Book recommendations With a Focus on Cozy

 I was asked about books I had read an liked in the last few years that I could recommend.  After thinking about it for a bit and reviewing my queue and closest bookshelf and mentally eliminating the programming and management books, this is my short list.  It's got a focus on cozy, not conflict, and a lot of strong female lead characters in many of them, including the general "anything by T. Kingfisher".

• The Dungeon Book (As Told by Cornelius the Skull) by Gareth Hanrahan - my most recent I was reading on the way to Denver and back.  Good humor  Great primary characters.  I think if you like Pratchett, this book would scratch an itch.
• When the Moon Hits Your Eye by Scalzi - a nonsense premise he handles with various perspectives
• Legends and Lattes, Bookshops and Bonedust, Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldress - a great series, although I liked the first two better than the last one.  About the family you construct organically, not the one you're born with
• Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - I put this here not because it has a strong female lead (it has many) and not because it's cozy (it is in a way, but not like the others....it's cozy in the way eight 700+ page books give you a sense of continuity and familiarity), but because I have to cop to liking it enough it's taken up 5000+ pages of my reading in the last two years.  My wife and kid have read them as well, along with half the people I know at work.
• Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz - robot cozy, a really fun short read.
• Anima Rising by Christopher Moore - warning, some themes that put people off, but I enjoyed this more than some of his other recent books and he really leans into the main character/s.
• Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove - a fast, fun read about monsters in space.  Loved this one and someone at work thanked me at our recent offsite for recommending it on the internal book slack.
• The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman - heavier than the others.  King Arthur and company and the clash of cultures in Britain.  I posted a photo of a church I thought captured the intersection of Christianity and Druidry and Lev gave it a like, so maybe I'm biased.
• The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler - this one is deeper and goes into the philosophy of what it means to be intelligent.
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones - ok, not cozy at all.  This is the only scary one I'm putting on the list because he's a great writer and this was a true number of steps above most scary books I read.
• Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson - I can't imagine anyone not liking this one.
• The Rivers of London Series by Ben Aaronovitch - a bit of Harry Potter meets London cop.  Although a warning, the action isn't as gangbusters as Harry Potter. If you're going to London, a perfect series to read before you go  (or on the tube, like I was for one of them).  Also recommended by my wife.
• The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister - more of a folktale than a horror tale.
• The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty - I hear it has a sequel.  When I say strong female leads, this one is all in.  A very impressive main character.
• Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson - I liked this better than Yumi, and that's a source of debate with at least one friend.  But this is truly a cozy, female led, organic family book.  I've read The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger about how writing that arc differs from a hero's journey, and this is textbook.
• Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi - he's got a new book out as well this week I'm looking forward to.  Short, fun, also read by my wife and kid.
• Pretty much anything by T. Kingfisher, and I mean that.  She's a masterful storyteller in the fable style and gothic style depending on the book.  Reading one of her books right now that I'm liking so much I didn't realize it was #2 in a series.  Going to have to remedy that (Swordheart series, only two long).
• Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - e.g. pretty much anything by Becky Chambers, also about organic families

Anything else?  I'd recommend Whalefall and Project Hail Mary, but in the case of the latter, you can catch a very good movie version.  I hear the movie version of Whalefall isn't as good as the book, so I'm unlikely to catch the movie as I don't want to override the book in my head.

I read some scary one-off novels and LGBTQIA+ themed books (but also scary - that subgenre really understands body horror).  A number of graphic novels (truly hit or miss, even with good ratings).  And as a staple: Pratchett, Moore, various programming and management nonfiction.

I really blew through Stephen King's Fairy Tale as an alternate reality tale.  R.F. Kuang's Poppy Wars series is exciting and she leans into some parallels to WW2.  So was Babel.  I haven't read Yellowface yet, although it's on my shelf.

And I read some others like Sanderson's Stormlight series (huge) which I really liked (one left to go...was waiting for it to be more readily available as a paperback or a library book with a less than 2 week turnaround), but is probably only for tastes that run toward epic fantasy (like Wheel of Time, Game of Thrones, or the Lord of the Rings).