Welcome, book friends!
If you’d prefer to listen to this list and why I chose these books, you can check out the full episode on The Bookmarks ‘n Blankets Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or listen below.
You can also follow me and/or comment on Instagram and X (aka Twitter).
******************
November is here, with its chilly breezes and early sunsets as the days grow shorter, making it the ideal time to hunker down with stories that transport you to enchanted worlds and charming small towns. This month, we’re celebrating the magic of cozy fantasy and the thrill of cozy mysteries—genres that offer just the right blend of comfort and adventure.
In cozy fantasy, you’ll find gentle magic woven into everyday life—think charming villages, friendly witches, talking animals, and heartwarming spells that make the world feel just a bit more magical. It’s the kind of reading that wraps you up like your favorite blanket on a cold evening. And for those who love a bit of sleuthing, cozy mysteries are perfect. Set in quaint little towns with quirky characters and puzzling mysteries, these stories offer the thrill of solving crimes without the heavy darkness of traditional thrillers.
So whether you’re in the mood to follow a witch brewing up potions in her bookshop or a tea-sipping detective solving a village whodunit, I’ve got the perfect recommendations to warm your heart this November. Grab your favorite blanket, pour yourself something warm, and let’s dive into the coziest reads of the season!
6 Cozy Mysteries I Want to Read
Assaulted Caramel by Amanda Flower
Average GR Rating: 3.99
Book Series: Amish Candy Shop Mystery Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Sometimes you need a sweet tooth to take a bite out of crime…
Bailey King is living the sweet life as an assistant chocolatier at the world-famous JP Chocolates in New York City. But just when Bailey’s up for a life-changing promotion, her grandmother calls with news that her grandfather’s heart condition has worsened. Bailey rushes to Harvest, Ohio, where her grandparents still run Swissmen Sweets, the Amish candy shop where she was first introduced to delicious fudge, truffles, and other assorted delights.
She finds her grandfather is doing better than she feared. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for a local Englisch developer, whom Bailey finds dead in the candy shop kitchen—with Jebediah King’s chocolate knife buried in his chest. Now the police are sweet on her grandfather as the prime suspect. Despite the sincere efforts of a yummy deputy with chocolate-brown eyes, Bailey takes it upon herself to clear Jebediah. But as a cunning killer tries to fudge the truth, Bailey may be headed straight into a whole batch of trouble…
Recipe Included!
Prose and Cons by Amanda Flower
Average GR Rating: 4.09
Book Series: A Magical Bookshop Mystery Series – Book #2
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Magic, books, and cats collide in a village near Niagara Falls in the latest Magical Bookshop Mystery from the author of Crime and Poetry.
In Cascade Springs, New York, Violet Waverly and her grandma, Daisy, are the proprietors of Charming Books, where the power of the written word is positively enchanting…
October in Cascade Springs means tourists are pouring in for the annual Food and Wine Festival, and Daisy hopes to draw those crowds to the store. She asks Violet and the local writing group, the Red Inkers, to give a reading of the works of Edgar Allan Poe in the shop’s back garden to entertain the revelers. Everyone eagerly agrees.
Yet their enthusiasm is soon extinguished when Violet discovers one of the writers dead during the event. After the shop magically tells Violet she’ll need to rely on Poe’s works to solve the murder, she enlists the help of her trusty tuxedo cat, Emerson, and the shop’s crow, Faulkner. But they must act fast before someone else’s heart beats nevermore…
Apple Cider Slaying by Julie Anne Lindsey
Average GR Rating: 3.99
Book Series: A Cider Shop Mystery Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Apples are at the core of the family business run by Winona Mae Montgomery and her Granny Smythe. But this year’s crop is unseasonably ripe with murder…
ONE ROTTEN APPLE
Blossom Valley, West Virginia, is home to Smythe Orchards, Winnie, and her Granny’s beloved twenty-five-acre farm and family business. But any way you slice it, it’s struggling. That’s why they’re trying to drum up business with the “First Annual Christmas at the Orchard,” a good old-fashioned holiday festival with enough delicious draw to satisfy apple-picking locals and cider-loving tourists alike–until the whole endeavor takes a sour turn when the body of Nadine Cooper, Granny’s long-time, grudge-holding nemesis, is found lodged in the apple press. Now, with Granny the number one suspect, Winnie is hard-pressed to prove her innocence before the real killer delivers another murder…
Includes Recipes!
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Beginnings by Lydia Sherrer
Average GR Rating: 3.69
Book Series: The Lily Singer Adventures Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Saving the world is such a bother when it makes you late for tea.
By day, book-loving wizard Lily Singer manages library archives. By night? She sleeps, of course. In between, she studies magic and tries to keep her witch friend Sebastian from dragging her into trouble. Unfortunately, trouble comes looking for her on a regular basis.
When Sebastian needs help breaking a magical curse, Lily knows things are not as they seem. Their quest to unravel the truth and free a tormented soul uncovers hints about Lily’s mysterious past–and those working to hide it from her. As if that were not enough, Sebastian gets them stuck in a time loop and Lily must track down the culprit. But they are not the only ones interested in this strange phenomenon, and it becomes a race to the source of the magical disturbance, with all their lives hanging in the balance.
Full of unexpected twists and snarky humor, Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Beginnings is book one of the Lily Singer Adventures urban fantasy series. If you enjoy magic-filled adventures like Harry Potter and Supernatural, then you’ll love this delightful series.
Sprinkles and Sea Serpents by Danielle Garrett
Average GR Rating: 3.94
Book Series: Sugar Shack Witch Mysteries – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: In Winterspell Lake there are things darker than midnight…
They say you can’t go home again … oh, if only that were true.
Thanks to a series of unfortunate events—and one backstabbing frenemy—home is exactly where I’m headed. Back to Winterspell Lake, the small community in Eastern Washington, where magic runs rampant and humans are outlawed.
Faster than you can say hocus pocus I’m unpacking my bags and settling into the guest room of my parents’ house, trying to ignore the creeping sensation that I’ll never break free again.
The one thing Winterspell has going for it is the sweets shop in the center of town, a bakery filled with magical creations designed to enchant the tastebuds and charm even the pickiest of connoisseurs. Luckily for me, I get the friends and family discount since my parents own the famous Sugar Shack. If I want room and board I have to frost cupcakes and sling macaroons with the rest of the fam.
Unfortunately, things in Winterspell aren’t all sugar cookies and rainbows. According to the local news, a dangerous sea serpent has claimed the lives of three missing girls. The journalist in me has to have a look for myself, and what I find is something far more deadly.
Something that makes me wish I’d stayed in the bakery.
Love’s a Mystery in Sleepy Hollow, NY by Gabrielle Meyer and Ruth Logan Herne
Average GR Rating: 3.78
Book Series: Love’s a Mystery Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
Amazon Description: When a strange man claiming to be the brother of Ichabod Crane accuses Brom Van Brundt of murdering Ichabod, his daughter Hannie begins a desperate search for the truth. Was the local folklore true? Was Brom the headless horsemen who scared Ichabod out of Sleepy Hollow? Or did something more sinister happen? The handsome new schoolmaster, Gideon, offers to help Hannie, but how long can they hide their growing feelings for one another?
Then turn the page and travel 200 years to the present where Tess has returned to Sleepy Hollow to help run her Gran’s soup shop. But all is not well. Gran has been scammed out of thousands of dollars by a bogus animal charity. She hires Riley O’Toole, Tess’s high school crush, to help. As Riley and Tess investigate, sparks soon fly. Is Gran secretly playing matchmaker?
6 Cozy Fantasies I Want to Read
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
Average GR Rating: 4.14
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.
When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.
In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.
But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.
Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.
The Lady Jewel Diviner by Rosalie Oaks
Average GR Rating: 3.85
Book Series: Lady Diviner Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Diamonds, Death, and Devonshire tea…
Miss Elinor Avely’s proper upbringing cannot prepare her for the tiny, spinster vampire who crashes into her sitting room and demands to be fed with a sheep.
Elinor already has enough troubles without having to catch ruminants. First, her secret gift for divining jewels has landed her in scandal, exiling her from London society. Second, a nobleman of dubious repute wants her to find a cache of smuggled jewels, hidden somewhere along the Devon coastline. Last – and worst – she is invited to cream tea at the local manor. And while the autocratic and magnificent Earl of Beresford might be there (and perhaps the jewels themselves too), Beresford is the last person Elinor wants to meet over cream tea.
When a dead body is discovered along the cliffs, of course, such delicate considerations become secondary. Fortunately, Elinor now has a small vampiric chaperone – even if said spinster has a habit of appearing stark naked – and together they are ready to risk the hard questions.
Where are the jewels hidden? Who killed the smuggler? And just when is the cream tea being served?
The Good and the Green by Amy Yorke
Average GR Rating: 3.72
Book Series: The Wilderise Tales Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: With the help of her late father, Alison Lennox has carved out a promising career path in a kingdom dominated by land-hoarding elves and industrial tycoon dwarves. But her salary barely covers the rising rent, let alone the luxury lifestyle she dreams of. So when she unexpectedly inherits a neglected property in a distant land, it seems like the solution she’s been seeking.
All she needs to do to keep her life on track is get in, flip the cottage, and get out, hopefully with a pocket full of coins for the effort.
Upon her arrival, Alison quickly discovers she isn’t immune to the village’s charms. But maybe she could look past the quaint shops, the sweet little old ladies, and the adorable talking cat and stick to the plan if it weren’t for Keir Ainsley. At first, she finds the former doctor and town recluse good and irritating, and he’s definitely wrong about where his property ends and Alison’s begins. But then he has to go and save her life from a DIY disaster. And then he shows her that under his bristly exterior, there’s a tenderness that feels familiar and right.
Not good.
But the town does have a problem. A mysterious vine is spreading through the land, choking out everything in its path. “Cute cottage; minor overgrowth issue—probably not poisonous” isn’t going to work as a real estate listing, but that’s not all that’s wrong. The deeper her connection to Keir and the town grows, the further she strays from the life her father wanted for her.
And she’ll have to dig deep into the town’s thorny past to have any hope of stopping the vine.
Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons by Quenby Olson
Average GR Rating: 4.13
Book Series: Miss Percy Guide Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Miss Mildred Percy inherits a dragon.
Ah, but we’ve already got ahead of ourselves…
Miss Mildred Percy is a spinster. She does not dance, she has long stopped dreaming, and she certainly does not have adventures. That is until her great-uncle has the audacity to leave her an inheritance, one that includes a dragon’s egg.
The egg – as eggs are wont to do – decides to hatch, and Miss Mildred Percy is suddenly thrust out of the role of “spinster and general wallflower” and into the unprecedented position of “spinster and keeper of dragons.”
But England has not seen a dragon since… well, ever. And now Mildred must contend with raising a dragon (that should not exist), kindling a romance (with a humble vicar), and embarking on an adventure she never thought could be hers for the taking.
The Tinker & The Witch by G.J. Daily
Average GR Rating: 4.37
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Come sit by the hearth and enjoy a pint and well-packed pipe with Andrew, a seventeen-year-old tinker from a nearby swamp, in this feel-good slice of life, as he tells a tale of tree horses, Night Watchmen, and the mythical being covered in eyes that grants dangerous wishes. It’s Eden Vale, a Festival of Lights, in Jatoba, a cozy village nestled high in the hills where Andrew is trying to ply his trade when a blizzard forces him into the leaning cottage on the edge of town that everyone fears.
When Lorna, a powerful witch whose memory is locked inside a sentient chest, saves Andrew’s life, he is compelled to find a way to help her. This sends him on a scavenger-hunt-type adventure in search of a way to open the particularly moody chest holding Lorna’s memories, secrets, and clues to their shared past.
On his journey, Andrew falls in love, enjoys a cup of tea with unique and powerful creatures, and is granted a dangerous and costly wish to help Lorna and ultimately himself.
Set in the world of Eloree & Ardimus, The Tinker and the Witch is a cozy character-driven tale of good food, great friends, and low-stakes adventure, rich with unique races that feel real for fans of Legends and Lattes, Howl’s Moving Castle, and T. J. Klune.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
Average GR Rating: 3.81
Book Series: Wayward Children Series – Book #1
Read more on GoodReads
GR Description: Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children:
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests
Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else.
But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.
Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.
But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.
No matter the cost.
