“The detectives in such stories are nearly always amateurs and frequently women. They are typically well educated, intuitive, and often hold jobs (caterer, innkeeper, librarian, teacher, dog trainer, shop owner, reporter) that bring them into constant contact with other residents of their town and the surrounding region. Like other amateur detectives, they typically have a contact on the police force who can give them access to important information about the case at hand, but the contact is typically a spouse, lover, friend, or family member rather than a former colleague. Dismissed by the authorities in general as nosy busybodies (particularly if they are middle-aged or elderly women), the detectives in cozy mysteries are thus left free to eavesdrop, gather clues, and use their native intelligence and intuitive “feel” for the social dynamics of the community to solve the crime…
Cozy mysteries do not employ any but the mildest profanity. The murders take place off stage, frequently involving relatively bloodless methods such as poisoning and falls from great heights. The wounds inflicted on the victim are never dwelt on, and seldom used as clues. Sexual activity, even between married characters, is only ever gently implied and never directly addressed, and the subject is frequently avoided altogether.
The cozy mystery usually takes place in a town, village, or other community small (or otherwise insular) enough to make it believable that all the principal characters know, and may well have long-standing social relationships with, each other. The amateur detective is usually a gregarious, well-liked individual who is able to get the community members to talk freely about each other.”
Please join me in making sure the “cozy” modifier is added to every other literary genre as quickly as possible. Before the year is out, I wish to be the possessor of several handsome titles in the cozy gothic, cozy bildungsroman, cozy speculative fantasy, and cozy memoir traditions. Make it so.
Tags: books, coziness, requests
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cozy Gothic …so the Munsters?
I’d go with the Addams Family.
Just realized that the Addams Family and the Munsters are different. How did I get so far in life thinking they were the same thing?
Northanger Abbey?
The cozy policy manual genre typically has a folksy “We’re all in this together” tone. Peak examples will have a comic sans font, clip art and cheery checklists.
Cozy policy manuals are often found in churches, not for profit agencies and fishing clubs. They are frequently written by a volunteer (often a retired teacher), with a contact (son, daughter in law or second cousin) who works professionally in a related field, or in human resources. Professional norms are translated so as to be more vague and open to interpretation.
Cozy policy manuals should have a catchy title that does not explain their function.
You are my people.
True story: I shared a (very unusual) name with the main character of a cozy mystery novel, the “A Stamping Sisters Mystery” series. Life is weird, man. Maybe I’ll include this fun fact in my cozy memoir one day.
The cozy Franzen, or “cozen”.
A Cozen would be a very supportive, nurturing coven
This is excellent timing, as I’ve just finished reading my first Miss Marple book and all I want to read are more cozy mysteries. (None more cozy than an amateur elderly lady detective who is always knitting.)
I adore the Ruby the Rabbi’s Wife & Magdalena Yoder books in this genre. They’re fun.
I recall greatly enjoying the Mrs. Pollifax books when I was younger. It’s been years, though, so I don’t know if they hold up.
The Miss Silver mysteries by Patricia Wentworth are waiting for you. They’re PERFECT. And there’s lots of ’em.
Exciting! I will look them up.
This is perfect because I LOVE this genre (I didn’t know it had a name) but have a very thin line between my preferred amount of cozy and ‘no too twee’. I now avoid anything where the title is a pun on baked goods.
I’ll be looking these all up.
Also I realise now I prefer ‘cozy historical romances’. Too much sex and I’m like ‘ugh if I wanted this I’d just read fanfic, where it’s better and hotter. Please get back to repressing your feelings and admiring his cravat’
A TV series, not a book…but I think Rosemary & Thyme fits nicely into the cozy mystery genre. It’s on Netflix!
Which one?
The Murder at the Vicarage – Amazon had a sale recently on the Kindle edition of the Miss Marple omnibus so I have ALL of them to read! I am very excited.
I’m listening to it right now! About half-way through, and it’s so delightful. I never remember who dun it, because I’m so busy enjoying descriptions of Matron Hats and the best way to not-train your domestic help so she’ll never be good enough to leave your employ that I don’t pay attention to the actual crime. Who cares about Colonel Protheroe’s death, anyway? Old fart deserved it. (I do kind of remember. I just prefer not to think too hard about if I’m remembering correctly, because it would spoil my fun.)
My favorite cozy mysteries are the Flavia de Luce series; if you like a) small English villages, b) plucky heroines, c) the 1950s, d) eleven-year-old girls who are also brilliant scientists, or e) all of the above, you should check them out.
Flavia! They are the best non-Golden Age cozies.
OMG I love Flavia so much and I recommend her to everyone!
I like how there’s an entire sub-genre of fanfic that falls under the cozy umbrella as “curtains fic” ( cause they get together and pick out curtains you see)
YES. So often written of characters who have are complete BAMFs. I joyously suspend my disbelief!
I seem to recall, when I was caring for an elderly woman, reading a large number of these that she had around the house. A lot of them involved cats…
Check out the Agatha Raisin and Hamish MacBeth books by MC Beaton.
Just by the names alone I am pretty sure these will be great.
I like Hamish more than Agatha – Agatha was perfect reading post-awful-breakup when I couldn’t read anything that made me think or had a love story element in it. I haven’t wanted to reread them (although possibly that’s context more than the books) but I can reread the Hamish ones.
The Hamish McBeth tv show was a cultural phenomenon when it first came out, here. I remember my whole family was OBSESSED with it.
Odd casting though. I saw the TV series first and developed a crush on Robert Carlyle then read the books describing Hamish as six foot tall and red headed.
I remember several years ago, my aunt was very pleased that she had a friend who wrote these types of stories! Only my aunt called them “tea cozy mysteries” and so I guess I assumed they all had to do with tea for some reason.
There is a very real cozy mystery series that takes place in a tea shop. My favorite title of the run is ‘Oolong Dead’.
I read a ton of cozy mysteries when I’m depressed. I wish I didn’t hate people so I could open an inn, make jam and pies, make friends in unlikely places, find a cute guy who liked me back and talk exclusively in platitudes. That would be the fucking life
I’m pretty sure cozy steampunk is a thing–witness Gail Carriger and her ilk.
Yup.
With werewolves. Cuddly werewolves.
But like most paranormal romance it does have a little more sexytimes than most cozy literature.
Yes but then they still get flustered and ever so slightly embarrassed about it afterwards so that’s okay.
“I…erm…I’ll just go then, shall I?”
There is honestly nothing like the particular joy that comes with opening up a mystery and seeing that it starts with a detailed description of a tea tray. Thank you, Josephine Tey.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles?
I was thinking of The Franchise Affair, but The Mysterious Affair at Styles just went to the top of my TBR list.
Whoops, that was me trying to remember the name of The Franchise Affair at work and failing utterly. I can’t comment on the contents of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, sadly.
I’m throwing my hat in the ring for cozy historical fiction: a couple of war nurses organize a stitch-and-bitch circle in between shifts. They talk about their boy- and girlfriends back home, where to get ahold of nylons, what’s going on in their favorite radio drama; the only things that never come up are the wounded men they treat and the battles that caused their injury.
Would read.
I would like to read this series.
What about cozy Tudors fiction? Anne and Mary gossip about boys, embroider things, solve mysteries around the castle, and no one gets beheaded.
I’m re-reading the Ursula Blanchard series by Fiona Buckley and they might almost qualify? Still plenty of allusions to burnings (as in, but I must uncover this plot against the queen because otherwise: burnings. And we wouldn’t want that, would we now?) but mostly… cozy mysteries to be solved.
Jesus God, where is this? I would read the shit out of this. I ALMOST feel like this may be a thing in certain books? But I’d have to do a real thorough search.
This almost sounds like the WW1 plotline in Downton Abbey.
Oh dawg, I’m pretty sure that LM Montgomery’s *Rilla of Ingleside* qualifies. There is war and death and despair aplenty, but there’s also a zany war wedding, cat-based slapstick humor, and bitching about how the other girls in the Junior Red Cross embarrassed you in front of your beau.
I think you could probably get behind Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis?
Mr Churchill’s Secretary and subsequent volumes might be worth a look.
Maisie Dobbs is also pretty cozy.
Cozy war fiction is the best war fiction.
i was in a bookstore not long ago, and saw a full wall of mystery novels with cozy domestic covers and play on word titles combining food items and murder.
a full wall, from tons of authors. i had no idea. it was like discovering a new set of constellations.
Some of them are so good, too. I will not be ashamed.
But some of them are… not good. I have the same problem with any happily full genre where it’s impossible to tell, from a blurb, whether it is a good one or a less good one (or, perhaps more accurately, one that is not for me).
Luckily, there are internet friends and threads like this to recommend specific ones!
There’s a pizza-parlour-themed one that was horrible. I made it through half the first chapter before I had to Google the author (who had a gender-fluid name like “Chris”) to confirm my suspicion that he was indeed a he, thanks to all the references to “watching my figure” and “only eating half the cupcake.” Because that’s what wimmin talk about with each other, rite? Their weight and dieting and nothin else.
Also, the book made me constantly want pizza.
>>>and play on word titles combining food items and *murder*.
Well, Lecter needs to find something to occupy his time with while waiting for his show to be renewed. So why not write some books and publish them under multiple pseudonyms? Trolling unsuspecting readers can be fun…
And some have recipes! I rarely bake, but I find it so comforting to read recipes. Dude. I probably need to switch up my meds.
Yes, there are SO many of these. I shelve at a public library. I don’t typically enjoy mysteries or puns. Puns are a big thing in mystery titles generally, and some of them are REALLY reaching… And I have to check the titles for alphabetizing. *sigh* Still, good to know how people enjoy them.
Miss FIsher’s Murder Mysteries is exactly this, but while being very frank about sex and the pleasure of being rich as fuck. The books are alright but the show is EVERYTHING.
I have to admit, I felt that way at first, but the time I’d read all 20 books (and it happened so quickly – I just couldn’t stop myself) I liked them just a little more than the show. Though really, they’re different enough that it’s worth thinking of them as just two separate entities.
Agreed. I love the show but the plots of the books are more complex. And I love the descriptions of clothing and dresses in them! The books have my heart.
Also, there’s a Mrs. Butler to go with Mr. Butler, and the stuff with the adopted daughters (which the show seems to just forgotten about), and Dot is – I think – more interesting and intelligent in the books. And some of them have Mr. Butler’s cocktail recipes in them! They’re not very good cocktails – lots of OJ involved – but I love that Kerry Greenwood does that.
I haven’t finished all the books yet, but the books will always have a special place in my heart for that time Phryne bones a clown while he’s still in full clown makeup.
Also the TV show does not have nearly enough Lin Chung.
If you like the books, I would suggest not reading the latest one (or two). The quality has SHARPLY declined. I say this as a long-term fan of the books. I’m just going to read the first 15 or so over and over and pretend the others didn’t happen.
You did see that Netflix now has season 3, right?
WHAT? No! Oh I am a happy happy happy (soon to be sleep-deprived) gal. Thanks for mentioning it.
so…i watched like most of season 1 last night after reading comments here and getting curious. it was only putting myself to bed at a semi-responsible hour that kept me from season 2
I am enjoying watching the programme very much at the moment, but I don’t know if it’s completely cosy. Her sister was murdered!
The Sister Murder Plot is… the most INTENSE thing about that show (and as a bonafide wuss, I was very freaked out, but no one else I know was…). As soon as that plot gets resolved it becomes innuendo and Inspector Robinson’s deep voice and sherry and Miss Fisher flirting with men, oh and also a murder, 100% of the time.
Ooh, ooh, OOH. If you like your mysteries as cosy and as English as a hot buttery crumpet, you need to check out the British Library Crime series. They’ve reissued a load of 1920s and 1930s detective novels which were previously out of print, including my favourite, ‘Death on the Cherwell’ which is set in my old college back when it was for laydees only. The detectives are all 19 and spend most of their time going for lunch. http://shop.bl.uk/mall/productpage.cfm/BritishLib…
WHAT. This sounds amazing. Why am I not solving mysteries and constantly going for lunch?
DEATH ON THE CHERWELL. I have a dear cousin and pretty much all I give her for presents are murder mysteries set at women’s educational institutions. She’s had this, “Gaudy Night” and “Murder Most Unladylike”* so far.
*This one is a loving pastiche about genre-savvy schoolgirls with a detective agency at their boarding school. It works both as a parody and as the thing itself and the narrator/co-heroine is from Hong Kong and has all these snarky observations about British society.
I refuse to read any mystery novel having a pet as a protagonist!
How about livestock? The herd of sheep in “Three Bags Full” are not pets, but their shepherd used to read to them. Thus, they attempt to investigate his murder (while still behaving recognizably like sheep. Miss Maple is a very clever sheep…which does not make her at all clever by human standards. Pretty much the only advantage the sheep have is that nobody tries to keep anything secret from them.)
UGH, I loved “Three Bags Full”. I remember thinking it was really dumb while reading it, but also hilarious.
(My sister and I have a Thing about sheep — we were in a Very Christian Musical about sheep as children and sing the songs together whenever we’re in the car together. Mostly for the sheep puns.)
Or a pet billed as co-author, naming no names **cough cough ** Sneaky Pie Brown **cough cough **
Cozy high fantasy: all hobbits, all the time.
forget about the American Dream, what I want is the Hobbit Dream!
I highly recommend the “the Whisper of Glocken” by Carol….something? It’s all cozy hobbits, but instead if hobbits they’re called Minipins, and there’s a group of outcast misfits that end up saving the day. And the writing is wonderfully good!
For me, this was the Redwall series. There were moments of like, intense battles, but usually it was just like, weasels and squirrels solving riddles and eating truffles and creampuffs and mushroom ragout. (Is that a thing?)
I think of We Have Always Lived in the Castle as cozy horror, but I don’t suppose everyone does. (For whatever reason, I don’t find it especially frightening, unlike Jackson’s other scary books.)
Cozy Lovecraftian horror: In which the terrors of the deep have only resurfaced to give you a comforting pat on the back with their tentacles. And also, no one is racist.
ETA: The cozy romantic ode also has potential:
My love, your sigh is like the sound
Of a soft breeze through an apple orchard;
Your breath is like unto the blossoming steam
Lifting up from a mug of chamomile tea;
My love, you embrace me like a worn sweater:
Comforting, yet slightly itchy.
Lay now your head upon my lap
And I will stroke your hair as I would a beloved pet.
Where are eldritch terrors when you need em? I could use a reassuring pat on the back right now. More so if another tentacle offers a nice cup of tea.
Well any excuse to draw nameless horrors:
This is my everything.
YES! (Brilliant)
My love, you embrace me like a worn sweater:
Comforting, yet slightly itchy.
Smelling faintly of sheep
That graze vast fields like white clouds upon a greeny sky
Cozy post-apocalyptic fiction would be the best. Just afternoon tea and light gossip on the smoking ruins of humanity. Maybe you’d watch the blood-red sun sink into ashen clouds, after a fortifying supper in the tunnels.
This is kinda almost the first bit of A Canticle for Leibowitz with the cozy post-apocalyptic monastery!
Cozy catastrophe is a recognised genre. Jo Walton wrote about it http://www.tor.com/2009/10/14/who-read-cosy-catas…
Come to think of it, a lot of Doctor Who qualifies
I think Station Eleven might qualify as cozy post-apocalyptic fiction.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20170404-stat…
There is a lovely short story called “The Last of the Spode”, by Evelyn Smith, which is almost exactly this, and is also extremely funny.
Cozy mysteries! There are knitting mysteries, library mysteries, quilting mysteries, book club mysteries, bakery mysteries, pizzeria mysteries, pet store mysteries, stamp collecting mysteries, ballroom dancing mysteries, amateur theatrical mysteries, tea shop mysteries…
That’s the side benefit of a good cozy. You experience another profession on the side. I write a cozy series about a rock guitarist. My next series will be about an erotic bakery owner, so I’m expanding the definition of the genre in the sex department!
One of my favorite nontraditional cozy writers is Karen E. Olson. Her series follows a Vegas tattoo shop owner. If you can forgive puns in your titles (The Missing Ink, Ink Flamingos, etc.), they’re a blast.
Literary Fiction, She Wrote?
Is the cozy YA dystopia a thing yet? I feel like that must be a thing.
The Hunger Games is a competition to see who can eat the most crumpets at tea time. It’s dystopian because they live in a world without marmalade and have to make do with lemon butter. The horror…
I would say Adventure Time is almost a slant on cozy YA dystopia? Especially the ones featuring Tree Trunks!
OMG, yes! Or the ones where Bubblegum has her tea parties.
YES!
i give you small English village cozy mysteries where the detective is a gay vampire: Simon Kirby-Jones mysteries.
I’m trying to write a cozy mystery but where everyone’s worried they’re going to be arrested for homosexuality/gross indecency right now, and so I want to read that a LOT.
This is a particularly excellent comment when paired with your username. I am now thinking happily about gay Robert Templeton novels.
It makes so much SENSE
But Robert Templeton has appalling dress sense! Surely no gay man would look so awful.
I did think about but 1) that’s a stereotype so ofc is not true across the board 2) maybe it’s creative cover? 3) maybe it’s ‘bad dressing’ a la Alan Cumming, he’s just too fabulous for his time.
Thank you, I just bought it!!
Cozy science fiction: The Guardians, by John Christopher (at least, the second half).
Also: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Excellent book! Lots of penwipers and socials and time travel!
Ahhhh! That is one of my favourite books of all time. It is almost, almost perfect. My only issue with it is that the characters sound American when they’re not, but it is such a small thing. It is basically the book that I wish I had written.
YAY! I actually like Doomsday Book better but TSNOTD is also awesome. Certainly TSNOTD is more cozy! Connie Willis is a genius.
And hilarious.
She was a Guest of Honour at the World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane this past August, and I had the great pleasure of listening to her Hugo Awards speech.
The Blackout /WWII books are quite cozy too.
And Bellwether– which I hope one day will be an Aubrey Plaza vehicle.
That would be amazing!
Have you guys read Passage? Oh. My. God. I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard in my life.
And the Oxford geography is just slightly wrong (as is the whole “being an Oxford undergraduate” experience, but I charitably put that down to its being The Future).
Yeah, the future and Time Lag screwing up geography. Also, Time Lag as a parody and commentary on Victorian sentimentality is perfect and satisfying.
Is the narrator an undergraduate? I couldn’t quite decide. I don’t think so, and it sure sounds like the kind of situation a grad student would get roped into.
I think a fair few Anne McCaffrey books would qualify for Cozy Sci-Fi. I’m just rereading the Freedom series which is basically: people are dropped onto an abandoned planet by horrible aliens, they set up a colony and everyone gets along and works out how to make pottery and stuff, also there is no racism.
(Although, CONTENT WARNING, there’s some crappy attitudes to sexual assault in the first one, and the second two have some not at all traumatic but really not consensual sex in them – two people get blind drunk and do it, basically, but the way everyone talks about it is gross. Almost all McCaffrey needs a big o’ content warning for this kind of thing, so if that’s not something you can filter out, give them a miss.)
I’d say that the Pegasus books do. BUT I went back and read those, which I hadn’t since I was a child, and they are weird and racist, and I wound up not finishing the reread because of that.
Yeah I was thinking of reading them next but I remember them being… weird. With undertones. And I don’t remember them well enough to just skim for the good bits, like I do the Freedom Series.
I did just re-read the Masterharper books from the Pern series, which are the only ones I ever managed to read. They are refreshingly free of sexual assault (oh, McCaffrey, it’s such a LOW bar…) and are pretty nice. I can recommend them.
WHAT IF I DID THIS BUT ON A SPACE STATION
Would Read
I’m thinking I might make it a game now, actually.
YES PLEASE
100% would read.
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold! Main character is a young gay doctor from a men-only planet who travels to a space station to solve the mystery of the missing ovarian samples, makes friends with and is flabbergasted by awesome female Han Solo type. All space station, all the time.
BRB adding to Goodreads list.
Yes, cozy space station stories need to happen. Dicebox sort of starts off as cozy sf but it is…less cozy, now.
In re: “cozy speculative fantasy”: TV Tropes identifies the Cosy Catastrophe genre, and in a variety of such works, the apocalypse has a fantastic component. I can recommend Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World.
And then there are things like Terry Pratchett’s Reaper Man, which downplays the sex and violence because, being a real book written by a grown-up, is about love and death.
TV Tropes is amazing, isn’t it? Seems there is nothing that cannot be Troped…
“The Man Who Was Thursday” is my favorite cozy surrealist thriller if you’re into that sort of thing. I’d also recommend “The Proud Tower” by Barbara Tuchman in the cozy history genre.
Charlotte MacLeod’s cozies are the best EVER. They’re fun, and get progressively sillier, but I highly recommend that you read them with a dictionary at your elbow because there will be at least one word that you’ve never seen before. I wish I had her vocabulary and descriptive ability (and I was “the human dictionary” in middle school).
I love her books. I own all of the Sarah/Max and all of the Peter Shandy books.
The lovely Robot, knowing what was relevant to my interests, sent me a gluten-free mystery which I believe fits nicely into this category. It was called Gluten for Punishment and I enjoyed it very much. (It has recipes for Danishes!)
this can’t be real (startled emoji)
That’s too adorable
What a time to be alive.
If you like your mysteries gluten-free, try looking up Shira Glassman’s books – they’re mystery/adventure novels set in a mildly tropical fantasy nation where the main character is the nation’s queen, a young Jewish lesbian with celiac and a poultry allergy. Her girlfriend is a chef who maintains a whole gluten-free kitchen for her, and along with their friends (who includes shape shifters and friendly butch bounty hunters) they solve the frequently magical mysteries that beset the nation.
Just today this genre was a topic in the FB Lord Peter Wimsey Appreciation Society group! Truly, the Toast editors are omniscient!
(In Lord Peter’s own words, “I like a nice, quiet, domestic murder, with the millionaire found dead in the library.”)
What is the quote about detective fiction being where ‘the good are rewarded and the bad are punished’? I can’t think of anything cosier than that.
Oooh, I had no idea that existed and have just joined it!
Did not know that was a thing, have now joined. Thanks!
Does Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries fall into this category or is it too racy?
Pomo historical cozy?
No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency doesn’t avoid serious topics, but Mma Ramotswe is so friendly and practical that they might count.
“Go to hell, Johnny Gossamer.” She poured herself into a seamless dress. From the looks of it, she spilled some.
I’d read the heck out of cosy sci-fi or cosy space opera. A space ship, which is not displaced at all and can fly home any time it wants, taking day trips to distant planets in order to take walks on purple beaches and play card games with the locals, or maybe just hang out in a Café all day, alien people watching. Or basically Gilmore Girls in space.
Has anyone here seen Rosemary and Thyme? When there is bad news, Scarborough Fair plays softly and sadly in the background. There was one episode where the culprit escapes on a canal barge that’s going about 3 miles per hour. The ladies catch up to him by walking briskly and closing the canal gate. When he tries to escape they rap him on the knuckles with a shovel.
My partner keeps trying to get me to watch this and I haven’t yet because I am bad at watching things (seriously, it’s a problem) but I AM GOING TO because it sounds like my cup of tea.
It is one of my ‘I am too tire to concentrate on anything and want something to gaze at while I space out this evening’ standards.
I usually use Poirot for this. Good to know R&T might work just as well!
Poirot is delightful!
I just submitted a review for a book I described as a “hipster cosy,” not realizing I’d adopted the spelling habits of the Anglophile who turned me on to the genre. Hopefully they catch it in edits. The book was awesome, though it did have some sex and cussing because hipsters. Still, you knew everything was going to work out by the end, and those hipsters love their stitching and bitching.
My books have been called “hipster cozies.” (with a “z,” but I can adapt) Who are you reading? I need to find this person’s books ASAP.
The trick with a cosy/cozy is that they make everything seem harmless and cuddly, and the good guys always figure it out, even if sex, cussing and marijuana are a part of the plot.
Libby Cudmore! She’s new and the book’s not officially out until February, but watch for The Big Rewind! Half of my notes were just a page number and “marry me,” because her humor was so plugged into my own. Now I’m excited to read yours!
Libby Cudmore. I just performed some Google Fu and “The Big Rewind” might be the perfect blend of hipster and cozy for me. Thank you for the recommendation!
I looked you up and was immediately super-excited about the overlap between your books and this one. Now I’m all excited for Death by Homemade Sauerkraut and The Giant Front Wheel-Having Bicycle Murders. Hipster cozy IS a thing.
I may have to borrow “Death by Homemade Sauerkraut” as a companion to “Wurst-Case Scenario,” about a crew of hipster sausage makers. Only they make the sausage out of hipsters … okay. I should stop.
Another hipster cosy/cozy recommendation is Anne Marie Stoddard. She wrote a Southern hipster cosy set in a rock club and it’s tops.
I am going to an event at a club tonight featuring women modeling lingerie that has been crocheted. Something is cozy about that.
Might I reccomend the Meg Lanslow series by Donna Andrews? Meg is a blacksmith with a notebook-that-tells-her-when-to-breathe and a dog referred to as “the wee evil one”. Her large, quirky, and over-involved family’s antics are the selling point here.
I used to love those! I wonder if I’ve missed any newer ones…
I just read Becky Chamber’s A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and it is 100% cozy space opera: an oddball crew on a small spaceship who more or less get along and support each other as they deal with government contracts, paperwork, and other small and not quite as small annoyances IN SPACE with such means as curtains to make the new crewmember feel at home, open lesbian relationships to make the polyamorous velociraptor navigator less homesick, constant supplies of tea and snacks in the galley…
Thank you for this wonderful description of “A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet”. It made me go and buy it and read (inhale) it and I enjoyed it immensely. Now I want more books like that.
Nothing against action etc. – I read my share of that, but there’s tons of it out there. It’s highly satisfying to come across some cozy sf. If you’ve got more recommendations, please share them with me.
Cozy Post-Apocalyptic is already a thing: a catastrophe destroys the world, except for a small group of middle-class white people, who get by just fine, and build a small, close-knit town in the ruins.
Cozy Can-Lit is redundant; Can-Lit is already cozy.
Here’s the reference: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CosyCa…
Does Amelia Peabody count? I can’t decide. There’s a teeny bit of gross stuff in it, but at the same time, there’s a real attitude of whoops, here we go again locked in a tomb again!
UGH AMELIA PEABODY!!!! Those were my very first grownup books as a kid and I hold them with SUCH fondness.
I think that the thirteenth book of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, A Civil Campaign, could be considered cozy science fiction. Other books in the series range from having some cozy elements to not being anything even vaguely resembling cozy (Mirror Dance and Diplomatic Immunity, in particular, each contain a good deal of High-Octane Nightmare Fuel).
I mentioned this upstream, but I think Ethan of Athos is pretty cozy. I’m a huge fan of the whole series. Have you read her Curse of Challion books? Also good! Slightly less nightmare inducing.
Cozy paranormal?
Tanya Huff’s Enchantment Emporium series (Gale Girls) has a lot of pie baking. Most of the witches’ spells seem to involve pies. And Aunties. And Aunts. (Very different types of elderly relatives.)And celtic music with notes.
There is a fair bit of sexual activity, some lesbian, some incestuous, some incestuous lesbian. But no one it perfect.
Also they take place in Canada, so everyone is very polite. Even the demons.
I love these books so much. That is all.
I was so angry when I saw Dorothy Sayers shelved in the “Cosy Crime” section of a bookshop. Just because they’re Golden Age doesn’t mean they’re cosy! There’s suicide and blackmail and PTSD all over the place! They’re hugely dark!
Also the first book involves a mysterious corpse in a random bathroom with an open window, so basically the entire city of London is suspect. Which is the exact opposite of the small-town limited-cast cozy genre.
My mom and I were just talking this morning about how one of the reasons we love Miss Marple is that she lives in a cozy universe but she’s absolutely serious about evil. She identifies it and she fights it. Then she helps out the good people who’ve been hurt by it- if the rich lady’s been murdered, she finds her maid another situation, or if the nice young people love each other but can’t spit it out, she gives them the necessary nudge.
I find it particularly encouraging because in a universe of very fit people fighting evil (Buffy, superheroes, the “Leverage” team, etc) it’s nice to know you can have aching joints and be tired all the time and still do your bit.
What a wonderfully perceptive comment! I also believe there is a quietly subversive thread running through the cozy, as these people (often middle-aged or older, of modest means) are the quintessential invisible “outsiders.” The characters who ordinarily would be relegated to the “edge” of the picture but who ingeniously find a way to not only inject themselves into the crime-fighting process, but to prosper.
How radical is it that an elderly spinster in the 1930’s ends up holding the floor and speaking to a crowd of Nobs and police professionals and is actually LISTENED to? How many women in 2015 accomplish this feat?
Thanks! I know Dame Agatha didn’t get *everything* right, but running through all her books are two principles I support with all my heart: don’t overlook anybody (the spinster companion knows all about art, the young car mechanic is a prince among men, the scullery maid is the person who had the vital clue all along) and individual human lives are of infinite value. There’s a Poirot where he’s unmasked the murderer and the murderer points out that the people he killed were stupid or corrupt or weak, whereas he’s an important person who could do wonderful things for the world, and Poirot says, no, each of those people mattered just as much as the murderer did.
And listening to women will save your life! Even though not doing so is sometimes written into our very language (for instance, an “old wives’ tale” is something you should brush off.) But I love Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher and Miss Seton and Miss Climpson.
Here is a really good Miss Marple appreciation post from someone’s LJ. It’s worth reading the whole thing: http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/196423.html
Also, maybe men in the 30’s were more likely to listen to old ladies, because they’d grown up with Victorian aunties bossing them, and the generations weren’t as segregated as they are now? But I don’t know.
Also, “The Snoop Sisters” is all too brief (only five episodes) but has Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick as sisters who write murder mysteries and solve them. The supporting cast is a Who’s Who of 1970’s stars. There’s a show with devil worshippers (one of whom is Cyril Ritchard) and another with a creepy toy factory after dark. They wear beautiful tweed suits and drink cocktails. It’s pretty much perfect.
Cozy fantasy definitely exists. Everyone should read Diana Wynne Jones, whose books rarely feature anything as gauche as a Climactic Battle Between Good and Evil for the Fate of the Universe, and are all the more interesting for it.
See also “cozy catastrophe,” as epitomized by The Triffids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_pos…
Thanks! I know Dame Agatha didn't get *everything* right, but running through all her books are two principles I support with all my heart: don't overlook anybody (the spinster companion knows all about art, the young car mechanic is a prince among men, the scullery maid is the person who had the vital clue all along) and individual human lives are of infinite value. There's a Poirot where he's unmasked the murderer and the murderer points out that the people he killed were stupid or corrupt or weak, whereas he's an important person who could do wonderful things for the world, and Poirot says, no, each of those people mattered just as much as the murderer did.
And listening to women will save your life! Even though not doing so is sometimes written into our very language (for instance, an "old wives' tale" is something you should brush off.) But I love Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher and Miss Seton and Miss Climpson.
Here is a really good Miss Marple appreciation post from someone's LJ. It's worth reading the whole thing: http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/196423.html
Also, maybe men in the 30's were more likely to listen to old ladies, because they'd grown up with Victorian aunties bossing them, and the generations weren't as segregated as they are now? But I don't know.
We’ve got cozy grandma spy stories with the Mrs. Pollifax books!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Pollifax
That sounds amazing.