Cozy Beach Reads

Even if we’re not near a beach, I look forward to summer reading all winter long. I allow myself to read more books “for fun” and at a relaxed pace than I do throughout the school year.

I delight in reading cozy mysteries, sometimes veering over the line into non-cozy mysteries. I particularly enjoy series because I get to spend so much time with the characters and the community.

I’m sharing some of my favorites this week in the hope that you’ll share your favorites with me. There are few things scarier than reading the last available book in a series and not knowing what to read next.

Rhys Bowen

I find Bowen’s Her Royal Spyness series absorbing. Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie is 34^th in line for the English throne and she’s broke. Her brother, the Duke of Atholt and Rannoch, has cut off her allowance. She tries on several jobs, being ill-suited to most, before the Queen asks her to spy on the Queen’s playboy son (you’ll recognize him). Georgie is very clever at solving mysteries. As the series progresses, Georgie gets married, has a child, and becomes quite competent as a detective. The characters around her are well drawn.

Verity Bright

A Very English Murder. Eleanor Swift has spent the last two years biking around China, Peru, and Persia, when she receives word her uncle is dead and she has inherited Henley Hall. Returning to England, Lady Eleanor Swift tries to be more ladylike but witnessing a man shot in the distance awakens her need to solve the mystery. The body has vanished. Along with her Renaissance-man, kindly Clifford the Butler and her bulldog Gladstone, Eleanor solves several mysteries in each book. Verity Bright is the pseudonym of a husband-and-wife writing team. There are 23 books in this series and I’ve savored each one.

Vivien Chien

Death by Dumpling is a change of pace being set at the Ho-Lee Noodle House in the Asia Village shopping mall in East Cleveland. Lana Lee doesn’t want to be working at her family’s restaurant but family insists after she breaks up with her boyfriend and dramatically walks out of her job. When the property manager winds up dead, Lana is determined to clear her family from suspicion and solve the crime. There are 10 books in the series and every one of them makes me order Chinese food.

Tony Hillerman and Anne Hillerman

You may be streaming the Dark Winds series featuring mysteries about Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito, but first there were the books. I encourage you to read them. I believe it’s best if you begin with the books by Tony Hillerman where we first encounter Leaphorn and then Chee. After Tony died, his daughter Anne continued the series, focusing on Navajo Tribal Police officer Bernie Manuelito. Character development throughout this series is deeply fascinating. I feel as though these characters are a part of my own story, they are that real. Set on the Navajo Nation, many of the books are true to the Navajo way. The books are not as violent or leave-you-gasping as the TV show, but each format has strengths. I recommend them both. There are 28 books in this series. Tony Hillerman wrote 18 of them, beginning with The Blessing Way. Anne Hillerman’s books begin with number 1, Spider Woman’s Daughter.

Anna Lee Huber

This Side of Murder finds Verity Kent solving mysteries. This one opens with a bang. Verity, widowed by the events of World War I, receives an invitation to Umbersea Island to a reunion of her husband Sidney’s war buddies. There’s a strange tension from the get-go and Verity fears it was a mistake to attend, that her grief is still too raw. Sidney was an officer who may have committed treason. Verity can’t believe it. A former Secret Service agent herself, Verity sets out to gather information and then the first murder occurs. This is Book 1 of 8.

London Lovett

The author of no fewer than six series, I’m recommending her Firefly Junction books. Sunni Taylor plans to open a bed-and-breakfast near her sisters’ catering business and farm. She doesn’t plan on murders happening in this small town, nor does she find the mystery of her live-in ghost easy to solve. There are currently 19 books in the series, each one of them fun. Begin with Book #1, Death in the Park.

Susan Elia Macneal

These books are astonishing in their characterization, plotting, and depth of emotion. The history drew me in but the stories keep me glued. Maggie Hope graduated at the top of her college class and has all the skills needed by British intelligence, but her gender limits her to an assignment as a typist for the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Her gifts for deduction, codebreaking, and problem-solving help those around her understand just how valuable she is as a sleuth and agent. The first book is Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. There are 10 more books in the series. I hope there are more.

Lee Strauss

Strauss writes several series but Ginger Gold is one of my favorite of her sleuths. Set in England, Lady Gold is committed to her vow to keep secret her work with Secret Services during World War I. The first book is Murder on the S.S. Rosa. Her war experiences give her a certain amount of daring, confidence, and bravery when she tries to figure out murders throughout England. Several books into the series, Ginger marries Chief Inspector Basil Reed, which gives her access to police cases. The setting and the family members in this series are important texture for the stories.

Your turn. Which cozy mysteries do you recommend we read?

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