Best Cozy Fantasy Books to Start With

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, shamed for his parentage. When the emperor and his other sons are killed in an airship crash, Maia is suddenly the Emperor of the Elflands—and must navigate a court he knows nothing about, with no allies and a dozen enemies waiting for him to fail.

Linus Baker is a by-the-book caseworker sent to evaluate a peculiar orphanage on a remote island housing the most dangerous magical children alive — including the possible Antichrist. What he finds there will challenge everything he thought he knew about magic, duty, and love.

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, he makes careful observations: the House is beautiful, its rooms full of marvels. He is not afraid—though sometimes he wonders if he should be.

After decades of bloodshed, veteran orc mercenary Viv hangs up her sword and opens the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. But not everyone welcomes change — and building something new from scratch is harder than any dungeon she has cleared.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins stumbles across a book in his university library that contains a story from his own childhood. He follows a series of clues leading him to a subterranean world beneath a hotel—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, and assassins. A timeless love story set in an underground sea of story.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Two young magicians are trained from childhood to compete against each other in an arena they cannot choose to leave—a mysterious black-and-white circus that becomes an obsession for all who encounter it.

Young Tristran Thorn promises his heart's desire—the beautiful Victoria—that he will retrieve a fallen star from beyond the Wall that separates their village from the enchanted kingdom of Faerie. What he finds is not a lump of rock but a young woman named Yvaine, who is not at all pleased to be captured.

According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, the world will end on a Saturday. An angel and a demon who have been on Earth since The Beginning must work together to avert Armageddon—but they rather like the world as it is.

Georgia Peach Award Nominee • Florida Teens Read Award Nominee • ABC Best Books for Young Readers • Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year • A Junior Library Guild Selection • Hugo & Locus award finalist In Other Lands is an exhilarating novel from bestselling author Sarah Rees Brennan about surviving four years in the most unusual of schools - friendship, falling in love, diplomacy, and finding your own place in the world — even if it means giving up your phone. Excerpt: The Borderlands aren’t like anywhere else. Don’t try to smuggle a phone or any other piece of technology over the wall that marks the Border — unless you enjoy a fireworks display in your backpack. (Ballpoint pens are okay.) There are elves, harpies, and — best of all as far as Elliot is concerned — mermaids. "What’s your name?" "Serene." "Serena?" Elliot asked. "Serene," said Serene. "My full name is Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle." Elliot’s mouth fell open. "That is badass." Elliot? Who’s Elliot? Elliot is thirteen years old. He’s smart and just a tiny bit obnoxious. Sometimes more than a tiny bit. When his class goes on a field trip and he can see a wall that no one else can see, he is given the chance to go to school in the Borderlands. It turns out that on the other side of the wall, classes involve a lot more weaponry and fitness training and fewer mermaids than he expected. On the other hand, there’s Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elven warrior who is more beautiful than anyone Elliot has ever seen, and then there’s her human friend Luke: sunny, blond, and annoyingly likeable. There are lots of interesting books. There’s even the chance Elliot might be able to change the world. Chapter illustrations by Casey Nowak.

A NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND INDIE BESTSELLER One of Buzzfeed's "Best Books of 2022"! An Indie Next Pick! A Locus Awards Top Ten Finalist for Fantasy Novel A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place in Under the Whispering Door, a delightful queer love story from TJ Klune, author of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The House in the Cerulean Sea. Welcome to Charon's Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through. When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead. But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A sparkling debut fantasy with Celtic tones set on the magical isle of Cadence where two childhood enemies must team up to discover why girls are going missing from their clan. Enchantments run deep on the magical Isle of Cadence. The capricious spirits that live there find mirth in the lives of the humans who call the land home, but that mischief turns to malevolence as girls begin to go missing. Adaira, heiress of the east, knows the spirits only answer to a bard's music, enticing them to return the missing girls. But there's only one bard capable of drawing the spirits forth by song: her childhood enemy, Jack Tamerlaine. He hasn't stepped foot on Cadence in ten long years, content to study music at the Mainland university. But as Jack and Adaira reluctantly work together it becomes apparent the trouble with the spirits is far more sinister than first thought and an older, darker secret lurks beneath the surface, threatening to undo them all. 'An alluring and rich tale, at once a fast-paced mystery and a love story as warm as a hearth' Ava Reid, bestselling author of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Angrboda's story begins where most legends end: with a punishment. Odin burns her three times and she keeps coming back. She retreats to the farthest edge of the world, where she meets Loki and begins a family. But fate has a way of catching up, even with a witch who has been forgotten by the gods.

"In the early 1900s, a curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town to study faerie folklore, where she discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love. Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on dryadology, the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--much less get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog Shadow, and the Fair Folk to that of friends or lovers. So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hransvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: the dashing and insufferably handsome Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of her research, and utterly confound and frustrate Emily. But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart"--

El Higgins is at a school full of monsters—and she's not talking about the students. The Scholomance has no teachers, no library, and no dining hall. It just has students, trying to learn enough magic to survive before monsters kill them. El has been assigned to the most dangerous room, and the only student willing to help her is the one she hates most.

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always felt he was meant for another world. When a mythic city appears out of nowhere and a band of legendary warriors arrives to recruit people for a rescue mission, Lazlo must decide how far to follow his dreams.

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year. Vasilisa loves the long winters and the bright cold of the forest, where she is at home among the spirits of the wood. When a priest arrives preaching that the old ways are evil, her family must choose between new faith and old magic—with deadly consequences.

Miryem is the daughter of moneylenders, but her father's inability to collect debts has left the family starving. When she takes matters into her own hands and gains a reputation for turning silver into gold, a magical debt-collector shows up—and she is forced to make good on her boast or be taken into his frozen domain forever.

Agnieszka loves her valley home. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and her people rely on the cold wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its influence at bay. Every ten years he takes a girl from the valley as his apprentice—and this year, he chooses Agnieszka.