Bookshops, Bakeries and Snowed-In Inns: The Coziest Winter Settings in Holiday Fiction

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Christmas mysteries and snowbound winter thrillers feature image

Some winter books are less about the plot than the place. A bookshop with a radiator that clanks. A bakery window steamed over at 6am. An inn where the road has just closed and nobody is leaving until the snowplough comes. If that's the feeling you're after this December, start with the setting and let the story follow.

Here are the coziest settings in holiday fiction, with one honest note on each so you know whether you're getting kisses, heat or a body in the snow.

Bookshops

The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan. A laid-off department-store worker moves in with her picture-perfect sister in Edinburgh and tries to rescue a dusty old bookshop over one festive season. Gentle romance, closed door.

The Mistletoe Motive by Chloe Liese. Rival bookshop clerks bet their jobs on December sales, not knowing they're also anonymous online pen pals. A You've Got Mail riff, only 179 pages, with a little open-door heat.

Bakeries

The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox. Identical twins trade places before Christmas, and one lands in the family bakery in a snowy mountain town. A light romp, closed door.

Mangos and Mistletoe by Adriana Herrera (F/F). Two Dominican bakers are paired for a holiday baking competition in Scotland. A short novella with Bake Off energy and open-door heat.

Spicy or Sweet by Sophie Snow (F/F). A local baker and a new patisserie owner are forced to share a kitchen for a Christmas movie shoot. Rivals to lovers, explicit.

Inns, lodges and grand hotels

Snowed In for Christmas by Sarah Morgan. Mistaken for the CEO's girlfriend and snowed in at a family lodge in the Scottish Highlands. Kisses and fireside warmth.

Murder at Mistletoe Manor by F.L. Everett. Twelve strangers snowed into a hotel four days before Christmas, and a body in a four-poster bed. A cozy whodunit, not a romance.

The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose. A 128-page Christmas return to Molly the maid and the Regency Grand Hotel, where a Secret Santa sets off a small mystery.

And one kitchen

Blackmail and Bibingka by Mia P. Manansala. A Filipino-American family cozy mystery in the run-up to Christmas, with a Winter Bash, Simbang Gabi masses and a cousin accused of murder. The gentlest crime on the list, and it comes with recipes.

Every book here is labelled by heat, holiday, length and content notes in the Holiday Reading & Book Gift Guide at Lesbian Romance Reads. Browse the cozy Christmas romance list, the Christmas mysteries and snowbound thrillers, or the novellas you can finish tonight, or start at the hub.

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