragon Chicken to A Most Indulgent Chocolate Cake.
Bruno Courrèges, the protagonist of Martin Walker’s internationally acclaimed mystery series, is not only the local police chief of the idyllic French village of St. Denis, but he also happens to be an impassioned amateur chef. In this delightful cookbook, the culinary and cultural inspiration behind Bruno’s fictional world comes to life. Featuring meals…
France claimed me early, when I was a teenager. A French major, a Rotary scholarship year in the Loire Valley, and decades of return visits later, I'm still not done with this gorgeous country. Since retirement, my husband and I spend at least several weeks there every year, and in 2011, we lived in France for three months during an adult gap year. My third book, a novel set in Paris and Normandy, is the most recent evidence that France and her food, wine, culture, literature, art and landscapes, have never loosened their hold on me.
From the first page, this novel transported me to Paris so completely I could almost smell the bread and feel the cobblestones underfoot.
The writing is sensory and assured. It is filled with descriptions of food, fashion, art, and wine that don't just set a scene but make you ache to be there. What elevates this beyond a love letter to Paris is Stella herself. She's a young woman in the middle of becoming, and watching her navigate that is quietly compelling.
Her friendship with the elderly art collector is one of the book's great pleasures: two people at very different stages of life, each with something essential to offer the other. That dynamic felt true and earned. I loved Stella and was rooting for her the whole way.
'No one writes about food like Ruth Reichl... I consider her essential nourishment.' NIGELLA LAWSON
Ripping open the envelope, she read Celia's last words to her. There was just one line written on the paper: 'Go to Paris.'
The last word anyone would use to describe Stella St. Vincent is adventurous. She's perfectly comfortable with the familiar, strict routines of her life as a copyeditor in New York. Or at least, she is until she receives a mysterious note from her late mother and a one-way plane ticket to Paris.
Until recently, my lovely in-laws kept a home in southern France near where my father-in-law grew up. Their hilltop village was everything my summer-in-France fantasies could imagine: red-tile roofs, overflowing flower boxes, croissants on every corner (or at least four), bustling markets, and palm trees framing a snowcapped peak. Downsizing in their eighties meant selling the house, but some of my fondest memories will always reside there. This summer most of my travels will take place from my garden in Colorado. I plan to trek the world through books. These are some of my favorite reads for an armchair trip to France through romance, mysteries, exploration, and cooking.
The title says it all—Paris is always a good idea! My now-husband romantically invited me to meet him in Paris, way back when, so it’s a special place for me. So is this book, which is a fun, emotional story about love, wanderlust, and finding one’s self.
Chelsea Martin threw herself into work to cope with her mother’s death. Seven years later, her father announces he’ll remarry, prompting Chelsea to examine her own life. She plans a trip to Europe to retrace the last time she remembers being happy.
I adore Chelsea for her bravery and this book for transporting me to gorgeous places, from Paris to Ireland and a vineyard in Italy.
A thirty-year-old woman retraces her gap year through Ireland, France, and Italy to find love—and herself—in this hilarious and heartfelt novel.
It's been seven years since Chelsea Martin embarked on her yearlong postcollege European adventure. Since then, she's lost her mother to cancer and watched her sister marry twice, while Chelsea's thrown herself into work, becoming one of the most talented fundraisers for the American Cancer Coalition, and with the exception of one annoyingly competent coworker, Jason Knightley, her status as most successful moneymaker is unquestioned.
Until recently, my lovely in-laws kept a home in southern France near where my father-in-law grew up. Their hilltop village was everything my summer-in-France fantasies could imagine: red-tile roofs, overflowing flower boxes, croissants on every corner (or at least four), bustling markets, and palm trees framing a snowcapped peak. Downsizing in their eighties meant selling the house, but some of my fondest memories will always reside there. This summer most of my travels will take place from my garden in Colorado. I plan to trek the world through books. These are some of my favorite reads for an armchair trip to France through romance, mysteries, exploration, and cooking.
Here’s another fantasy I didn’t know I had until I listened to this fabulous audiobook: to be neighbors with the great Chef, Julia Child. Not only that, to solve crimes with her!
Tabitha Knight has arrived in post-World War II Paris from Detroit for an extended stay with her French grandfather. She’s on a journey of discovery and about to get mixed up in a murder investigation.
Mysteries are my favorite genre, especially cozy mysteries focused on a topic and places I’d love to visit. This book combines some of my favorite things: cooking, France, and did I mention Julia Child?
Fans of Jacqueline Winspear, Marie Benedict, Nita Prose, and of course, Julia Child, will adore this magnifique new mystery set in Paris and starring Julia Child’s (fictional) best friend, confidante, and fellow American. From the acclaimed author of Murder at Mallowan Hall, this delightful new book provides a fresh perspective on the iconic chef’s years in post-WWII Paris.
“Enchanting…Cambridge captures Child’s distinct voice and energy so perfectly. Expect to leave this vacation hoping for a return trip.” –Publishers Weekly
As Paris rediscovers its joie de vivre, Tabitha Knight, recently arrived from Detroit for an extended stay with her French grandfather,…
I enjoy reading and writing cozy mysteries, especially ones that feature libraries and cats because I’m a librarian and have three cats of my own. I like cozies because they focus on characters who can become your fictional friends as you learn more about them with each book. I like the fact that there’s a minimum of violence and even though there may be romance, there are no explicit sex scenes. I’ve always enjoyed reading stories with twists and secrets that are revealed slowly to the reader. These are the type of books that you can savor along with a cup of tea seated next to a purring cat.
Like most cozies, the first book of the Village Library Mysteries takes place in a small town, Whitby, North Carolina. The main character, Ann Beckett, like me, is a reference librarian. When a patron sets her up with a blind date and the mystery man turns up dead, Ann steps up to help solve the murder with the help of a few patrons. I loved and related to the library setting and the situations in which Ann found herself and also really enjoyed the addition of Fitz, the rescued library cat. I consider this a purrfect start to the series.
There are no renewals when you’re permanently checked out.
When librarian Ann Beckett finally reluctantly agrees to being set-up on a blind date by one of her over-eager patrons, she figures the worst that could happen would be the two of them wouldn’t hit it off.
Little did she know that she’d be stood up...because her date was murdered.With help from her patrons, Ann tries to find out who might be responsible in the small town of Whitby before more residents are permanently checked out.
