Bargain @ $1.99 through December from Open Road Media (couponable @ Kobo, price good in all the standard Canada & US stores, may also be on sale in other regions, etc.):
Rest You Merry by the late Canadian-born Nero Award-winner and Edgar-nominee Charlotte MacLeod (
SYKM,
Wikipedia), who also wrote as Alisa Craig, the festive 1st installment in her Peter & Helen Shandy series starring a pair of academics in Massachussetts, originally published in 1978. Kobo files these under cozy, and Wikipedia claims that MacLeod specifically tailored all her books to be cozies, but YMMV.
On Christmas Day, a University scrooge finds a murdered librarian
Each December, the faculty of Balaclava Agricultural College goes wild with Christmas lights. The entire campus glitters with holiday decorations, save for one dark spot: the home of professor Peter Shandy. But after years of resisting the Illumination festival, Shandy snaps, installing a million-watt display of flashing lights and blaring music perfectly calculated to drive his neighbors mad. The horticulturalist flees town, planning to spend Christmas on a tramp steamer, but soon feels guilty about his prank and returns home to find his Christmas lights extinguished, and a dead librarian in his living room.
Wishing to avoid a scandal, the school’s head asks Shandy to investigate the matter quietly. After all, Christmas is big business, and the town needs the cash infusion provided by the Illumination. As Peter Shandy will soon find, though, there is a dark side to even the whitest of white Christmases.