Thanks to NetGalley.
The Cozy Case Files Samplers are always enjoyable. I find new books by favorite authors and new authors to try. Elizabeth Penney is a new author for me but I liked the sample of her new series Hems & Homicide. Also the offerings by old favorites including Paige Shelton, Vivien Chien, Diane Kelly, and M.C. Beaton were all good reminders to check out these books.

Great sampler in my favorite genre, cozy mysteries. Several of my favorite authors, are included in this sampler, but also authors I have never read before. I strongly recommend this book to see which books you want to read in full.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This fun sampler volume contains a few chapters written by each of the following to whet the appetite:
- Egg Drop Dead, Vivien Chen
- Dead in the Doorway, Diane Kelly
- Hems and Homicide, Elizabeth Penny
- The Stolen Letter, Paige Shelton
- Beating About the Bush, M. C. Beaton

I enjoyed them all but did rank each out of five.

In Egg Drop Dead, which takes place in Cleveland, we follow a story about hostess and her fancy house party which is catered by a restaurant (food sounds good, by the way!)...with disastrous results.

* This was my third favourite...the cliffhanger really made me want to ingest more! Love (hate?) where it left off. 3.5/5

Dead in the Doorway takes place in Nashville and is about real estate and flipping houses. Guess what is found where?

* This was my fourth pick. I really liked the premise and possibilities but found it very clichéd like many cozies. 3/5

Hems and Homicide is set in Maine in an apron shop...but this is no ordinary apron shop!

* Though I enjoyed this, it was my fifth pick. Very cliched and seems too twee and predictable. 3/5

The Stolen Letter is set in Edinburgh, Scotland which is supremely atmospheric which is a reason it was more exciting for me. Scotland drips with history. Two woman have what appears to be a chance meeting...or is it?

* This is my second pick for the reason above plus
the story itself is unique which can be tough in cozies. There are fascinating characters which I'd like to learn more about. Also enjoy the "stolen letter" trope. 4/5

Beating About the Bush is in an entirely different environment and the...find is quite unexpected.

* Beating About the Bush is my favourite from these five...just more polished with better sentence structure, less clichéd and less predictable. The story is unique and gripping...didn't want it to stop! Agatha is not one dimensional as many cozy characters are but has character. 5/5

All in all, cozy mysteries are enjoyable to me but more so the extraordinary, unpredictable, unexpected and unique. Sometimes it seems the cover, character names and locations change but the "meat" of the book is often roughly similar.

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur books for the chance to read these excerpts! And for everyone else, these Cozy Case Files collections are available as free e-books on retail sites too.

This collection contains 5 excerpts, ranging from the first in a new series to the latest installment in MC Beaton's long-running Agatha Raisin series.

EGG DROP DEAD by Vivien Chien was by far my favorite excerpt. I had just read another excerpt from KILLER KUNG PAO in this same series, out of Cozy Case Files #10, and was pleased to find that this seemed similarly light and fun. Also, now I want Chinese food.

DEAD IN THE DOORWAY by Diane Kelly is part of the House-Flipper Mystery series set in Nashville. Our heroine Whitney does all kinds of stuff with houses: carpentry, real estate, and house flipping. This opening excerpt is mostly exposition about the heroine's career and friends, and I wish it had been more woven into the action rather than an infodump at the beginning. We do find the body by the end though, and cut off on a cliffhanger as a mysterious man approaches. The last chapter is from the point of view of Whitney's cat, Sawdust, which is a technique I don't particularly enjoy. He is also much more loyal and doglike than my cats!

HEMS & HOMICIDE is the first in the Apron Shop series by Elizabeth Penney. I had a chance to read an excerpt from the next book THREAD AND DEAD in Cozy Case Files #10 and enjoyed it much more, as it features the heroine established in her business of selling aprons. (I have no idea how this is a money-making business, but that's another story / the joy of fiction!) Here there are all kinds of things to set up, literally -- the heroine is working on opening up a store, and the building she's bought is all old and dusty, and in addition to finding a decades-old skeleton they have to worry about passing code. I enjoyed the other excerpt much more because we got to have all kinds of details about pretty fabrics and intricate decorations, which I like reading about more than dusting out cobwebs and preparing for building inspections.

THE STOLEN LETTER by Paige Shelton is part of the Scottish Bookshop series. I love bookstores as much as the next bookworm, but this one was a little odd to me. There are too many coincidences for my liking -- randomly running into a lookalike, a random political decision that of all the buildings in their area the bookshop has to be condemned. I'm sure we'll see there's some kind of conspiracy, just like I'm sure we'll see that there's some explanation for the mysterious old-timey voices running through our heroine's head, but I'm not sufficiently intrigued to read it for myself.

Finally, BEATING ABOUT THE BUSH by M. C. Beaton is an Agatha Raisin mystery, which is so popular that it is now a TV show. I'm afraid I am completely unfamiliar with it, though, aside from simply having heard the name "Agatha Raisin" before. So I was a bit lost and perhaps more familiar readers are used to how irritable she is! Additionally, the point of view flips back and forth between Agatha and her assistant Toni pretty frequently, without necessarily being marked by scene breaks, and that kind of head-hopping really distracts me as I prefer to be deep in one person's point of view at a time.

Ultimately out of this collection I will probably only read EGG DROP DEAD but I appreciated the chance to sample a few different cozy series!

I received a review copy of this from netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion. If you've never read a cozy mystery before, but are intrigued by what they may be, I suggest you grab this ebook. It contains the first few chapters of 5 different cozies from great authors. First we get to attend a dinner party where food isn't the only thing on the menu in Vivien Chien's Egg Drop Dead. Next we get to check out a great fixer upper with a cold surprise in Diane Kelly's Dead in the Doorway. Then let's head to a new apron shop where threads and fabric aren't the only things you'll find on the walls in Elizabeth Penney's Hems & Homicide. Now we get to go to a quant bookshop over in Scotland that could be closing and there's a mystery involving a woman who thinks she is Mary, Queen of Scots in Paige Shelton's The Stolen Letter. Lastly we get mixed up in espionage with Agatha Raisin in MC Beaton's Beating About the Bush. I've never read any of these authors before, but I do own Vivien Chien's first book Death by Dumping and I've heard wonderful things about the Agatha Raisin series. The only bad thing about this sampler is it makes you want to read more of each book so you have to go and buy them. Or put them on your wishlist like I did lol. I honestly can't wait to read the rest of the books in the sampler and read the other Cozy Case Files Samplers.

I received this Cozy Mystery Sampler from #NetGalley. It is a bit difficult to review a sampler. This sampler includes cozy mystery chapters from Paige Shelton, Diane Kelly, Vivien Chien, Elizabeth Penney, and M. C. Beaton. First up is Vivien Chien- Egg Drop Dead, a Noodle Shop Mystery. Lana Lee of the Ho-Lee Noodle House is trying her hand at catering but finds herself in the middle of a murder. This book came out 2/25/2020. Diane Kelly- Dead in the Doorway is a House Flipper Mystery with Whitney and Sawdust her cat. This book came out 3/31/2020. We are introduced to Elizabeth Penney's new The Apron Shop series in Hems & Homicide. Set in Blueberry Cove Maine Iris Buckley is excited to open her new shop but not excited about the bones of previous visitor. In Paige Shelton's The Stolen Letter, Delaney Nichols is back in the Scottish Bookshop series and The Cracked Spine is in danger of closing. This latest installment came out 4/7/2020. And finally M. C. Beaton returns with Beating About the Bush featuring Agatha Raisin a favorite cozy mystery sleuth. A great sampler for cozy fans.

What a wonderful idea! I loved this sampler of the first few chapters of five different cozy mysteries. It introduced me to four authors I had not yet met and updated me on the most recent exploits of the famous Agatha Raisin.

I enjoyed the diversity of setting and characters, and each one of the samples was just the right length. I finished each one wanting more. Links to purchase the books and information about each author and their series were helpful and appreciated.

This would be a wonderful book to display on the mystery shelves at a library, or to offer as a giveaway on Amazon or other sites.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed reading some of these cute short mystery stories. My favorites were...Egg Drop Diva, Murder in the Doorway, although I wouldn’t mind also reading a few more chapters of Hems and Homicide and The Stolen Letter. These stories were pretty good and I was bit sad when my except was finished. Thanks for making this booklet and giving me books to add to my TBR pile.

I was given this book by NetGalley for an honest review -
This book is stories from various authors - - you will visit a dinner party with deadly consequences, a real estate market you might die for - then to an apron shop, a journey across the pond and a case of espionage. These are cozy mysteries to enjoy
This is just a few chapters of each book - so you may not want to purchase

I love reading the Cozy Case Mystery Files samplers offered by Macmillan publishing. It’s a great way to sample novels. I’ve read one of the four full featured novels and can’t wait to delve deeper into the other four. I like the variety and getting exposed to authors I haven’t read and catching up on books by authors I have read.

I loved this sampler collection it was a really fun way to sample a few new authors. I love a cute cozy. These are not super in-depth because a true cozy is a short story but they are very entertaining and I highly suggest them if you’re looking for some light fun reading.

I received this book collection from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press and Minotaur Books for an Honest review.
#CozyCaseFilesACozyMysterySamplerVolume8
#NetGalley

I really enjoyed all of these cozy mystery samples. I especially enjoyed The Stolen Letter by Paige Shelton. I look forward to getting some of these to read them in full.

5 stars.

I loved the samplers featured in this collection. So many fresh new stories I will now pick up.

I highly recommend this if you’re looking for a new read.

Want to try a new author or are new to cozy mysteries. This book is a way to get an introduction to them.
It provides a few chapters of several books to see if it's something you want to read.
These are not the whole book.

These cozy case files give you a taste of several cozy mystery series. This would be a great idea to include on library shelves so that patrons can see which books spark their interest enough for them to check them out at the library. Some of these are new to me authors whose mysteries I have not heard of so I definitely would recommend reading this to anyone who wants a sample of works by authors they have not read before.

A great way to try out different cozy mysteries. I'm still on the fence about a few but now I know what to read next.

I received a complimentary review copy of the Cozy Case Files, A Cozy Mystery Sampler, Volume 8 from NetGalley.

This sampler includes extended previews of 5 novels. I really enjoyed being able to preview enough of the book to know whether I'd be interested enough to read the whole thing. Each excerpt starts with a page showing the book cover, and a page with the book description, and the publication date is listed on the copyright pages.

In these crazy times where we’re staying home as much as possible, this was a wonderful introduction to some cozy mystery books and authors, some of whom I haven’t read books by previously. I enjoyed all of the samples and now have some new books and series to read!

Engrossing collection of murder mysteries from some of the top names in the genre.
I loved the food in Egg Drop Dead and the cat point on view in Dead in the Doorway. Agatha Raisin is back in wicked form as a Private Investigator in Beating About the Bush as causing as much trouble as usual.

If you're looking for a new cozy author to read or waiting for the next book in your favorite series, this is a great book. It gives you a few chapters of 5 different cozies, just enough to pull you in. I've added all 5 to my TBR list.

I received a free e-copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review.