Threads of Stories
Knitting and Quilting in Fiction
Knitting by Anne Bartlett
A chance meeting sparks a friendship between two very different women who share a fascination with knitting. Sandra, a rigid academic, struggles to navigate the world without her husband, whom she recently lost to cancer. Martha, a self-taught textile artist with her own secret store of grief, spends her days knitting elaborate projects with personal meaning. As the two women collaborate on a new project, surprising events will help heal them both.
A Single Thread by Marie Bostwick
It's a long way from Fort Worth, Texas, to New Bern, Connecticut, yet it only takes a day in the charming Yankee town to make Evelyn Dixon realize she's found her new home. The abrupt end of her marriage was Evelyn's wake-up call to get busy chasing her dream of opening a quilt shop. Finding a storefront is easy enough; starting a new life isn't. Little does Evelyn imagine it will bring a trio like Abigail Burgess, her niece Liza, and Margot Matthews through her door.
Casting Spells by Barbara Bretton
Sugar Maple looks like any Vermont town, but it's inhabited with warlocks, sprites, vampires, witches—and an ancient secret. And Chloe Hobbs, owner of Sticks & String, a popular knitting shop, has a big secret too. She's a sorcerer's daughter in search of Mr. Right—and she's found him in Luke MacKenzie, a cop investigating Sugar Maple's very first murder. Bad news is he's human, which could spell disaster for a normal future with a paranormal woman like her.
The Quilter's Apprentice by Jennifer Chiaverini
Sarah and Matt McClure have just moved to Waterford, Pa. While Matt finds work in landscaping, Sarah wants to try something new. With no leads or offers, she is depressed and frustrated. When elderly Sylvia Compson asks Sarah to help prepare her family estate for sale, Sarah finds new friends, and Sylvia, agrees to teach Sarah how to quilt. Sarah's new relationship inspires an exchange of confidences; she learns about Sylvia's "family skeletons" while facing her own difficult relationship with her mother. The Elm Creek Quilts series continues with Round Robin.
Alice’s Tulips by Sandra Dallas
Alice Bullock is a young newlywed whose husband, Charlie, has just joined the Union Army, leaving her on his Iowa farm with only his formidable mother for company. Alice writes lively letters to her sister filled with accounts of local quilting bees, the rigors of farm life, and the customs of smalltown America. But no town is too small for intrigue and treachery, and when Alice finds herself accused of murder, she discovers her own hidden strengths.
Casting Off by Nicole Dickson
On a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland, the fishermen's handmade sweaters tell a story. Each is unique—feelings stitched into rows, memories into patterns. Rebecca Moray has come to research a book on Irish knitting. With her daughter, Rowan, she hopes to lose herself in the history of the island and forget her painful past. And it is here that young Rowan befriends Sean Morahan, a cantankerous old fisherman, despite his attempts to scare her off. As Rebecca watches her daughter interact with Morahan, she recognizes in his eyes a look that speaks of a dark knowledge not unlike her own.
The Knitting Circle by Anne Hood
After the sudden loss of her only child, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle in Providence, Rhode Island, as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days. The women welcome her, teaching Mary new knitting techniques and, as they do, revealing their own personal stories of loss, love, and hope. Eventually Mary is able to tell her own story of grief and in so doing reclaims her love for her husband, faces the hard truths about her relationship with her mother, and finds the spark of life again.
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
Juggling the demands of her yarn shop and single-handedly raising a teenage daughter has made Georgia Walker grateful for her Friday Night Knitting Club. Her friends are happy to escape their lives too, even for just a few hours. But when Georgia's ex suddenly reappears, demanding a role in heir daughter's life, her whole world is shattered. Luckily, Georgia's friends are there, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they've created isn't just a knitting club: it's a sisterhood. Also try Knit Two and Knit the Season.
The Shop on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber
There's a little shop on Blossom Street in Seattle called A Good Yarn, which sells knitting supplies and patterns—and now it's offering a knitting class. The first lesson: how to knit a baby blanket. Four lives are knit together when Lydia, the shop’s owner and cancer survivor meets Jacqueline, a middle aged woman in an unhappy marriage who doesn’t like her daughter-in-law, Carol, who’s having a final attempt at in-vitro fertilization, and Alix, who is learning to knit her blanket for her court-ordered community service. The Blossom Street series continues with A Good Yarn.
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil
When her husband dies in a car crash, Jo Mackenzie packs up her two rowdy boys and moves from London to a dilapidated villa in her seaside hometown. There, she takes over her beloved Gran's knitting shop-a quaint but out-of-date store in need of a facelift. After a rough start, Jo soon finds comfort in a "Stitch and Bitch" group; a collection of quirky, lively women who share their stories, and their addiction to cake, with warmth and humor. The women meet every week at the shop on Beach Street and trade gossip and advice as freely as they do a new stitch. But when a new man enters Jo's life, and an A-list actress moves into the local mansion, the knitting club has even more trouble confining the conversation to knit one, purl two.
How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto
Imaginative in concept and execution, Otto's remarkable first novel is designed with deliberate analogies to quilt-making; like the scraps of fabric that make up a quilt, a series of neat vignettes cumulatively reveal the lives of eight members of a woman's sewing group in a small California town, in portraits that include their families and neighbors. Moreover, each chapter is followed by a short set of “instructions,” which provide lucid explanations of the histories, designs and techniques of various quilt patterns that reflect and symbolize the conditions of the characters' lives.
Wedding Ring by Emilie Richards
Needing time to contemplate her troubled marriage, Tessa MacRae agrees to spend the summer helping her mother and grandmother clean out the family home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. But the three women have never been close. But, with the gift of time, Tessa's eyes are opened, and she begins to see her mother and grandmother for the flawed but courageous women they are. As she restores a vintage wedding-ring quilt pieced by her grandmother and quilted by her mother, the secrets that have shadowed their lives unfold at last. The Shenandoah Album series continues with Endless Chain.
The Healing Quilt by Loraine Snelling
When Dot decides to raise money for a new mammogram machine by auctioning a quilt made by local women, she ends up enlisting some ladies who appear to be quite different from one another for the job. However, they find that they share a quiet suffering triggered by painful circumstances. Their struggles will bring them closer together than they ever could have anticipated, and their lives will be dramatically changed, as together they experience the curative powers of The Healing Quilt.
* There are also several knitting & quilting mystery novel series; look for authors Monica Ferris, Earlene Fowler, Clare O’Donohue, and Maggie Sefton; also see Christie Ridgeway in the Romance area.