It’s winter, and for some people, it means a great season of sledding and skating, while for others, it means counting the days until spring. We totally get that. And either way, winter is also a great time to do some reading. Pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate and curl up with one of these cozy reads.
For Emma Burcelli, decorating her family’s bookstore for Valentine’s Day is the last thing she wants to do. She’s grieving her beloved grandfather’s death, and her dating life has been anything but happily-ever-after. But she finds herself enjoying the decorating work, especially when a family friend, the handsome Lane Forester, pitches in to help out. Emma finds herself falling for Lane, but there is a problem: Emma’s sister has already declared Lane is hers, and Emma’s mother agrees. Will this season of romantic entanglements have a happy ending?
Children and grownups alike will love this treasury of winter-themed stories, fairy tales, and folktales from around the world. The eighteen tales in the book include “The Nutcracker,” “The Snow Queen,” “The Mitten,” “The Apple Tree Man,” and many more.
Effie Garrard, an artist and a dreamer, has come to live in Lochdubh. Inspector Hamish Macbeth doesn’t think Effie has what it takes to survive a harsh and unforgiving Highland winter, so he is surprised to find her still in residence after the last of the winter storms. But soon, Effie becomes obsessed with a visiting Glaswegian landscape painter who seems to have charmed several of the women in the village.
Soon, Effie is found dead in the mountains. The authorities have ruled it suicide, that Effie took hemlock and poisoned herself. But Macbeth has reason to think that it’s murder.
Master chef Charly Poisson hopes that he and his staff at La Fermette will be able to get back to business as usual, now that the winter holidays in upstate New York have thankfully come to an end. Alas, that is not to be. First, there is the problem of the antique thieves that have been preying on La Fermette’s customers. And things go from bad to much, much worse, when Charly finds the body of a local antiques dealer in the restaurant’s freezer. Determined to figure out what is going on, Charly decides to investigate, against the advice of the local authorities.
Inspector Hamish Macbeth is facing a lonely winter season in Lochdubh while his lady love is away in London. But he gets a (not entirely) welcome distraction with the arrival of a group of hip and urbane filmmakers in a neighboring town. They’re filming a television series based on the Lady Harriet Vare cozy mysteries by Patricia Martyn-Broyd–who herself is a recent arrival in Lochdubh. But Patricia is not all happy with the filmmakers; they’ve taken her clean and cozy books and turned them into a sex-and-drugs romp. Before too long, the scriptwriter and the leading actress are dead, and Patricia is a suspect. But as Hamish investigates, he finds that there are quite a few people–both locals and out-of-towners–who might have a motive for murder.
Irene Steele seems to have it all. She has a fine Victorian house in Iowa City, a good job at a magazine, a husband who adores her, and two grown-up sons. But everything falls apart one winter night when she gets a terrible phone call: her husband has been killed in a helicopter crash in the U.S. Virgin Islands. So Irene and her sons leave behind the Midwest winter for the sunshine of St. John to determine what happened. There, they learn a surprising secret: Irene’s husband had a double life his family didn’t know about. As Irene and her sons try to untangle the web of secrets, while enjoying life in St. John and getting to know the people there, the family has to face some hard truths about their lives and their futures.
A phone call telling her that her mother has suffered a stroke brings Rita Jansen from her dream life as a Hollywood hairstylist back to her old home in Chicago. But when Rita arrives, she realizes that there is still more bad news. With her mother unable to work while she recovers, the Jansens could end up losing their family-owned salon on Valentine’s Day. So Rita sets to work on a plan to save the salon, while reconnecting with her old childhood friends at the local skating rink. One such friend, Rita’s old classmate Johnny, turns out to have a lot more in common with Rita than either one of them realized. Could the two of them have a future beyond being just friends?
Erin Roll is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. Her favorite genres to read are mystery, science fiction, and fantasy, and her TBR pile is likely to be visible on Google Maps. Before becoming an editor, Erin worked as a journalist and photographer, and she has won far too many awards from the New Jersey Press Association. Erin lives at the top floor of a haunted house in Montclair, NJ. She enjoys reading (of course), writing, hiking, kayaking, music, and video games.
