Sarah Beth Durst has written over thirty books from her corner of Stony Brook, New York — epic fantasy for adults, sharp novels for teens, adventures for children — but you most likely know her from The Spellshop, the 2024 cottagecore fantasy that became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and helped set off the whole cosy-fantasy wave we keep pressing on people.
Long before the spellshop she was quietly collecting the genre's better trophies: a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for her YA novel Vessel, an ALA Alex Award for The Queen of Blood, and three Andre Norton finalist nods across Into the Wild, Ice and Vessel. So when she turned to low stakes and slow-burn romance, she did it with a craftsperson's hand.
If you're wondering where to start, it's The Spellshop — and the happy news is that the Spellshop books are loosely linked standalones, so you can read any one on its own or follow them in publication order for the cameos and callbacks.
On our shelves
Island LifeCottagecore
The Spellshop
A shy librarian rescues a trove of forbidden spellbooks and retreats to her late parents' island cottage, where she quietly turns magic into jam and slowly lets people back in. Bees, blossom, a chatty sentient houseplant, and the warm ache of learning to belong somewhere. Read it when you want gardens, neighbours and a fresh start.
Where to start
Start with The Spellshop. It's the series opener and her breakout bestseller, and the purest dose of her cosy voice: low stakes, a sweet slow-burn romance, found family and cottagecore comfort. It sets up the world before the standalone sequels and asks nothing of you beforehand.
Sarah Beth Durst’s books
A rogue librarian flees a revolution with her best friend — a sentient spider plant — and quietly reopens a spellshop in her sleepy seaside hometown, selling jams alongside forbidden spells. The book that set the whole shelf alight.
On our shelves →
Spellshop number two, a standalone in the same world. Terlu wakes from a spell on a near-deserted island of hundreds of magical greenhouses and sets about reviving them with their reclusive caretaker.
Spellshop number three takes to the high seas: a sailor and a musician finding love and company in a changing world. Another standalone in the same gentle universe.
The forthcoming fourth Spellshop standalone. A former assistant librarian comes home to her grandmother's island cheese shop after the empire falls, and learns to run the magical emporium — a cosy romance about coming home and finding your purpose.
A standalone YA cosy fantasy: a teenage girl spends the summer helping her eccentric great-aunt run a run-down Vermont inn, only to find the B&B and its guests are hiding a magical secret.
The darker end of her shelf, and an Alex Award winner. The opening of the adult Queens of Renthia series: a young woman trains to control the deadly nature spirits that both guard and threaten her forest kingdom. Higher stakes, not a cosy read.
A standalone adult epic fantasy in which a band of middle-aged heroes reunites twenty-five years after defeating a bone-magic villain, when the signs suggest he may have returned. Bigger stakes, and not a cosy one.
Good questions
They're loosely connected standalones, so each one reads perfectly well on its own. For the cameos, callbacks and easter eggs in their intended sequence, read in publication order: The Spellshop (2024), The Enchanted Greenhouse (2025), Sea of Charms (2026), then The Magical Cheese Emporium (2027).
Both, really. It opens the Spellshop series, but the books are self-contained standalones set in one shared world — you can begin and end with The Spellshop quite happily.
Her Spellshop titles lean sweet and slow-burn rather than steamy — comfort romance built on found family and cottagecore warmth, not heat.
Sea of Charms is the third Spellshop standalone, a cosy fantasy on the high seas, arriving in 2026. The fourth, The Magical Cheese Emporium, follows in 2027.
If you love the low-stakes, cottagecore comfort of The Spellshop, browse our Cosy Corner — it's where we keep the warm, gentle fantasies cut from the same cloth.
Over thirty, spread across adult epic fantasy (The Bone Maker, Race the Sands), YA (Drink Slay Love, Ice) and middle grade (Into the Wild) — the cosy turn is a recent and very welcome chapter.
The Cosy Corner →Will Hug You →Whimsy & Folklore → ← All authors Browse every book →