5 First-in-a-series mysteries to start the new year
- Dane Luna
- Jan 18
- 2 min read
New year, new cozy mysteries!
There's something so refreshing and optimistic about reading the first book in a cozy crime series. There's the potential of finding your new favorite sleuth and your new favorite fictional locale. There's also comfort in the knowledge that once you finish the current book, you have plenty more books in the series to look forward to.
And if you're looking to get that first book feeling and add to your 2026 reading list, I'm sharing five cozy mysteries coming out this month below. What do they have in common? They're all the first book in a series!
Start the new year by starting a new cozy mystery series—sounds like a plan!
Former rockstar Adam Parrall now runs a record store in sleepy Cordoba along the mid-California coast.
It's a calmer, less exciting life compared to his years as a drummer, until he discovers the body of a Righteous Brother tribute artist outside a nightclub.
Knives Out meets Downton Abbey in this historical mystery set in Cornwall in 1910.
Tithe Hall has been sealed off from the outside world with its viscount inside, hoping to save himself from what he believes to be the impending apocalypse brought about by the passing of Halley's Comet.
It's a little ironic, then, that he then meets his untimely end.
Discovering the mystery behind his death will fall on the hands of an unlikely duo in Tithe Hall's new under-butler Stephen Pike and the matriarch of the house, the enigmatic Decima Stockingham.
Annie Murray has finally opened her detective agency above her beloved bookstore. For her first case, she's hired by an elderly neighbor who believes a recent death by drowning might in fact have been murder.
Members of The Quaint Bookshop's murder mystery group try to solve the mystery behind the bookshop owner's murder.
Las Chicas de Carne—a BBQ competition team featuring three women who are wizards in the kitchen and in other matters—try to solve a string of murders while cooking up their award-winning meats.
Which cozy mysteries are you planning to read this year? Do you have any new year reading resolutions or goals?
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