The rat race has begun! For many, the menorah is lit. Or the tree is decorated. The lights are hung. The list is complete. (Until they add to it again.) The shopping has started—on and off-line. The weather is cooperating. Sorta. And the parties are out of control! But all you want to do is relax. So here’s a few cozies to help you do just that. Enjoy! HARK THE HERALD ANGELS SLAY by Vicki Delany A Year-Round Christmas Mystery #3 The town of Rudolph, New York, is gearing up to celebrate Christmas in July. Merry Wilkinson, owner of Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, is looking forward to a busy weekend starting with the arrival of Santa by boat to begin his summer vacation at the lake. But Merry is caught off guard when her ex-fiancé, Max Folger, unexpectedly arrives with a team from a lifestyle magazine wanting to do a feature on the July festivities. It’s clear that Max’s visit has less to do with business and more to do with winning back Merry’s heart. Between the magazine feature and the Christmas events, Merry has too much on her plate to deal with an old flame. But when Max is found…

Every writer is also a reader. I mean, if we didn’t love books, we wouldn’t spend our time trying to create more, right? So, I read fast and I read constantly. But, strangely, I find my choices are affected by the seasons. Spring is the time for something new and strange. Summer is the time for high-flying suspense and the dramatic thriller. Fall, though, is the time to get back to the classics. Collins. Dickens. Christie. Sayers. DuMaurier. Josephine Tey. Wait. Who? Josephine Tey. Quite possibly the best mystery writer nobody ever heard of. Tey was a pseudonym for Elizabeth MacKintosh. She wrote during the great heyday of English mystery, from the mid-1920s to the early 1950s. A playwright as well as an author, her output of mysteries was small, just seven books. But Oh! Those books! I discovered Tey in the back of Aunt Agatha’s bookshop, which is where I go when I want to find, well, anything mystery or crime fiction related. I picked up THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR, at random, and didn’t put it down. THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR a stand-alone English village murder mystery. It’s written in a clean, comfortable, infinitely, entertaining style that still comes across as…