59 books like A Village Fete Murder

This was a book that I picked up because my Mom recommended it. And she struck gold with this one. The book is set in a British retirement community, where a group of old-timers spend their time trying to solve cold cases. But over the course of the book, they get themselves caught up in one very hot case. 

The POV shifts between different characters, who all have interesting voices and skill sets.

I was late coming to this author, but once I discovered her I knew I’d go back to her earlier books in the Lady Eleanor Swift series.

In this book, Lady Swift leaves England to see what Manhattan is all about. With her butler, Clifford, (and her dog Gladstone) in tow, she is soon ensconced in a high-end apartment and is giving and attending all of the parties with the rich and famous. But her society status is put on hold when she witnesses the doorman of her building killed in a hit and run.

This is soon followed by another murder connected to the doorman. She, of course, gets involved and is determined to right the wrong. The book is a perfect bit of escapism, written with humor. 

Wallace puts a new spin on witches and witchcraft as she introduces us to a family of witches living in a small New England town.

The Warren witches have used their magic for good and have devoted their skills to protecting and helping the citizens of Evenfall for four hundred years. But when a guest dies at the family B & B, one of the witches becomes a prime suspect.

The main character has a rare talent that lets her commune with ghosts. But her skills are rusty, so she tries using her investigative techniques hoping that her witchy skills will be there if she needs them.

Magical thinking is fun, but the reader can see it’s love and family that’s the true story and the magic here.

Who can resist a three-book series set in the Scottish Highlands? Travers does not disappoint we lovers of all things Scottish.

She sets this book in Edinburgh, 1911. The main character does something uncommon for women to do at that time—she takes a family inheritance and opens a detective agency. She also brings along Daisy, her lady’s maid.

When their first case leads them into the Highland society, the Duchess of Duddington employs them to ferret out a jewel thief. They go undercover to hunt for the thief, but soon realize they are hunting for a killer. This book blended the political and cultural reality of the day, but did it seamlessly.

I learned a few things while following Maud and Daisy around that fancy house in the Highlands. 

I love a good page-turning thriller, but to keep my interest, there has to be more than thrills and spills – I want characters I care about too.

The heroine here, unusually, is a teenage girl, who’s funny, smart, and stroppy, but at the same time vulnerable and scared. She teams up with a nosy elderly lady who proves to have hidden depths and as they find themselves in a terrifying situation and tackle some seriously bad villains, I was rooting for them all the way.  

This was the first book I read by Sharon Bolton and it got me hooked on this author.

The book draws you into the lives of the residents of a small village where beneath the idyllic setting lurks secrets and malice. We follow newcomer Clara, a local vet, who is called upon when poisonous snakes turn up in the residents’ homes. The book has a brooding atmosphere which will leave you checking under the bed before you sleep.

Maybe not a 'murder mystery' in the typical sense of Agatha Christie, but this is a delightful, cozy read, ideal for an afternoon snuggled before a blazing fire (wine and chocs to hand) or for lazing on a sunny beach (plus wine – maybe not the chocs). As someone living in a small Devonshire village I look forward to our annual summer show (hopefully without a corpse hidden anywhere!) I thoroughly enjoyed the rural background of this delightful little tale. Don't take the murder-to-solve element too seriously, instead, enjoy the lives of charming and quirky English Cotswolds’ characters, and the events that unfold around them in this, the first, of a highly enjoyable series. We need more entertaining cozy mystery novels like this series!

Oh, this book is perfect from the first page. It captures motherhood wonderfully and specifically—in this case, mothering two teenage boys—and it just as successfully captures the Maine coast and the complicated, sometimes fragile ecosystem of a marriage.

Jill is a documentary filmmaker who’s temporarily a single parent to her boys while her husband, a fisherman, recovers in a hospital from a boating accident. There’s nothing flashy about the story—it’s a smart, lovely, often funny look at one woman’s life. It’s a deeply contented life, by the way, which means the stakes are very high when the foundation of it starts to look shaky.

I read this book for two reasons—I have two adopted siblings and I am in the midst of writing a memoir about growing up in a rural Ontario village in the 50s and 60s. Petrie tells of her own experience as an unwed mother and the stories of six other women she has managed to locate after all this time, who talk about their experiences of being young and pregnant in the 50s and 60s. At that time, unwanted pregnancies brought shame onto the girl herself and her family, so they had to be carefully hidden. Often the girl was sent to a mother and baby home run by churches and the Salvation Army, where judgment dictated the responses to these girls. Petrie breaks through her own desire to remain separate from the other girls to tell an honest and heartbreaking story of what life was like in… show more.

The Cornish Wedding Murder is the first installment of Fiona Leitch’s wonderful cosy mystery series. It features Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker, ex-copper turned caterer, who butts heads with handsome DCI Nathan Winters to prove a childhood friend’s innocence, after an unexpected guest is found dead at his wedding. It’s an entertaining read with plenty of twists and turns and some added romantic tension to keep you wanting more. 

Jodie’s on my list as a female lead who’d make a great dinner guest because she’s bold, fiercely loyal and she doesn’t let others push her around. She’s also one to raise a smile with her deadpan humour and she’d have many a story from her police days to share. Oh, and with her being a caterer, I might not even have to cook!