Books like “The Kamogawa Food Detectives”

What to read after “The Kamogawa Food Detectives” by Hisashi Kashiwai: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Shelby Van Pelt · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read” and “Melancholic”
- Comfort Read
- Melancholic
Tova Sullivan cleans the local aquarium at night and talks to Marcellus, a clever giant Pacific octopus. When Marcellus works out the answer to a loss that has haunted her for years, a drifting young man arrives in town, and three quiet lives slowly knit together.
2
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith · 1998
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read”
- Comfort Read
Precious Ramotswe opens Botswana's first detective agency for ladies, working from a small office in Gaborone. With patience and common sense she takes on a cheating husband, a missing father and a con man, and begins to find her own place in the world.
3
Still Life
Louise Penny · 2005
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read”
- Comfort Read
In the village of Three Pines, the body of a well-liked woman is found in the woods with an arrow through her heart. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is drawn into a community where old friendships and hidden resentments make almost everyone a suspect.
4
The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read”
- Comfort Read
Four friends in a retirement village meet weekly to look over unsolved crimes, until a murder happens on their doorstep. As the bodies add up, they use a lifetime's worth of skill and nosiness to work the case the police cannot close.
5
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
M. C. Beaton · 1992
Similar atmosphere: “Whimsical”
- Whimsical
Publicity agent Agatha Raisin retires early to a Cotswold village and enters a baking contest to win over her new neighbours. When a judge dies after eating her quiche, she must clear her name by finding the real killer, whether the village likes it or not.
6
The Marlow Murder Club
Robert Thorogood · 2021
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read”
- Comfort Read
When Judith Potts hears a shot while swimming in the Thames near her home, the police see nothing strange. She teams up with a dog walker and a vicar's wife to investigate, and the three amateur sleuths begin to uncover the town's secrets.
7
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read” and “Melancholic”
- Comfort Read
- Melancholic
In a small Tokyo cafe, one seat lets a visitor travel to the past. There are rules: you cannot change the present, you must not leave the seat, and you must return before the coffee goes cold. Four customers sit down, each hoping to say what was left unsaid.
8
Then She Was Gone
Lisa Jewell · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Melancholic”
- Melancholic
Ten years after her teenage daughter disappeared, a mother learns what happened and tries to rebuild her life. Meeting a new partner and his young daughter, she is unsettled by small resemblances to her lost child, which reopen the case.
9
The Last Unicorn
Peter S. Beagle · 1968
Similar atmosphere: “Whimsical” and “Melancholic”
- Whimsical
- Melancholic
A unicorn learns she may be the last of her kind and leaves her forest to search for the others. With a bumbling magician and a sharp-tongued woman she travels to a king's castle, where love and loss wait at the end of the road.
10
The Princess Bride
William Goldman · 1973
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read” and “Whimsical”
- Comfort Read
- Whimsical
Buttercup and farm boy Westley are parted when he sails away to make his fortune and is reported killed by pirates, and she is promised to a prince she does not love. A swordsman, a giant and a scheming noble chase the pair across a kingdom of pirates and wonders, in a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale of true love.
11
The Enchanted April
Elizabeth von Arnim · 1922
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read” and “Whimsical”
- Comfort Read
- Whimsical
Four British women, strangers to one another, answer an advertisement to rent an Italian castle for April. Away from husbands and habit, each is quietly changed by the sun, the sea and the company of the others, and returns to her old life seeing it anew.
12
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman · 2012
Similar atmosphere: “Comfort Read” and “Melancholic”
- Comfort Read
- Melancholic
Ove is a grumpy widower who has decided there is nothing left for him, until a noisy young family moves in next door and keeps interrupting his plans. Piece by piece, the neighbourhood draws him back into a life he thought was over.