The holidays aren't all sugar cookies and silent nights. Sometimes you need a little murder with your mistletoe.
Maybe you're the person who secretly watches true crime documentaries while everyone else is watching It's a Wonderful Life. Or maybe you just need a break from all that relentless cheer, and nothing says "me time" quite like a locked-room mystery set during a snowstorm. Regardless of your motivation, you've arrived at the ideal destination.
I've spent weeks hunting down the coziest, most deliciously dark holiday mysteries and thrillers that'll keep you turning pages well past midnight. These aren't your average Christmas reads. In fact, some of them are more on the dark side rather than cozy. Buried secrets at family gatherings, suspicious deaths in manor houses, and detectives who solve crimes while everyone else is singing carols are the norm, but just to shake it up, I've thrown in a good, old-fashioned demon possession just to keep you up at night.
The beauty of a holiday mystery? You get all the atmospheric charm—crackling fires, snow-covered landscapes, twinkling lights—with just enough danger to make your pulse quicken. It's comfort and chaos wrapped up in one perfectly twisted package.
So find your coziest reading spot, and let's talk about ten holiday mysteries and thrillers that'll make this season delightfully murderous. Trust me, these books are precisely what you need when family gatherings start feeling a little too familiar.
12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas by Natasha Bache (2025)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: If you’ve ever sat through a tense holiday meal thinking, “If one more relative says one more thing…,” this book is for you. 12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas throws you into Olivia’s personal version of festive hell: two long weeks trapped in her husband’s obscenely wealthy, catastrophically awful family’s country mansion, just before she finally escapes them for a new life in Australia. The snow is piling up outside, the decorations are picture-perfect, and inside? The vibes are homicidal. When a family member turns up dead, then another, and another, it becomes gloriously clear that someone has decided that this year will be the last Christmas for more than the turkey.
Bache leans hard into everything you secretly love in a holiday thriller: a stately house cut off by a snowstorm, a toxic tangle of grudges and greed, a suspiciously convenient change to the will, and a cast of relatives so appalling you start mentally handing out motives and weapons. It’s sharply funny, properly dark, and just unhinged enough to feel like a wickedly cathartic antidote to all those cozy, cinnamon-scented Christmas stories.
If you’ve ever wanted a holiday read that lets you laugh, gasp, and feel wildly grateful for your own imperfect family, 12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas deserves a prime spot on your December TBR.
A Christmas Vanishing by Anne Perry (2023)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: If you love your holiday stories with a pinch of mystery and just enough melancholy to make the cocoa taste richer, A Christmas Vanishing delivers beautifully. Anne Perry, ever the queen of Victorian intrigue, brings us a tale of friendship, faith, and secrets in the soft glow of the Christmas season. When octogenarian Mariah Ellison—yes, that formidable grandmother from Perry’s Monk series—discovers one of her dearest friends has disappeared, she won’t let polite society or icy roads stop her from finding the truth. What begins as a seasonal visit turns into something much deeper: a reckoning with age, regret, and second chances. Perry’s prose glimmers like lamplight on snow—steady, graceful, and filled with quiet compassion. It’s the kind of short novel you curl up with on a long winter night and close with a sigh of satisfaction.
My Darling Girl by Jennifer McMahon (2023)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: If you’ve ever braced yourself for one last visit with a parent who never quite learned how to love you right, My Darling Girl will hit you straight in the gut—and then keep twisting. Jennifer McMahon takes the familiar haunted-house chill and ties it to something far more personal: a daughter caring for her dying, alcoholic mother during Christmas. Only... that’s not all that’s dying. Shadows whisper, doors creak, and the boundary between grief and the supernatural begins to blur in ways that will have you scrutinizing every corner of every room. It’s a slow, sinister unraveling of love, faith, and what it means to forgive someone who might not be human anymore. Think holiday lights, family secrets, and a creeping dread that doesn’t let go.
Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson (2021)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: It’s Christmas in a small Australian town, and Benjamin Stevenson is here to remind us that nobody does messy family gatherings quite like the holidays. Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret feels like Agatha Christie crashed a dysfunctional family reunion—then handed out cocktails and confessions. The story unfolds during a traditional Christmas get-together gone spectacularly wrong, when old grudges, buried scandals, and one very inconvenient truth start bubbling up faster than the gravy. Stevenson, ever the master of twisty humor and heart-stopping reveals, keeps you teetering between laughter and suspense. It’s cozy in setting but deliciously chaotic in spirit—the kind of book that makes you think twice about who’s sitting across from you at Christmas dinner.
A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny (2007)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: If small towns could talk, Three Pines would whisper secrets you’d never forget. In A Fatal Grace, Louise Penny brings us back to this snow-dusted Quebec village just in time for a murder that shatters the cheer of Christmas. When the notoriously unlikable CC de Poitiers is electrocuted at a curling match—yes, a curling match—Chief Inspector Armand Gamache quietly takes the case. What follows is vintage Penny: a blend of warmth, wit, and moral depth that turns a murder mystery into something closer to a meditation on grace, kindness, and the choices that define us. Between the comforting smell of coffee at the bistro and the creeping chill of suspicion, you’ll find yourself unwilling to leave Three Pines—even when the case is solved.
The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson (2023)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: If you love your holiday reads with a dash of murder alongside the mistletoe, The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson is your kind of festive escape. It begins innocently enough—an English countryside holiday, crackling fires, and a young American spending Christmas with a charming British family. But something feels off beneath the carols and candlelight. Secrets simmer. Smiles don’t quite reach the eyes. And before the holiday’s over, someone won’t be singing “Silent Night” ever again.
Swanson turns the cozy mystery on its head here, wrapping dread in tinsel and tension in taffeta. It’s short, sharp, and satisfyingly sinister—the kind of story that makes you side-eye your eggnog and stay up way too late turning pages. This book isn’t your grandmother’s Christmas story, but she’d probably love it too.
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter (2024)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: Imagine being invited to spend Christmas at the home of the most renowned mystery writer in the world. She lives in a gorgeous English manor decorated for Christmas, surrounded by twinkling lights and holiday cheer. Sounds perfect, right? Except she suddenly goes missing.
Enter Maggie Chase, a woman who knows her way around a crime scene (she writes bestselling cozy mystery novels, after all). When a real-life body drops during the festivities, she teams up with Ethan Wyatt, a not-so-cozy bestselling crime writer who happens to be the one man Maggie has spent years trying to avoid.
Now they're solving a possible murder together while the snow keeps falling and tensions keep rising. It's a locked-room mystery meets second-chance romance, wrapped up in holiday magic and Carter's signature wit. Think "Knives Out" vibes but with mistletoe, unresolved feelings, and that delicious "will-they-won't-they" energy.
Trust me—this isn't your typical cozy Christmas read. Bah, humbug! I hate romances and cozy mysteries. But this one is sharper, funnier, and impossible to put down.
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie (1960)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: There’s something deliciously comforting about curling up with Agatha Christie at Christmastime, isn’t there? The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding is that perfect blend of murder, mischief, and mistletoe that only Christie could serve up. Hercule Poirot, the world’s most fastidious detective, finds himself lured to an old English manor under the pretense of holiday cheer, only to sniff out a far frostier mystery beneath the tinsel. Between stolen jewels, secret identities, and a pudding that hides more than candied fruit, every twist feels like unwrapping another layer of festive intrigue. It’s vintage Christie—cozy yet wicked, charming yet cunning—and it’ll make you want to pour another cup of tea and keep guessing long past dessert.
The Christmas Train by David Baldacci (2002)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: Sometimes a book hits that perfect sweet spot between cozy holiday escape and unexpected emotional depth—and The Christmas Train does exactly that. On the surface, it’s the story of Tom Langdon, a jaded journalist making a cross-country rail trip at Christmastime. But underneath the witty dialogue and gentle romance is a tender love letter to the golden age of train travel. Baldacci doesn’t just describe the journey—he brings it to life, from the rhythm of the tracks to the quirky, heartwarming cast of passengers who could only exist on a train bound for adventure.
I loved how the story made me feel like I was right there in the dining car, sipping coffee while snowy fields blurred past the glass. The history and charm of train travel add such richness to the trip that you can almost smell the steam and feel the hum of nostalgia. By the time you reach the last stop, you realize it’s not just a Christmas story—it’s a reminder that sometimes the journey is the destination.
The Dead of Winter by Sarah Clegg (2024)
What Makes This Festive Whodunit Sparkle: You think you know Christmas? Think again. Sarah Clegg's The Dead of Winter is going to flip everything you thought was cozy about the holiday season straight on its head—and here's the kicker: this book isn't fiction. It is real folklore, the stuff that kept our ancestors huddled by the fire, whispering stories that made their skin crawl.
Clegg takes you deep into the dark, twisted origins of Christmas traditions we now consider cheerful. We're talking ancient winter solstice rituals, vengeful spirits wandering through frozen nights, and the genuinely terrifying figures that inspired jolly old St. Nick. Remember those creepy Krampus legends? They're just the tip of the iceberg. This book unearths the ghosts, demons, and supernatural terrors that haunted midwinter celebrations long before anyone hung a stocking or sang a carol.
What makes this book brilliant is how Clegg connects these bone-chilling traditions to the holiday we celebrate today. You'll never look at mistletoe, holly, or even Christmas dinner the same way again. It's deliciously frightening, meticulously researched, and absolutely unputdownable—perfect for anyone who loves their Christmas with a side of shivers.
There you have it—ten twisted, atmospheric, absolutely unputdownable mysteries to help you through the holiday season. Whether you're hiding from houseguests or just craving something darker than gingerbread, these books deliver all the seasonal charm with a side of satisfying suspense.
But maybe you're not always in the mood for murder. Maybe sometimes you want books that make you think rather than books that make you gasp. Maybe you are ready for stories that explore what the holidays really mean when you strip away all the commercial tinsel and forced cheerfulness.
If that sounds like you, stick around. My next post dives into something completely different: literary fiction that'll give you all the holiday feels without the usual fluff. We're talking beautifully written, emotionally complex stories perfect for thoughtful readers who want more than candy-cane romance and predictable happy endings.
The final installment of this holiday series is entitled Beyond the Tinsel: Literary Fiction for Thoughtful Holidays, and it is waiting for those who are ready to trade the body count for something a little more contemplative. Your winter reading list is about to get seriously excellent.
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