I agree that they work to some extent as comfort literature - perhaps more accurately, given so much of the subject matter, they are so immersive that I'm immediately taken away from whatever's troubling me and thoroughly absorbed in Janet's life.

My hardbacks have some wonderful covers, particularly Sashie. I have a paperback cover of Misses Kindness with a romantic novel style cover that doesn't really capture anything of the contents of a really well-structured and clever novel. Not that I have anything against romance-reading, but I bet you'd never see anything by e.g. Jonathan Franzen reprinted in a ghettoizing cover, on account of his books about the everyday doings of ordinary folk count as Lit-ret-chur.

Did you manage to track down the book you were missing?