Cozy Mystery · December 2026
7 New Cozy Mystery Books Coming in December 2026
A ghost helps run an inquiry, a hotel proposal divides Cabot Cove, and a wedding reception leaves the newlyweds with a murder to untangle.
The sleuths in these December mysteries find clues in places they already know. Jessica Fletcher hears Cabot Cove argue about a proposed hotel over lunch. In Sea Harbor, a knitting circle has to ask what it really knew about a friend. A Welsh fair and a new skating rink bring winter into two of the cases, while Freddie Archer’s investigation takes her through the nightlife of 1920s Manhattan.
The seven books below have scheduled U.S. release dates. A Happier Medium starts with a new cast. The other mysteries return to familiar sleuths, but each gives them a fresh case.
At a glance
What cozy mysteries are coming in December 2026?
A Happier Medium is scheduled for December 1. A Crime of Fashion and Murder, She Wrote: A Killing in Real Estate follow on December 8, then Murder at the Winter Fair on December 9. Skating on a Thread, Top Dog Murder, and A Prologue to Murder are due December 15.
01 · Paranormal cozy mystery
A Happier Medium
By Annie England Noblin
· US · Lake Union Publishing
Birdie Briscoe inherited a psychic shop from her grandmother Leonora in the coastal New England town of Consternation Springs. The business is struggling, and Birdie has never been able to offer the sort of readings the town expects. Then Leonora’s ghost shows up. After a nor’easter, Birdie’s friend Sierra is found murdered, and her grandmother turns out to have more to offer than advice about the shop.
Birdie investigates with help from Leonora and other local spirits. Finn Avery, who’s renovating the tavern across the street, helps with the case and becomes part of a growing romance. The grandmother Birdie feared disappointing is now someone she has to rely on to find out what happened to Sierra.
A standalone mystery. Birdie, Leonora, and the town are introduced here.
02 · Jazz Age historical mystery
A Crime of Fashion
By Julie Mulhern
· US · Forever
In 1925 Manhattan, fashion and nightlife columnist Freddie Archer looks into the disappearance of a family friend, a judge with ties to Tammany Hall. Her boyfriend, bootlegger Brandt Adams, wants her to stay out of it. So does a federal agent. Freddie’s inquiries take her from couture salons and jazz clubs into the company of men like Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano.
Freddie’s job gives her a reason to be in rooms where people are showing off. It also teaches her to pay attention to what they’re trying to hide. A missing judge makes the gossip around Manhattan’s nightlife matter in a way it never could in an ordinary fashion column.
Freddie Archer Mysteries, book 2. Murder in Manhattan introduces Freddie and her circle. The missing-judge case begins in this book.
03 · Small-town cozy mystery
Murder, She Wrote: A Killing in Real Estate
By Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran
· US · Berkley
A mayoral race is already dividing Cabot Cove when developer Lionel Watts starts approaching landowners about a site for a luxury hotel. Some neighbors want the tourist business and others want to preserve the town as it is. When Watts turns up dead in the woods, a heart attack looks like the obvious explanation. Jessica Fletcher has reason to suspect that it was murder.
The proposed hotel turns lunch at Mara’s Luncheonette into an argument about the future of Cabot Cove. Watts had approached several landowners, so the same deal meant different things to different neighbors. Those conversations give Jessica a place to start when the apparent heart attack stops adding up.
Murder, She Wrote, book 64. The novels continue the TV show’s fictional sleuth and retain Jessica Fletcher in the cover credit alongside Terrie Farley Moran. The hotel dispute and the death begin in this book.
04 · Historical cozy · Welsh winter mystery
Murder at the Winter Fair
By Verity Bright
· US · Bookouture
Lady Eleanor Swift and her detective agency are in the Welsh mountains when Steffan Adams collapses at a village winter fair. The cause is poisoned mead. The stallholders say Adams was following Eleanor, and her bulldog Gladstone noses out a signet ring with a red Welsh dragon in the snow.
The ring sends Eleanor and Hugh looking into a secret the village has kept for decades. What the stallholders saw becomes evidence as Eleanor tries to work out why Adams came looking for her. The snow has already hidden one clue, and a blizzard is on its way.
A Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery, book 27. A Very English Murder introduces Eleanor and her circle. The Welsh fair opens a new case in the series.
05 · Craft cozy · Coastal winter mystery
Skating on a Thread
By Sally Goldenbaum
· US · Kensington Cozies
Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, opens an outdoor skating rink just as winter settles in. Julia Euclid helps run the nonprofit behind it, and Mayor Beatrice Scaglia sees the rink as a chance to win a statewide award. After the opening, Julia is found shot near the rink. Her friends Nell, Izzy, Cass, and Birdie start asking questions about the parts of her life they didn’t see.
The knitters are investigating someone they already liked and thought they understood. The rink brings the town together in public, but the evidence takes them into the much less tidy business of Julia’s private relationships.
Seaside Knitters Society, book 9. Murder Wears Mittens opens the Seaside Knitters Society sequence. Julia’s case starts here, with the knitting circle already established.
06 · Amateur-sleuth cozy
Top Dog Murder
By Leslie Meier
· US · Kensington Cozies
Carole Capobianco’s daughter Connie is slightly injured when her boyfriend Jared is shot outside a Providence restaurant. Carole suspects the attack may be tied to a film crew working in nearby Newport. She gets onto the set as an extra alongside her mother-in-law, trading her usual clothes for a scullery maid’s costume while she tries to find out who Jared really was.
The film set gives Carole a way to observe people who are used to putting on an act. There’s humor in the distance between the scullery maid she plays and the Rhode Island socialite who takes her Brittany spaniel Poopsie for a walk every day. Off set, she’s a mother trying to understand how much Connie knew about the man she was seeing.
A Carole and Poopsie Mystery, book 2. A Matter of Pedigree introduces Carole and Poopsie. Jared’s death opens a separate case in their second book.
07 · Bookshop cozy · Wedding mystery
A Prologue to Murder
By V. M. Burns
· US · Kensington Cozies
Michigan bookseller Samantha Washington and her fiancé Frank move their wedding reception to a yacht after a plumbing disaster at the hotel. When a shot rings out on deck, their honeymoon has to wait. Sam, Frank, and Nana Jo help Detective Pitt sort through the people aboard and ask whether the killer meant to shoot the person who died.
Sam has a second mystery on her hands, this one in the novel she’s writing about wartime espionage at Wickfield Lodge. The two cases give her different ways to think about appearances, motives, and who a crime was meant to hurt.
Mystery Bookshop, book 12. The Plot Is Murder introduces Sam, Nana Jo, and the North Harbor bookshop. Earlier books give the wedding more context. The shooting is a new case.
More mysteries with returning sleuths
The cozy mystery shelf includes other cases built around familiar communities. The Impossible Fortune follows the Thursday Murder Club when a wedding gives them a new investigation.
Cozy mystery books covered on Book Review GuideThe Impossible Fortune by Richard OsmanMore new and upcoming books