5 Festive Cozy Mysteries with a Holiday Theme

Table of Contents show

1 Top 5 books with a holiday

2 A Cup of Holiday Fear by Ellie Alexander

3 Fudge Bites by Nancy Coco

4 Independence Slay by Shelley Freydont

5 Easter Bunny Murder by Leslie Meier

6 April Fool Dead by Carolyn Hart

Top 5 books with a holiday

Have we been locked up for 5 years, or does it just feel like it? Let’s take a trip. (Also, can you tell I’m dying to take a holiday?) – From Meeghan Reads

Woot holiday you say? Well, I know just the books. I love cozy mysteries and almost every series has some kind of holiday book. I also consider myself a seasonal reader, so i always seek out holiday and seasonal cozies. For this list, i have decided to list my top 5 anticipated cozies that include a holiday. I believe my unread list might be bigger than the read list. Also the unread books seem to excite me more.

A Cup of Holiday Fear by Ellie Alexander

It’s Christmastime and everyone is heading to Torte, the most cheerful bakery in town. There’s no place like home for the homicide…

Ashland, Oregon, looks as pretty as a postcard this holiday season. The halls are decked, stockings hung, and eyes are all aglow—mostly thanks to the buttered rum. Jules Capshaw and her staff at Torte are busier than ever. . . still, even the town’s most in-demand bakers need to take a break. So Jules invites everyone to celebrate at the local Winchester Inn’s Dickens Feast, a six-course extravaganza with Yorkshire Pudding, Christmas goose, and all the trimmings. But as the weather outside becomes frightful, things inside turn less delightful when one of the guests ends up as dead as Scrooge’s doornail. Now it’s up to Jules and her helpers to make a list of suspects—and check it twice—to try to find out who’s naughty, who’s nice, and who’s guilty of murder…

Fudge Bites by Nancy Coco

Halloween on Mackinac Island is a season of fun tricks, but finding a corpse is no treat for fudge shop owner Allie McMurphy . . .

NIGHT OF THE REALLY DEAD

It’s late October, off-season for tourists, but locals are up and lurching for the annual zombie walk charity event. Though everyone’s living it up, trouble is just a few pawprints away. Allie follows the bloody tracks of her calico cat, Carmella, to a body in the alley behind the Historic McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shop. Unlike the island’s other walking dead, this one’s flatlined for good. It seems that someone is using the zombie fest as the perfect backdrop for murder. Now amateur sleuth Allie and dreamboat officer Rex Manning must use every trick in their treat bag to unmask a killer in disguise.

Independence Slay by Shelley Freydont

In the third Celebration Bay mystery, Old Glory is flying high for the Fourth of July holiday–until someone raises a red flag… With Independence Day fast approaching, Liv Montgomery is swamped coordinating one of the town’s biggest festivals. In addition to the traditional July fourth events, the town stages a spooky Revolutionary War reenactment that can’t be missed. Every year, the ghost of local war hero Henry Gallantine–played by his eccentric descendant of the same name–appears at the top of the family mansion, kicking off the night’s revelries. But Henry’s annual cameo goes awry after the ghost signals SOS instead of his traditional cue. When Liv rushes to the rescue, she finds Henry missing and a real dead body instead of a fake haunt. Now she will have to hunt down both a murderer and a missing person quickly before unwanted political fireworks ignite and someone else winds up as local history…

Easter Bunny Murder by Leslie Meier

Spring has sprung in Tinker’s Cove, and Lucy Stone has a mile-long to-do list. From painting eggs with her grandson, to preparing the perfect Easter feast, to reviving her garden after a long, cold winter, she hardly has time to hunt for a killer with a deadly case of spring fever… Lucy has always loved covering the annual Easter egg hunt for the Pennysaver. Hosted by elderly socialite Vivian Van Vorst at Pine Point, her luxurious oceanfront estate, it’s a swanky event where the grown-ups sip cocktails while their children search for eggs that are as likely to contain savings bonds as they are jelly beans.

But when Lucy arrives with her three-year-old grandson, VV’s normally welcoming gates are locked, and a man dressed as the Easter Bunny emerges only to drop dead moments later… Lucy discovers that the victim is Van Vorst Duff, VV’s grandson, and soon learns that not all is as it seems at idyllic Pine Point, where the champagne and caviar seem to be running dry. Always a social butterfly, VV has been skipping lunch dates with friends, and her much-needed donations to local charities have stopped with no explanation. Maybe she’s going senile, or maybe her heirs are getting a little too anxious to take over her estate… As Lucy gathers a basketful of suspects, she’s convinced someone’s been hunting for a lot more than eggs, and she’ll have to chase the truth down a rabbit hole before the killer claims another victim…

April Fool Dead by Carolyn Hart

Well that’s my list! What books would you pick for this prompt?

(My Top 5 Tuesday post will be linked to Meeghan’s blog, the meme Host)