7 Small Coastal Town Murder Mysteries You'll Devour

Though cozy mystery writer Bree Baker lives about as far from the seashore as you can get—in Kent, Ohio—she lovingly evokes the world of the North Carolina coast in her Seaside Café series.

Set in the town of Charm, which, despite the odd killing or six, merrily lives up to its name, the books feature amateur sleuth, top-class cook, and café owner, Everly Swan.

In this, the fourth in the series, Everly’s bee-keeping aunts are being filmed for a documentary, but the arrival of the film crew brings unwanted attention to Charm. And that multiplies like a swarm round the queen when a visiting Hollywood star winds up dead.

Filled with lovable characters and complete with mouth-watering recipes from Everly’s kitchen, A Call for Kelp is a toothsome delight.

Number three in O’Leary’s entertaining Cat Noir series sees our feline hero Aubrey, his best pal Vincent, and the Goodman family settling into a new home in a quaint English seaside town.

It’s all fun and games and fishing in rock pools for the two cats until an old lady dies in Lilac Lodge, the home for the elderly in which Molly Goodman works.

And it turns out not to be the only crime that’s going on amongst the old folk. There’s been a series of thefts, too.

When the chef also goes missing, Aubrey and Vincent (with a bit of help from their human friend Carlos) determine to find out who is behind it all.

Filled with twists and turns, this a warm-hearted cozy mystery with an entertaining ‘cats-eye’ view of crime.

Cleland’s 14-book Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries series gets off to a flying start in this cozy tale of death and silver polish.

Our heroine has found herself unwittingly caught up in a scandal at the prestigious New York City auction house she’s working at. To escape from the finger-pointing, she relocates to the New Hampshire seaside town of Rocky Point.

Josie is determined to restore her reputation—and maybe a few 18th century dining tables along the way. Naturally, things don’t work out that happily.

A big local collector is slain, and with Josie’s fingerprints all over the house and rumors of her shady past hanging over her like a storm cloud, the local police chief picks her for the murderer.

Josie has no choice—she has to find the real killer before the authorities lock her up.

The 13th book in Cleland’s charming series finds the now married and successful Josie living in her dream home, The Gingerbread House, on a rugged piece of coastline near Rocky Point.

Life seems to be perfect, but then Josie finds an old trunk in the attic that must have belonged to the previous owner, an old lady with memory loss who now lives in a nearby care facility.

When our amateur sleuth goes to return the trunk, she finds the old lady missing—and a fresh corpse lying on the carpet.

There’s nothing else for it, Josie will have to set aside the search for Shaker chairs and Tiffany lamps and find out what on earth is going on.

The fifth of the esteemed British mystery writer’s acclaimed Rachel Savernake series is set in the aptly named Hemlock Bay, a town on the English coast favoured by the rich, the glamorous, and the homicidal.

Beautiful society girl Savernake is in Hemlock Bay because a psychic has told her it’s going to be the scene of a killing. Louis Carson is there because he intends to make that prediction come true.

Sharply written and atmospheric, Edward’s masterly tale has a plot that twists and turns like a sand eel.

The second book in Hall’s popular cozy mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Faith Fairchild sees our heroine attending an estate auction on Maine’s Sanpere Island.

Faith buys herself a patchwork quilt handmade by deceased local, the misanthropic Matilda Prescott. It soon becomes apparent that this is no simple bedspread, but a detailed map.

Anyone who can decipher it will find hidden family treasure. That, at least is the theory.

But when Faith follows the clues, she doesn’t find a pot of gold, but a body floating in the kelp of a tidal pool.

Unravelling the mystery of who it is and how it got there will see Faith tangled up in a web of family secrets and deadly deceit.

This is the first in Trauth’s quirky series featuring Dodie O’Dell, an amateur sleuth who makes a living running a cafe in the sleepy Jersey Shore town of Etonville.

When money starts disappearing from the box office of the local theatre during a production of Romeo and Juliet, Dodie is called in to investigate. The missing cash turns out to be just the start.

Soon lead actor Jerome Angleton is found lying dead on the loading dock.

It seems a tidal wave of felonies is about to engulf the little seaside resort, and there’s only one person who can turn it back—Dodie O’Neil.