Turtlenecks are feel like a portable snuggle, and fuzzy weighted blankets can remove anxiety, but you know what really warms the soul from the inside out?
No, it’s not a seasonal squash soup, it’s a cozy mystery audiobook. “Murder” and “cozy” don’t usually go hand-in-hand, but when you press play on a reason for the season mystery set in a yarn shop or an audiobook with a plucky protagonist aboard a spaceship, you’ll get what we mean. Cuddle up, audio buds.
Ellie Christie is thrilled to begin a new chapter. She’s recently returned to her tiny Colorado hometown to run her family’s historic bookshop. Perched in a hamlet accessible by ski gondola and a twisty mountain road, the Book Chalet is a famed bibliophile destination. At least, until trouble blows in with a wintry whiteout. A man is found dead on the gondola, and a rockslide throws the town into lockdown—no one in, no one out. Dead and Gondola is the series debut starring a protagonist who must channel her inner Miss Marple to trek through clues before a killer turns the page to their final chapter.
The holiday season looks merry and bright for Libby and her friends at Y.A.R.N. The store is expanding for a holiday boom, and she’s decorating a community Christmas tree, and dashing Vincenzo Marani arrives. It’s a perfect yuletide—until Libby’s ex-husband, Sterling, turns up in town…and then turns up dead. In It Came Upon a Midnight Shear the murder unravels Libby’s life faster than a hand-knit Christmas stocking…and if she can’t stitch up a solution, she may be trading in her knitting needles for a set of handcuffs.
Holly Quick has made a good living off of murder, filling up the pages of pulp detective magazines with gruesome tales of revenge. Now someone is bringing her stories to life and leaving a trail of blood-soaked bodies behind. In Secrets Typed in Blood, Holly enlists famed detectives Pentecost and Parker to solve the murders, which are seemingly random. The case has the great Pentecost questioning her methods. But whatever she does, she’d better do it fast. Holly Quick has a secret and it’s about to bring death right to Pentecost and Parker’s doorstep.
Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station in Station Eternity, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. But the station agrees to allow additional human guests, and almost immediately aliens and humans alike begin to die. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit Mallory has to solve the crime or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board.
It’s Christmastime, but things are far from jolly for Lila Macapagal. Her cousin Ronnie is back in town after ghosting the family, claiming that he’s back on his feet and ready to contribute. Tita Rosie is thrilled with the return of her son, but Lila knows that wherever Ronnie goes, trouble follows. She’s soon proven right when Ronnie is suspected of murder. Now, in Blackmail and Bibingka, Lila has to put away years of resentment and distrust to prove her cousin’s innocence. He may be a jerk, but there’s no way her flesh and blood could actually be a murderer…right?
The royal family has gathered at Balmoral Castle for a traditional Christmas. As a blizzard gathers outside, the family circles up for a holiday toast. King Eric is about to name his successor. But as he raises a glass of his favorite whiskey, he drops dead. The king has been poisoned, someone in the family must have done it, and each one of them had opportunity and motive. In A Murder at Balmoral what happens in the castle usually stays in the castle, but this secret might be too big for these battlements.