Robert W. Chambers wrote a bunch of novels about rich upper-crust New York “society” people – young and rich and often alcoholic – which are delightfully cozy. In their day, they were often illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson, creator of “The Gibson Girl.” Syrupy romance books, but with quite a nice touch of class.
I also always end up coming back to Dickens. “Bleak House” is, I think, cozy in this sense.
I read a LOT of science fiction, and would consider Jack Vance a somewhat cozy writer. His “Demon Prince” series (five books) and “Tschai” series (four books) are absolute gems. They’re space-opera action adventure, but the drama is strangely softened, the angst curtailed. There is a faint overlay of dream-reality to them, and they could, in fairness, be called “science fantasy.”
Looking through some of the books I’ve read recently, I’d nominate:
The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
Potash & Perlmutter: Their Copartnership, by Montague Glass
Seconded, but under no circumstances should you binge-read them. Every story is exactly the same which is part of the charm, but after four or five of them, take a break or you will start to get annoyed by the characters.
An obscure cozy book which I think is only available in dead tree version is Linda Haldeman’s Esbe: A Winter’s Tale. Heartwarming, but with a plot and actual conflict.
The whole #1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. They are only nominally mysteries. The series is really about the main character and her family and friends and their struggles to be good people. Precious Ramotswe is one of my favorite people in literature.
I don’t know that this’ll count, but it’s getting me through the stress: A Blade of Black Steel, the sequel to A Crown for Cold Silver. They’re brutal, nasty fantasy with a gaggle of antiheroes at the core–but they’re also hilarious. An example set-piece from the second chapter of the second book:
[spoiler]An abandoned hero wakes up 50’ up in a tree to discover a deadly asp slithering across his face. He stays still except to look around him, and the movement of his eye attracts the snake, who apparently mistakes his eye for an egg and slithers up to try to eat it.
He’s saved only by a shaking in the tree that scares off the snake. The shaking continues, and a rain of snakes falls around him. He looks down to see some sort of ape-man climbing the tree toward him, snarling. Out of options, he leaps feet-first from his perch onto the ape-man, but the ape-man skedaddles, and instead the hero falls 50’ to land face-first on a rock and die.
Except really he just belly-flopped in a stinking swamp, snakes pattering all around him. Bruised and bedraggled he gets up to discover 20 ape-men around him, who chirp and pantomime “What’s your name?” Thinking he’ll be worshiped as a god, he points at himself and says, “Maroto, yeah.”
They all mimic him, including the one he chased off, who starts jacking off saying “Maroto yeah!” They all laugh and shake their butts at him before beating him down, then picking him up, hustling him across their land and into a cave and out an opening where they swing him off a cliff and into the ocean.
Things don’t get much better from there.[/spoiler]
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer. I think there’s more real book to this than its reputation as a cozy lets on.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. It definitely has sadness, but overall sweet and charming.
For people who will read YA novels, My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger is great, it’s like an upbeat view of high school, where people are mostly nice and everyone wants everything to be better. It really is completely unrealistic, but you cheer for all of the characters because they are so nice. (Recommended especially for fans of musical theater)
Non-fiction, but I thought it was just adorably winsome, The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal which is essentially this woman finds an old diary, kept by a young woman in the late 1920s, early 1930s, and it’s this great glimpse into the past (so some bad and some good) and then she goes out and finds the actual writer of the diary, obviously an elderly woman at the time this was published.
Yes, another vote for Benson’s Mapp & Lucia books. They’re old standbys for me. I needed something cozy last week but was too tired to read, so I crawled into bed and watched the wonderful 2014 version of the series that was streaming on PBS.
I’m also comforted by Nancy Mitford’s witty yet cozy novels.
Try Monica Dickens’ One Pair of Hands for something cozy and funny.
The Semi-Attached Couple and The Semi-Attached House by Emily Eden are nice escapes. Anything by EM Delafield. . . . I also like The Little Ottleys by Ada Leverson.
I used to read Colette for a French version of cozy escape, too.
Rosamund Pilcher is my go-to author, starting with her later works, The Shellseekers through Winter Solstice, my favourite. Another good one is Marcia Willett. All of these are set in the UK, from Cornwall to Scotland, so it probably helps if you’re an anglophile.
An Irish Country Doctor series, by Patrick Taylor. Nothing bad happens, everything in the village turns out just fine at the end. It is best to read them chronologically, and be aware that Taylor has two series running. One about Dr. Barry, and one about the early life of his boss.
