17 Christmas Cozy Mystery Books & Thrillers

Book Summary

Ernest Cunningham was a big fan of golden age mysteries, but now he gets suck solving them in his real-life. He thought he’d have a break from unraveling mysteries over the holidays, but he was wrong.

Erin, his ex-wife, has become a suspect in the murder of her new boyfriend, a wealthy philanthropist, and it’s up to Ernest to clear her name. But the crime seems impossible and all the other suspects are skilled in the art of illusion. Luckily, Ernest has an advent calendar of 24 clues to help him find the real killer.

Book Summary

A personal tragedy has Abby looking for a fresh start, so she packs up her home in San Francisco and moves across the country to Holiday Bay, Maine, where she’s purchased an old seaside mansion sight unseen. Abby just wants some time alone to heal, but the giant Maine coon cat that’s been living in the house has no intention of leaving. Abby is not a cat person… or at least she doesn’t think she is.

Around the time that Abby arrives in Holiday Bay, a local girl is murdered. When Abby finds boxes in the basement of her new home that she thinks might provide clues about the killer, she finds herself caught in the middle of a complicated case. But Abby is up for the challenge – after all, she’s a NY Times bestselling mystery writer and the widow of a homicide detective, so she knows a thing or two about investigating.

Book Summary

Lilly is a single mom to two teenagers, the owner of a jewelry shop, and the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. She is as busy as ever this Christmas and definitely didn’t have time to find a dead body on the floor of her store.

On top of that, she has to deal with her deadbeat ex-husband and the declining mental health of her mother. When a second dead body appears, Lilly is now the prime suspect and hopes the local police can figure out what is really happening ASAP for any hope of a merry Christmas.

Book Summary

Stella is about to spend her first Christmas season as the “Lady” of Morrington Hall. As an expat who married an aristocrat, she’s eager to embrace all the yuletide traditions in the English countryside. She’s thrown herself into starting a horse farm charity for the holidays. Initially, she doesn’t notice items disappearing from her bedroom. But then her housekeeper, Mrs. Nelson, is found dead in the cold on Mistletoe Lane.

Stella wonders if someone else on her staff knows the killer, but then another person dies at a Boxing Day race. Stella and her husband, Lyndy, must figure out what happens to save the estate’s reputation and keep themselves alive until the new year.

Book Summary

If you enjoyed Arsenic and Adobo, we think you’ll love this follow-up set in the Christmas season. In this book, Lila is trying to make a profit at her new coffee shop, The Brew-ha Cafe. She’s also starting a romance with her friend, Jae, so things should be good.

But her cousin Ronnie, who left Shady Pines fifteen years ago, is back. While Tita Rosie is happy the prodigal son has returned to buy a local winery, Lila knows better. Before long, Ronnie is accused of murder, and Lila has to figure out how to prove the jerk’s innocence because surely he wouldn’t go that far.

Book Summary

The O’Sullivan brood has gone off to West Cork to spend the holidays with brother James’s fiancee Elise’s family, including her grandfather, the famous orchestral conductor Enda Elliot. Holiday spirits are crushed when the cantankerous conductor is discovered under a ninety-pound harp in a local concert hall.

As both families are snowed into a lavish cliffside farmhouse, Siobhan must figure out who is to blame for Enda’s death before there is another victim.

Book Summary

Ellie is trying to juggle jobs and a sick daughter, and her wish is to make it to New Year without any more problems. But then her mother-in-law moves in.

Things get even worse when her estranged friend, Andrea, collapses and it becomes clear she was murdered. Along with her daughter and mother-in-law, Ellie follows the clues to solve the mystery. This unlikely trio of Blix women must find the killer, even if that really annoys her detective inspector ex-husband.

Book Summary

This series is set on a Christmas Tree farm in Mistletoe, Maine. Cat lovers will enjoy the feline character, Cindy Lou Who. In the first book, Twelve Slays of Christmas, the local grinch and president of the Mistletoe Historical Society, Margaret Fenwick, is bludgeoned and left in the sleigh display at Reindeer Games, Holly’s family tree farm.

Holly’s father, Bud, is the main suspect, and it doesn’t help that he and the reindeer keeper were seen arguing with Margaret just before her death. But Holly knows her father and is determined to exonerate him.

Book Summary

FBI Agent Ava James thinks she’s getting a break from work when she agrees to attend the wedding of her college boyfriend’s little sister. However, her retreat to a fancy Chalet in the mountains of New Hampshire takes a turn when the groom’s sister is found frozen in the snow.

Ava reaches out to the local sheriff and begins her own investigation, which is full of dead ends…until another guest is murdered.

Book Summary

Looking for a very non-traditional Christmas read? Try this Christmas mystery thriller! Edward Holbeck was born into a highly eccentric, old-money family in the 1%. He left them behind to escape their control and forge his own path. His wife, Harry, is a novelist on the brink of stardom, and their life is good.

However, the family’s eyes and ears are everywhere. They’re not okay with Edward’s separation from the family because he’s still set to be the sole heir to the fortunes.

When the head of the family, Robert, slips a shocking taped confession to Harry, their world begins to spin. As she searches for the truth, she finds herself involved in the Holbeck’s savage Christmas tradition, even though she knows losing the game can be deadly.

Book Summary

On Christmas Eve in North West England, four men who had gone on a walk are missing. Finding them before nightfall is essential because they’re unlikely to survive the brutal cold after dark.

After several hours, the first man is found. But, it’s clear he’s been murdered. With a snowstorm approaching, DI Walker must catch the killer before the trail is buried forever.

Book Summary

On Christmas Eve sixty years ago, a delivery man made a gruesome discovery that forever changed the small town of Tambilla. In the present day, Jess is a journalist in London when she gets a call to return home to Australia to help with her grandmother, Nora. Nora was more like a mother to Jess, after Jess’s mother, Polly, left her with Nora and moved to Brisbane when Jess was only 10.

Nora fell in her attic while searching for something, and now she is mumbling about an event in her past in a way that is difficult to understand. As Jess tries to piece things together, she learns that Nora was agitated and restless even before the fall. She knows something is going on, and is determined to figure it out. She searches the house for clues and finds a true crime book about the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve.

But what does this cold case have to do with her family?