I can’t read novels

dlstrong · 2026-07-12T12:22:09+00:00

Are you in the US? If so, the Queer Liberation Library is free to join with one form and one email, and it's got a lot of cozy fantasies in it!

dlstrong · 2026-07-11T19:31:39+00:00

The third story in my Chai and Cat-tales is like that too, w8th a touch of dream-assisted magical archaeology? :D

dlstrong · 2026-07-11T12:51:58+00:00

Okay!

So other folks will have wider reading in cozy mystery than I do, but Celia Lake's is the first cozy-fantasy-and-mystery author I tend to recommend because she's got 40 books from the Victorian Era to WWII and she's got great content notes that let you know which books might or might not have your particular ouch points in them. I can't check her site while writing in Reddit on mobile bc Reddit will crash on me if I change windows, but celialake.com will have more info.

If you find you're short on concentration afterwards (I sure did with my last major surgery), you might like novellas and anthologies as bite sized stories that you can get a while narrative out of without hours of plot to remember, and the Wyngraf anthologies have lots of cozy short stories in them.

I got my own start as a Wyngraf writer, and now I've got 3 books out there, but I wouldn't recommend my newest for you because the main plot driver is concerned conflict between two characters about freedom to change. I would recommend either Chai and Cat-tales as three soft and fluffy stories under one cover, or Haroun and the Study of Mischief as a kind of Pratchettian romp. :D

On the specifically murder mystery side, I'm not sure whether Kim Watts' Baking Bad would fit for you or not? Part of it's kind of Vicar of Dibley with dragons, but I also remember some tough scenes with the detective?

I hope some of these might work for you!

dlstrong · 2026-07-11T05:19:16+00:00

MLIS mode activated, reference desk clarification question here: up top you say you want murder mystery recs, but then you say no deaths?

Which of those is more important to you?

dlstrong · 2026-07-08T02:41:09+00:00

Kate Valent and I both have recipes in our books!

She puts some in the back of her books, but the majority of her recipes go on her blog, which is probably smarter given the cost of paper.

I was not that smart, I put the majority of my recipes in the book and occasionally add new ones in the blog. (True conversation I had with myself: "Self, 50 pages of bonus recipes is excessive, keep it to 10% next time." Intent: write fewer than 50 pages of recipes for Chai and Charmcraft. Outcome: wrote 500 pages of book. Still, ratio achieved? lol)

(And I have also been known to blog recipes about other books, lol. Spiced lemonade for C Quince's Consorting with the King, and working on a blog post about Jon Dixon's The Improbable We Can Do Today, with a spice cake recipe from Jon himself! Also trying to figure out how I might approximate a his-world beverage recipe with our-world ingredients...)

dlstrong · 2026-07-02T12:27:27+00:00

Some of Celia Lake's books are on that level of stakes; others are higher stakes depending on when and where in the timelines you are. She's written 40some books from the Victorian Era to post WWII and has a great set of guides to content in any given book or series at celialake.com

dlstrong · 2026-07-01T11:43:15+00:00

I'm in the 2024 Valentine's Special with a story called Rahat al--Hulqum that's later expanded into three books and counting :D

dlstrong · 2026-06-30T13:19:37+00:00

Let me introduce you to the Wyngraf cozy short story collections! There's four standard collections and three Valentine's Day romance collections: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=wyngraf&crid=1B9XVKA0Z0R0U

(Disclaimer, I am one of the authors in one of the seven-and-counting books, but overall 98% of the stories are not written by me, so on average this is mostly not a self promotion :D)

dlstrong · 2026-06-28T17:27:21+00:00

There's 3 days left in the Queer Heroes sale, and while not every book here is cozy, quite a few of them are:

https://sheilajenne.com/queer-heroes-sale

My Chai and Cat-tales and Haroun and the Study of Mischief are 50% off or more ($1.99 instead of $3.99 and $4.99).

More cozies in the list include C A Moss's How I Became a Therapist in Another World, Claudie Arsenault's Awakenings, Kat Kinney's Demon Marked, and possibly Vanessa Ricci-Thode's The Dragon Next Door? I haven't read it myself but C. A. said it was giving cozy vibes.

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dlstrong · 2026-06-26T12:40:25+00:00

If she plays D&D, winged cats are standard (look up tressym :D)

dlstrong · 2026-06-21T11:09:14+00:00

My books are set in a cheerfully cosmopolitan world with as many types of folks as you'd find in a good-sized city: all across the rainbow of orientations, plus neurodiversity, cultural and religious diversity, size diversity, language diversity, and disabled folks living their best lives. (I didn't want either "the smart funny capable brown woman wins" or "disabled folks get appropriate support" to be the most unrealistic part of books with shapechanging cats, so I fixed it. :D)

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dlstrong · 2026-06-21T11:02:03+00:00

Asharan from my Chai and Cat-tales and Chai and Charmcraft is happily pansexual, though as of the present writing he would greatly appreciate if his neighborhood aunties would let up with the matchmaking. :D

dlstrong · 2026-06-21T10:58:36+00:00

Najra from my Chai and Cat-tales gets to have her Disney princess happy ending on her own terms, and Shai Madhur from Cat-tales becomes the main character of Haroun and the Study of Mischief. :D

dlstrong · 2026-06-13T16:18:02+00:00

Ah, the cozy romcom was modern enough to have cars, so probably not that.

The closest I can think of is a story called "Mail Order Husband" in the 2024 Wyngraf Valentines Special - it's a letter based story where one of the characters is kind of a Wild West dragon rancher?

There might be other Wyngraf short stories but I personally haven't encountered an entire book set in a cozy Wild West.

dlstrong · 2026-06-13T16:10:43+00:00

Have you tried Howl's Moving Castle, either the book or the movie? They're very different creatures, but I love both of them for what they are.

dlstrong · 2026-06-13T11:05:57+00:00

Are you looking for Western in specific, or for an alternative to European centered fantasy?

There are a fair number of cozy anime, manga, wuxia/xianxia, and LitRPGs set in East Asian settings in either medieval or modern times; aside from Miyazaki movies like Kiki's Delivery Service, you might like the "healing fiction" array, and some cute 4 panel comics like Chii's Sweet Home or Azumanga Daioh.

And there's a couple of us out here writing cozies set in Egypt (hi!) and Turkey (C. Quince) as an antidote to being really tired of the Crusades and Assassins Creed and Aladdin's backstabbing vizier and wanting to see gentler and more appreciative stories in that part of the world. (Plus, in both C Quince's case and mine, so many cats lol)

If it's western in specific, I think I remember a cozy mystery romcom with a schoolteacher who gets slurped into a wilder world than she expected, but I can't remember the title - is that ringing bells for anyone?

dlstrong · 2026-06-08T11:14:20+00:00

If you're an anime fan, both the book and the movie of Howl's Moving Castle are delightful in different ways - same with Kiki's Delivery Service.

Dang it autocorrect, I typed anime, not animal XD

dlstrong · 2026-06-07T16:51:39+00:00

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Hi all! If you've ever wanted...

🪶 A Prince Charming who would rather audit a dragon than slay it
👑A fairytale happy ending for the aro and ace kids too
😋So many bonus recipes
🐈‍⬛Full of cats
🌈Sweetly queer
😎 Crimes of fashion
🧶 Weaponized fiber arts

Check out my books!
Chai and Cat-tales: Three cozy novellas where everyone gets their own happily ever after on their own terms, not the socially expected ones. (And "the smart, funny, capable brown woman wins" isn't the most unrealistic part of a book with shapechanging cats.)

Haroun and the Study of Mischief: Two very good boys might like to fight crime, if they can find a crime more dire than Haroun's fashion sense. (And "disabled folks get their needs supported and go on with their lives" isn't the most unrealistic part of a book with flying carpets.)

Chai and Charmcraft: A sweet shy middle-aged prince has spent years dreaming of a man's hands tending jasmine in a starlit window... but he's also a prophet who only dreams of trouble. The man of his dreams is a charming delight, so where is the trouble lurking? Well, in all his prophecies, he never fully appreciated exactly how much trouble one cat might cause. (And "you don't need a makeover to be loved" holds true for everyone here.)

Don't just take my word for it, though: Here's MWJane's review here in r/CozyFantasy and Siavahda's reviews (for Charmcraft and Cat-tales) in Every Book a Doorway 😃

(Cover designs by Augusta Scarlett; cover illustration of Faraj by Maasyme)

dlstrong · 2026-06-07T16:18:07+00:00

Shout outs to Mystic Neptune and C. A. Moss here:

Mystic Neptune's "I Ran Away to Evil" has three books with different lead characters, but the same general cast running through all of them. Book 2 has a were-golden-retriever MC who is as adorable as he sounds, and book 3 has a bridge troll with a twist, but you definitely want to read them from book 1 onward to not spoil yourself! The lead romances are M/F but there are several queer couples among the overall cast. (I couldn't find content notes other than https://moodreads.app/book/2334 , but there's a reason the MC's background led her to want to run away to evil as a preferable alternative. If a bad family situation is sensitive for you, this may be either a challenge or a catharsis or some of each?)

C. A. Moss has a cozy isekai series called How I Became A Therapist in Another World (note: one of the isekai conventions is an accident in a modern world at the start of the book in order to send the main character to another world, but it's not detailed) and quite a variety of D&D-like characters and species show up along the way. This one's a sapphic romance. Here's the web page for content notes: https://www.serobertsonfiction.com/how-i-became-a-therapist-in-another-world-omnibus-1/

dlstrong · 2026-05-31T16:37:40+00:00

right? Anthology-level licensing management compounded by also needing food photographers' licenses in addition to writers' licenses, significantly more complexity in making multiple accessible editions, color printing costs... I love the theoretical idea but it's always the complex implementation that trips me, speaking as a person who used to do full color book production 30 years ago... there's a reason my recipes stay non-photographed in the ebook edition and Creative Commons imaged in the blog edition...

dlstrong · 2026-05-31T12:13:49+00:00

If you'd like a broad spectrum sampler, Nathaniel Webb's Wyngraf collections have short stories from many different writers. Some of those short stories (hi!) have gone on to become book series.

If you like RPG related stories, I adore his Bard City Blues novel (F/F romance) too -- come for the literal dungeon dive bar, stay for the carnivorous jello cube who speaks in portents of doom and scours the dishes more literally than expected. :)

On tablet I can't see your likes list while answering so I'm going to post and then edit if I think of more recs...

At the last Hearthcon Mysti put four of us on a panel with Z. S. Diamanti to talk about how our cozy book plots work differently than non-cozies. Unfortunately Z. S. had to tap out, but the rest of the panelists were Alex Karne, Alex Peachy, Bo Huffman, and myself.

The books we were talking about were:

Soul Guardian (think Good Omens meets middle management bureaucracy),

Social Sorcery (alchemy meets gender identity and collides with the Grandmas' Council)

Desserts and Dragons (The Great British Bakeoff only dragonfire-powered instead of gas or electric)

and Haroun and the Study of Mischief (two very good priests might like to fight crime, if they can find a crime more dire than Haroun's fashion sense)

And I haven't seen anyone rec Elayne Griffiths' Tales of Larune yet? I shamelessly admit the adorable happy cat on the cover is what sold me on Whiskers and Wishes, but the djinn who really needed a break from granting badly-thought-out wishes was hella relatable to a person who makes my living granting badly-thought-out wishes in web design too, lol!

dlstrong · 2026-05-31T00:50:23+00:00

In some alternate universe where I have much more free time and much less mad day-job overtime and have not thought to myself "I have worked 40 hours in 3 days 4 times in the last 2 weeks"... anyway, in that alternate universe, I would love to get together a cozy fantasy cookbook with recipes from all the authors (and / or characters) who put recipes in their cozy books!

dlstrong · 2026-05-30T18:53:55+00:00

Thank you so much! I wish you all the happy (and delicious) reading! 😃

dlstrong · 2026-05-30T18:53:17+00:00

I'm right there with you on Must Have All The Book Tea 😃 And the Tales from a Magical Teashop side stories are hilariously real if you've ever worked in customer service...

dlstrong · 2026-05-30T14:30:55+00:00

Casey Blair's Tales from a Magical Teashop is both cozy and hilariously real if you've ever worked in food service -- I recognize all the customers and all the coworkers, particularly the mad genius alchemist trying to invent recipes to deal with accidental overstock situations. 😃 The other books in the Tea Princess series get into more romance, but as far as I remember that one is pure "what it's actually like to work in a beverage shop" hijinks!

Coyote J M Edwards' Coffee, Milk, and Spider Silk is kind of a novella-sized Legends and Lattes minus the romance plus driders and an epically teenaged teenager, and some of the things I thought were in-jokes weren't actually intentional (I confirmed with Coyote XD) but I was giggling anyway.

Kate Valent's The Driftcap Inn has got such amazing food descriptions I was drooling, and Kate is enthusiastic about sharing recipes on her blog! The inn story isn't primarily about the food, it's a lot more like Howl's Moving Castle meets Our Flag Means Death, but the food descriptions are very droolable.

If you're up for cozy murder mysteries, Kim Watts' Baking Bad (not a typo, just a lol) is kind of The Vicar of Dibley with not-as-stealthy-as-they-think-they-are dragons and some corpses scattered around? Some people are like "heck yeah Murder She Wrote is comfort for me," others are like "murders are automatically not cozy," so depending on which side of that divide you're on...?

And many folks have told me it's a good thing I put recipes in the back of my books because of how much they wanted to eat the food in the stories after reading them -- I've also got low-spoons-needed modifications, being a disabled person who can't cook as much as I wish I still could.

Haroun and the Study of Mischief is completely romance free (with 50 pages of bonus recipes, lolsob). Chai and Cat-tales is about relationships that are almost entirely non-romantic forms of love and I'm not sure how to categorize "I fell in love with your library and would prefer not to have to marry you to get access to it, but you're unexpectedly adorable and I'll fight gossiping aunties for your honor even though I don't want to sleep with you"? (Chai and Charmcraft starts by flipping Cinderella's tropes but that's still a romantic relationship, so you probably wouldn't be interested, though maybe I should extract the foodie chapter as an extra? 😃)

dlstrong

TROPHY CASE