Books about food are dangerous to read on an empty stomach. These stories are filled with bakeries, restaurants, family recipes, cooking competitions and, because cozy mysteries are involved, the occasional murder. Better yet, every book on this list includes recipes you can try at home.
There is a little of everything here, including cozy mysteries, historical fiction, romance, friendship stories and even cozy fantasy. If you would rather cook something inspired by a favorite fictional world, take a look at these cookbooks inspired by books and board games, too. Otherwise, grab a snack and find your next read.
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Kate & Frida
by Kim Fay
Set in the early 1990s, Kate & Frida takes place when becoming long-distance friends still meant sitting down and writing actual letters. Frida Rodriguez, the daughter of Joan from Love & Saffron, is living in Paris and hoping to become a war correspondent. Kate Fair works in a Seattle bookshop and dreams of becoming a writer. When Frida writes to the bookshop looking for a particular book, Kate answers, and one letter turns into years of friendship.
The two women write about books, food, work, relationships and the uncertainty that comes with trying to figure out what you want from your twenties. Their lives take them through Seattle, Paris and even war-torn Sarajevo, but their letters give them a place to be honest about the things they cannot always say to the people around them.
Kate & Frida is connected to Love & Saffron, which also appears on this list, but it can be read on its own. Several multicultural recipes are included at the end of the book.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
(Hannah Swensen Series Book #1)
by Joanne Fluke
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder introduces Hannah Swensen, the owner of The Cookie Jar bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota. Between running the bakery and avoiding her mother’s attempts to find her a husband, Hannah already has plenty to deal with. Then Ron LaSalle, a local dairy delivery driver, is found murdered behind the bakery with Hannah’s Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around his body.
Hannah is not about to let her cookies—or her business—become associated with murder. She starts asking questions and soon discovers that several people may have had a reason to want Ron dead. Unfortunately, looking for the killer also puts Hannah in danger.
This is the first book in the long-running Hannah Swensen series, and it includes recipes for cookies and other desserts from The Cookie Jar.
After you’ve read the books make sure to catch the Murder, She Baked movies based off of the series, starring Alison Sweeney and Cameron Mathison.
Catering to Nobody
(Goldy Schulz Culinary Mystery Series Book #1)
by Diane Mott Davidson
Goldy is a Colorado caterer trying to keep her business going while raising her son and dealing with a difficult ex-husband. When she agrees to cater a wake, the event takes a sudden turn after her former father-in-law collapses and Goldy’s food is blamed.
The health department shuts down her catering business while the police investigate a possible poisoning. With her income and reputation at risk, Goldy starts looking into what happened herself. She soon uncovers family secrets, old grudges and several people who may have wanted the victim out of the way.
Catering to Nobody is the first book in the Goldy Schulz Culinary Mystery series. It combines a traditional cozy mystery with plenty of cooking and recipes from Goldy’s catering business.
The Diva Runs Out of Thyme
(A Domestic Diva Mystery Series Book #1)
by Krista Davis
Sophie Winston is preparing to compete against her childhood rival, Natasha Smith, in the Stupendous Stuffing Shakedown. Natasha seems to be perfect at everything, including entertaining, and she also happens to be involved with Sophie’s ex-husband. Sophie would really like to beat her at something, even if it is only a Thanksgiving stuffing competition.
Then Sophie finds a man dead, and the police discover her name and photograph inside his car. Suddenly, winning the competition is the least of her problems. Sophie has to figure out who the victim was, why he had information about her and who actually killed him.
The Diva Runs Out of Thyme is the first book in the Domestic Diva Mystery series. Along with the Thanksgiving mystery, the book includes recipes and entertaining ideas.
A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic
by J. Penner
Arleta Starstone is a human baker living in a world where elves, dwarves and other magical beings have a natural advantage in the kitchen. Arleta may not have magic, but she has worked hard to create her own style of baking with herbs and ingredients from the apothecary.
When her orc neighbor secretly enters one of her creations in the Langheim Baking Battle, Arleta earns a place in the competition. Now she has to bake against contestants who can use actual magic while trying to prove that her talent is enough on its own.
A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic is a cozy fantasy with a baking competition, new friendships, a little romance and plenty of food. Recipes for several of the creations from the competition are included at the end of the book.
Love & Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love
by Kim Fay
In the 1960s, twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter and a small packet of saffron to Imogen Fortier, a fifty-nine-year-old food columnist living on Camano Island. Joan is beginning her own career as a food writer in Los Angeles, and the two women quickly discover how much they have to talk about.
What begins as one letter becomes a long-distance friendship. Joan and Imogen exchange recipes, introduce each other to new foods and write honestly about their marriages, work, disappointments and changing lives. Their friendship carries them through personal losses as well as major events happening around them, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy.
Love & Saffron is a short novel told through the women’s letters, with recipes worked naturally into their correspondence. Joan’s daughter, Frida, later appears in Kate & Frida, although both books can be read on their own.
Up to No Gouda
(Grilled Cheese Mysteries Series Book #1)
by Linda Reilly
After the death of her husband, Carly Hale returns to her hometown of Balsam Dell, Vermont, and opens the grilled cheese restaurant she has always wanted. The business is doing well until Lyle Bagley, Carly’s former high school boyfriend, buys the building and tells her she has to leave.
Carly and Lyle have a very public argument. Not long afterward, he is found dead behind her restaurant, and one of Carly’s employees becomes the main suspect. Carly begins investigating because she wants to protect her friend, but she also needs to save the restaurant she has worked so hard to build.
Up to No Gouda is the first book in the Grilled Cheese Mysteries series. The book includes grilled cheese recipes inspired by dishes served at Carly’s restaurant.
Recipes for Love and Murder
by Sally Andrew
Tannie Maria writes a recipe column for a small newspaper in South Africa’s Klein Karoo. When the paper decides it needs an advice column instead, Maria finds a way to combine the two. She answers readers’ problems with recipes chosen to bring a little comfort to whatever they are going through.
One of those letters comes from a woman trapped in an abusive marriage. When the woman is later murdered, Maria and her coworkers cannot leave the case alone. Their questions put them in danger and bring Maria into contact with Detective Henk Kannemeyer, who would really prefer that she stay out of the investigation.
Recipes for Love and Murder is the first Tannie Maria mystery. Recipes for the South African dishes featured in the story are included throughout the book.
The Hindi-Bindi Club
by Monica Pradhan
Kiran, Preity and Rani are Indian-American women who grew up watching their mothers maintain a close friendship through family traditions, shared experiences and plenty of food. The daughters jokingly called their mothers the Hindi-Bindi Club, but as adults, they begin to understand how much that friendship meant.
After a divorce, Kiran returns home and considers allowing her family to help arrange a new marriage. Preity is forced to revisit a relationship her parents never accepted, while Rani struggles with her identity as both an artist and a wife. Each woman has to decide which traditions still belong in her life and which choices need to be her own.
The Hindi-Bindi Club is a story about mothers, daughters, friendship and the experience of growing up between two cultures. Traditional Indian recipes passed down through the author’s family are included throughout the book.
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake
by Amy E. Reichert
Lou owns a small French restaurant in Milwaukee and is working hard to keep it going. On the morning a newspaper critic visits, she discovers her fiancé with another woman. Distracted and devastated, Lou serves one of the worst meals she has ever prepared. Unfortunately, that is the meal critic Al Waters reviews, and his brutal article puts the restaurant’s future in danger.
Lou and Al later meet in a pub without realizing who the other person is. She agrees to show the British newcomer around Milwaukee, introducing him to the city and its food while they slowly become closer. Lou has no idea that Al wrote the review hurting her business, and Al does not know that she owns the restaurant he criticized.
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake is a food-filled enemies-to-lovers romance built around mistaken identities and one very damaging secret. A recipe for Grandma Luella’s coconut cake is included at the end.
The Cookbook Club
by Beth Harbison
Margo joins a cookbook club after her husband leaves her with a rundown farmhouse and no clear idea of what comes next. There she meets Aja, who is hiding an unexpected pregnancy from her boyfriend and his disapproving mother, and Trista, a former lawyer trying to turn a struggling restaurant into a success.
The three women begin cooking their way through favorite cookbooks and quickly become friends. As they share meals, they also start sharing the parts of their lives that are not going according to plan. The club gives each of them a place to belong while they work through problems involving relationships, money, family and starting over.
The Cookbook Club is a light story about female friendship, food and finding a new direction when life changes unexpectedly. The paperback edition includes recipes along with an author interview and reading-group guide.
Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook
by Celia Rees
World War II has ended, and Edith Graham accepts a job helping rebuild schools in occupied Germany. Before she leaves England, her cousin in the Secret Service gives her another assignment. He wants Edith to search for Count Kurt von Stavenow, her former lover and a suspected Nazi war criminal.
Edith uses a fictional cookbook writer named Stella Snelling as her cover. By sending recipes back to England for Stella’s magazine column, she can hide information inside what appears to be ordinary correspondence. The assignment becomes increasingly dangerous as Edith encounters other spies, collaborators and people still willing to protect the Nazis she is trying to find.
Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook is a historical spy novel rather than a light food story. Recipes and menus appear at the beginning of many chapters. Some can be made at home, while others show how people cooked during wartime shortages and the difficult years that followed.
A Bakery in Paris
by Aimie K. Runyan
A Bakery in Paris follows two women from the same family whose lives are connected by a small bakery in Montmartre.
In 1870, Lisette Vigneau leaves her wealthy family behind after meeting Théodore, a revolutionary National Guardsman. As Paris faces invasion, famine and rebellion, Lisette opens a bakery to help feed the struggling neighborhood. In 1946, nineteen-year-old Micheline Chartier is raising her two younger sisters after losing her father and having her mother disappear during the war. A neighbor enrolls her in a baking academy, but Micheline is more interested in finding out what happened to her mother.
This is historical fiction with two timelines, family secrets, romance and a great deal of French baking. Recipes for several of the bakery dishes are included throughout the story.
Whether you want a cozy mystery, a romance or something historical, these books give you a story to read and a few new recipes to try when you’re finished. Just don’t start one on an empty stomach.
Fifty Shades of Chicken: A Parody in a Cookbook
Dripping Thighs, Sticky Chicken Fingers, Vanilla Chicken, Chicken with a Lardon, Bacon-Bound Wings, Spatchcock Chicken, Learning-to-Truss-You Chicken, Holy Hell Wings, Mustard-Spanked Chicken, and more, more, more!
Fifty chicken recipes, each more seductive than the last, in a book that makes every dinner a turn-on.
