Like any bookworm, I love me a store full of books. I can't resist them and I rarely leave without buying at least one new volume. My local indie, Changing Hands, is a wonderful place to browse for new reading material as well as a great place to trade used books for store credit (which I do at least once a year). I've been to some other well-known bookshops: the Strand (New York City), Powell's Books (Portland, Oregon), and Shakespeare and Company (Paris, France). My family and I visited Paris last year around this time, when there were still COVID restrictions in place. The store was limiting how many people could be inside at one time and there was already a long line to get in, so I wasn't able to actually go inside the famous shop, but I did see it, so I'm counting it! I don't have a bookstore bucket list (Maybe I should start one?), so I got nothin' for this week's prompt—Top Ten Favorite Bookstores OR Bookstores I'd Like to Visit. No matter, I'll just twist it up a little bit.

I adore a good cozy mystery any time of year, but Fall seems like the best time to read them. I've noticed many that are set in bookshops and libraries. I've yet to find a good bookish cozy series that I love, but there are a number of them on my TBR list that I hope will fit the bill. Please suggest any that are not on my list and I'll check them out.

Don't forget to click on over to That Artsy Reader Girl and give our lovely host, Jana, some love. If you want to join in the TTT fun (which you definitely do!), all the details are on her blog.

Top Ten Bookish Cozy Mysteries I Want to Read 

1. The Cracked Spine by Paige Shelton—The first installment in the Scottish Bookshop series, this one tells the story of a woman from Kansas who, on a whim, applies for a job at a bookstore in Scotland. Naturally, the place is filled with quirky book people and tantalizing secrets. When a valuable artifact goes missing and a woman is killed, it also becomes a place where murder is fact instead of just fiction.

2. Crime and Poetry by Amanda Flower—I love Flower's Amish Candy Shop mystery series, so I'm sure to dig this one. In this opener to the Magical Bookshop series, Violet Waverly is called back to Michigan to help her ailing grandmother with her bookstore. When she sees that the woman is in perfect health, she realizes she's been tricked into coming home. Although she's determined to head right back to Chicago, Violet can't leave after a murder happens in the shop. She has to stay and clear her grandmother's name.

3. The Plot Is Murder by V.M. Burns—What is it with Michigan and people getting murdered in bookstores? Yikes! In this initial installment of the Mystery Bookshop series, Samantha Washington is about to make her dream of owning a bookstore come true. At the same time, she's writing a historical cozy mystery in which her heroine investigates a puzzling murder. Art starts to imitate life when Samantha discovers a dead realtor in her backyard. In order to prove her innocence, she'll have to play amateur sleuth and find the real killer.

4. Death On Demand by Carolyn G. Hart—Annie Laurance's bookstore, Death on Demand, isn't located in Michigan (it's in South Carolina), but it still becomes the site of a baffling murder. In this 1987 series opener, a famous mystery author is killed in the bookstore and Annie must figure out whodunit.

5. Guidebook to Murder by Lynn Cahoon—The Tourist Trap mystery series has been recommended to me by multiple bloggers. This series opener introduces Jill Gardner, who owns Books, Coffee, and More in a quaint California tourist town. She's struggling to keep her business afloat when an elderly friend dies suddenly, leaving Jill her crumbling old house. The dilapidated home isn't the only thing she's been gifted, though—along with the old lady's abode, Jill seems to have inherited her secrets and enemies as well. Suspecting her friend was murdered, the bookshop owner launches her own investigation into the death.

6. Murder By the Book by Lauren Elliott—When Addie Greyborne inherits her aunt's home in the colonial New England town founded by their ancestors, she sees it as a chance to escape sour memories and start over. With her aunt's collection of rare books, Addie has enough inventory to start her own shop, Beyond the Page Bookstore. Unfortunately, her new life is not going as smoothly as planned. When Addie's friend is arrested for murder, she knows she can't stand idly by. She has to clear her friend's name, even if it means risking her own neck. 

7. By Book Or By Crook by Eva Gates—Lighthouses have always fascinated me, so I love that this series features a lighthouse library. How fun is that? In this first installment, Lucy retreats to the Outer Banks to lick her wounds and gets a job as a librarian. She soon finds herself investigation both a book theft and a murder.

8. The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Ransom—Speaking of book thefts, this first installment in the Mobile Library Mystery series concerns a truckload of missing books. It's up to Israel Armstrong, the new mobile librarian to figure out what happened to his inventory.

9. Murder Past Due by Miranda James—This series features another male lead, Charlie Harris, and his pet coon cat, Diesel. In this first book, the pair are investigating the murder of a best-selling author, whose jerkiness has finally caught up to him.

10. Buried in a Book by Lucy Arlington—When journalist Lila Wilkins loses her job, she accepts an internship at a North Carolina literary agency. Lila's thrilled at the idea of being paid to read, but when an author drops dead in the agency's waiting room, she finds herself in the middle of a disturbing real life crime. Who offed the unfortunate writer?

There you are, ten bookish cozy mysteries on my TBR list. Have you read any of them? Which bookish cozy series are your faves? Did you feature bookstores on your list today? Which do you love/dream of visiting? I'd truly love to know. Leave me a comment on this post and I will gladly return the favor on your blog.

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

When Angie Turner inherits her grandmother's farm in little River Vista, Idaho, she sees it as the perfect opportunity to start over.  An executive chef, she decides to open a farm-to-table restaurant with the help of her best friend, Felicia Williams.  With the County Seat scheduled to open in a few weeks, the two women are scrambling to hire staff, convince local farmers to sell them produce and dairy, and make sure the restaurant's opening runs smoothly.  

Angie manages to persuade crotchety "Old Man" Moss to sell her his famous goat cheese, a real triumph.  The next thing she knows, however, the man's body is found at the bottom of a treacherous cliff.  Not only does Angie end up tending one of the deceased's lively goats, but she also can't help channeling her inner Nancy Drew to figure out the truth behind the elderly man's suspicious death.  As she comes closer and closer to solving the case, Angie's life becomes more and more dangerous.  Can she find the killer before the killer finds her?  

As much as I love the title and setting of Who Moved My Goat Cheese?, the first installment in Lynn Cahoon's Farm-to-Fork mystery series, the story just didn't work very well for me.  The characters are cliché and not well developed.  Angie Turner, for example, is as generic as her name implies.  Because neither she nor her love interest is round enough to feel real, their sparkless romance falls flat.  The mystery at the book's center isn't very mysterious and the big finale just feels ... anticlimactic.  While I appreciate this cozy for being light, fun, and clean, it didn't engage me enough to make me want to move on with the series.  Oh well.

(Readalikes:  Reminds me of the All-Day Breakfast Cafe series by Lena Gregory)   

Grade:

If this were a movie, it would be rated:

for mild violence and mild sexual innuendo

To the FTC, with love:  I bought a copy of Who Moved My Goat Cheese? from Amazon with a portion of the millions I make from my lucrative career as a book blogger.  Ha ha.