# Top 12 Cozy Christmas Mystery Novels

> Snowed-in manor houses, village sleuths and a few killers who clearly peaked at the holiday party. Golden Age puzzles sit beside modern cozies, so the argument is as much about tone as plot.

*By YPB Team · Published October 14, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/top-12-cozy-christmas-mystery-novels*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Hercule Poirot's Christmas**
   Agatha Christie's 1938 country-house puzzle in which a tyrannical patriarch is murdered in a locked room on Christmas Eve.
2. **Mystery in White**
   J. Jefferson Farjeon's 1937 tale of train passengers stranded in a snowstorm who take shelter in an eerie empty house.
3. **The Santa Klaus Murder**
   Mavis Doriel Hay's 1936 Golden Age whodunit about a wealthy squire shot at a family Christmas gathering.
4. **The Mistletoe Murder**
   P. D. James's collection of festive crime stories, including a Christmas-week killing in a country house.
5. **A Christmas Journey**
   Anne Perry's Victorian Christmas novella in which a family gathering turns into a mystery.
6. **Murder for Christmas**
   Francis Duncan's 1949 cosy about a Father Christmas stabbed in a country house, featuring amateur sleuth Mordecai Tremaine.
7. **The Twelve Jays of Christmas**
   Donna Andrews's Meg Langslow comedy mystery full of holiday chaos, blue jays and an unwelcome corpse.
8. **Mistletoe Murder**
   Leslie Meier's first Lucy Stone cozy, set in a small Maine town at Christmas.
9. **The Christmas Appeal**
   Janice Hallett's epistolary mystery told in emails and messages around a village charity appeal and a death.
10. **Owl Be Home for Christmas**
   Donna Andrews's festive Meg Langslow mystery, where holiday-season chaos in a small Virginia town turns deadly.
11. **Six Geese A-Slaying**
   Donna Andrews's Meg Langslow Christmas mystery, set among Virginia holiday festivities and an unexpected murder.
12. **A Christmas Secret**
   Anne Perry's Victorian-era Christmas novella, a short seasonal mystery with her trademark period atmosphere.

Tags: christmas, books, crime, mystery, cozy mystery