Here are 100 books that The Semester of Our Discontent fans have personally recommended if you like
The Semester of Our Discontent.
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Cozy mysteries tend to exist in a simpler world, one without extreme violence and heavy swearing. They are often set in bucolic settings, but they deal with murder! I love many of the cozy tropes—tea, cats, dogs or other pets, family shenanigans, food. I think it’s family nuances that draw me the most to cozies. Whether it’s a romantic comedy or just one full of capers and laughter, cozies are my favorite genre.
One of the first modern cozy mysteries I have ever read, Stephanie Plum is zany, ridiculous, and laugh-out-loud funny. Basically, she’s a bounty hunter, and she gets her man and solves mysteries despite herself. Her Grandma Mazur is quite possibly one of the best sidekick characters ever invented. Funerals may or may not involve dead bodies, but Granny Mazur will be there anyway, even if it means stealing a corpse. Especially if it means stealing a corpse! Stephanie has a habit of losing cars and getting stuck driving a very old boat of a car (Big Buick), which deprives her of looking as cool as she’d like. Well, she isn’t exactly a put-together gal, so that’s okay.
The initial books in the series are almost a coming of age—a chance at a career, a chance or two at romance, and family shenanigans that almost kill her with good intentions. This…
Stephanie Plum is down on her luck. She's lost her job, her car's on the brink of repossession, and her apartment is fast becoming furniture-free.
Enter Cousin Vinnie, a low-life who runs a bail-bond company. If Stephanie can bring in vice cop turned outlaw Joe Morelli, she stands to pick up $10,000. But tracking down a cop wanted for murder isn't easy . . .
And when Benito Ramirez, a prize-fighter with more menace than mentality, wants to be her friend Stephanie soon knows what it's like to be pursued. Unfortunately the best person to protect her just happens to…
I retired from a district attorney’s office as a victim witness specialist and a paralegal, where I saw a disturbing side of humanity with too many female victims. There were rarely any winners on either side. Reading mysteries with strong female leads gave me hope. A dash of humor didn’t hurt, either. After a long day of vicarious trauma, it was a treat to hide behind my computer in the evenings and write cozy mysteries, where I tied up the end of the story with a pretty pink bow and where there was a winner. I’m hooked!
This book had me laughing out loud in the first chapter and several times thereafter. The female lead is a CIA assassin in hiding in Sinful, Louisiana, where she meets two older woman, Gertie and Ida Bell, who the town has dubbed the “Geritol Mafia” and who were in Viet Nam together.
The author creates characters—and relationships between those characters—that stayed in my mind long after reading the book. Again, I eagerly wait for each new release in the series so I can be part of Fortune, Gertie, and Ida Bell’s adventures.
CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever-in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world's largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element. Posing as a former beauty queen turned librarian in a small bayou town seems worse than death to Fortune, but she's determined to fly below the radar until her boss finds the leak and puts the arms dealer out…
I graduated from Lower Cape May Regional High School in the '80s. My classes revolved mostly around the culinary sciences and theater, with the occasional nap in Chemistry. I write culinary cozy mysteries from my Northern Virginia office while trying to keep my naughty cat off my keyboard. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that prevents me from eating gluten without exploding. I now create gluten-free goodies at home and include the recipes in my Cape May-based Poppy McAllister series. Most of my hobbies revolve around eating and travel, and eating while traveling. My secret powers include finding my way to any coffee shop anywhere in the world, even while blindfolded.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation—collecting vintage cookbooks—into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
The skills Ricki has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy…
A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning author Ellen Byron.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee”…
I graduated from Lower Cape May Regional High School in the '80s. My classes revolved mostly around the culinary sciences and theater, with the occasional nap in Chemistry. I write culinary cozy mysteries from my Northern Virginia office while trying to keep my naughty cat off my keyboard. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that prevents me from eating gluten without exploding. I now create gluten-free goodies at home and include the recipes in my Cape May-based Poppy McAllister series. Most of my hobbies revolve around eating and travel, and eating while traveling. My secret powers include finding my way to any coffee shop anywhere in the world, even while blindfolded.
Smarmy personals ads. Daring declarations of love. Freelance writer Jaine Austen has penned them all. But no one needs her help more than geeky, gawky Howard Murdoch. His request is simple enough: a letter proclaiming his undying love for Stacy Lawrence, a gorgeous aerobics instructor. The fact that he's never actually met the woman gives Jaine pause—yet she soon overcomes her misgivings, and the unlikely Romeo lands a date! But his triumph is short-lived. On Valentine's Day, Howard finds Stacy bludgeoned to death with a Thigh Master—and is quickly named the prime suspect.
Jaine is shocked. Sure, Howard's awkward and eccentric. But a murderer? That's hard to believe. Especially after a little sleuthing reveals a plethora of people who harbored less-than-loving feelings towards the svelte Stacy. Now Jaine had better wrangle her clues quickly, before a crafty killer catches on—and puts a whole new spin on her ghost-writing career....
"I'm crazy about Laura Levine's mystery series. Her books are so outrageously funny." --Joanne Fluke
Smarmy personals ads. Daring declarations of love. Freelance writer Jaine Austen has penned them all. But no one needs her help more than geeky, gawky Howard Murdoch. His request is simple enough: a letter proclaiming his undying love for Stacy Lawrence, a gorgeous aerobics instructor. The fact that he's never actually met the woman gives Jaine pause--yet she soon overcomes her misgivings, and the unlikely Romeo lands a date! But his triumph is short-lived. On Valentine's Day, Howard finds Stacy bludgeoned to death with a…
In the early 1980s, I fell in love with the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, its people – including my wife’s Native Hawaiian relatives – and its history. My wife and I owned a home on the South Kohala Coast of the Big Island for twenty years, where I assembled a library of Hawaiian history and began reading all things Hawaiian, including detective fiction. Every year, Hawaiʻi inspires so many books, fiction and non-fiction, well-publicized or obscure, that it’s fun to mention some that Hawaiʻi lovers and residents may have missed.
Murders in academia are a special genre within the universe of detective fiction, but Frankie Bow – the pen name of a highly amused and amusing university professor – has created her own delightful franchise, extended into a series of eleven short, light-hearted, and gently satirical volumes featuring Professor Molly Barda as a sardonic sleuth, one who voices her observations almost as aphorisms.
Although The Musubi Murder is number two in the series, set at the faintly ludicrous Mahina State University ("Where Your Future Begins Tomorrow"), it’s a good place for the reader to start following Professor Molly. Musubi itself may not be addictive for everyone (it’s cooked Spam secured to sushi rice by a strip of seaweed), but Frankie Bow’s mystery series surely is.
"If you like your cozy mysteries with humor and a satisfying dose of sarcasm, Frankie Bow is your go-to author." ― Laura's Interests Book Blog
After a brutal year on the academic job market, Professor Molly Barda finally lands a teaching job. In Mahina, Hawaii!
But Mahina isn't exactly paradise.
Chronically-underfunded Mahina State University ("Where Your Future Begins Tomorrow") doesn't boast rolling green lawns or wood paneled offices. Molly sits on a yoga ball because there's no budget for office furniture. Her dean, unwilling to lose paying customers, won't let her report cheating students.
I’m the author of the novel The Good Ones, published by Harper Books earlier this year. I grew up in a beautiful and somewhat isolated part of the country, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and it’s still my favorite place to set my fiction. When I began writing crime fiction, I knew I wanted to balance telling compelling stories with creating a sense of place and interesting characters to inhabit it, and I’ve learned so much from these writers about how to do that.
I love all of Rebecca Makkai’s work, but this novel, published earlier this year, absolutely blew me away.
Makkai is adept at keeping the pages turning, but it wasn’t just the story of podcaster Bodie Kane and the murder of her high school classmate that drew me in as much as the atmosphere. The novel is set in a New England winter, and Makkai does a fantastic job of using the darkness and isolation of the season to create thematic resonance.
I’ve only been to New England a few times and don’t know it well at all, but this novel makes me feel like I’ve been there.
**A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR OPRAH DAILY, TIME, NPR, USA TODAY, BUSTLE, STAR TRIBUNE, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING AND MORE**
'Whip-smart and uncompromising' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
'Quietly riveting' IRISH TIMES
'It's the perfect crime' NEW YORKER
'Impressive and complex' GUARDIAN
'Addictive' OPRAH DAILY
The riveting new novel from the author of The Great Believers, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the 1995 murder…
I write fantasy novels, including A College of Magics, River Rats, and When the King Comes Home. With Patricia C. Wrede, I wrote half of the Kate and Cecy series: Sorcery and Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician.
Agent of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the spectacularly well-dressed protagonist tasked with saving the world (again) in an alternate 1912 Cairo. This award-winning novel awed me with its detail and invention. What I loved most was the way the world building relegated the British Empire to relative unimportance. Come to think of it, I loved the Ministry library almost as much.
Included in NPR’s Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade (2011-2021) A Nebula Award Winner A Ignyte Award Winner A Compton Crook Award for Best New Novel Winner A Locus First Novel Award Winner A RUSA Reading List: Fantasy Winner A Hugo Award Finalist A World Fantasy Award Finalist A NEIBA Book Award Finalist A Mythopoeic Award Finalist A Dragon Award Finalist A Best of 2021 Pick in SFF for Amazon A Best of 2021 Pick in SFF for Kobo
Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark goes full-length for the first time in his dazzling debut…
Living on Devon's gorgeous coast, I'm melding my lifelong love of reading Cozy Sleuths with my love of writing and years of living in foreign climes to write Travel Cozies. I also have a Vella Heist serial Found Money starting on Vella soon, and a Cozy Spy series They Call Him Gimletcoming out in the Autumn.
My all time fav Humorous Murder Mystery (now out of print but still available currently in the anthology He Do The Time Police In Different Voices) British author David Langford's The Spear of he Sun is set on a spaceship. This gem is simultaneously a terrific Locked Room murder mystery; the best Father Brown story I have ever read (and I've been a Father Brown fan for decades); a wonderful cozy mystery; and a fantastic parody-pastiche of GK Chesterton, The Roman Catholic Church imprints, and Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, all three at the same time. It's tears-of-laughter-pouring-down-your-cheeks funny, and a Hall-of-Fame-Quality of murder mystery if read straight. Don't miss it.
A collection of Langford parodies and pastiches incorporating the whole of The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two (1988, long out of print) plus some 40,000 words of additional material.
Growing up, I found my escape in fantasy worlds. I’ve always had an interest in writing, and when I was a young child, when someone asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, I always responded “a novelist.” It wasn’t until I rediscovered my love and passion for reading in my late teens, and early twenties, that the idea of The Reign Belowblossomed in my head. Through my writing, I have discovered a community of fantasy readers and lovers. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I listened to my inner child and that I wrote a story of my own, full of magic. But I’m glad my ambitious, childhood dream came true.
House of Earth and Blood was the first new adult fantasy book that I read that made me fall back in love with the fantasy genre.I had rediscovered my love for reading in my late teens after not reading much for a few years. Bryce Quinlan reminded me a lot of myself. In that, she was the first lead female character who isn’t thin and petite. Rather, Bryce is curvy and different from other women that Sarah J. Maas has written. I instantly felt drawn in by Bryce and her carefree attitude in the first half of the book. Her strength is admirable and authentic. Her story and struggles captured me much like many readers.
Though Bryce does have her struggles as being defined as a “party girl,” she is so much more than the label. Beneath it all, Bryce is someone you can’t help but to root for,…
Sarah J. Maas's brand-new CRESCENT CITY series begins with House of Earth and Blood: the story of half-Fae and half-human Bryce Quinlan as she seeks revenge in a contemporary fantasy world of magic, danger, and searing romance.
Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life-working hard all day and partying all night-until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She'll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.
The first story I ever wrote was set among warehouse pickers and stockers; the second, a bridge maintenance crew; the third and fifth, office workers, and the sixth, cops on the beat. I’m fascinated by the drama of work. For most people the workplace is a highly structured environment—you can’t wear what you want, you can’t say what you want, you can’t avoid that guy who drives you nuts. Who-You-Really-Are and Who-You-Are-At-Work are not always in harmony, and the tension between those two identities is richly revelatory. I live and write in Moscow, Idaho, and have taught creative writing at the University of Idaho, Stanford University, and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
One early summer afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from the mud of Lake Vättern, and Detective Inspector Martin Beck of the Swedish National Police is assigned to the case. Who was she? Who killed her? These questions remain unanswered for months and months (and months). Catching a killer, it seems, is a slog, and the routines of police work are captured here in all their tedium. And this is exactly why I love this book, as it compellingly dramatizes (to quote from Henning Mankell’s introduction) “the fundamental virtue of the police: patience.” There’s a heroism to these steadfast and rumpled men, and something thrilling about their dogged, often frustrating, yet ultimately successful pursuit of the truth.
With a New Introduction by Henning Mankell. The masterful first novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö ("the best writers of police procedurals in the world"), finds Beck hunting for the murderer of a lonely traveler. On a July afternoon, a young woman's body is dredged from Sweden's beautiful Lake Vattern. With no clues Beck begins an investigation not only to uncover a murderer but also to discover who the victim was. Three months later, all Beck knows is that her name was Roseanna and that she…
