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Recommended Reading

Lonely, restless, and bored with her life as a housewife in 1950s Pine Rapids, Wisconsin, Dolly Magnuson becomes fascinated by the abandoned grand old house on the hill overlooking the town and sets out to unravel the dark secrets of the family that had once owned it.

Moving from Fort Worth, Texas to New Bern, Connecticut to open a quilt shop begins a new life for Evelyn Dixon, bringing unexpected connections with a trio of women who come to the shop for quilting classes.

Escaping an abusive marriage, Ivy Peterman takes her kids and settles in historic New Bern, Connecticut and finds a job working part time in a quilt shop, but when a popular quilting TV show is taped at the store, Ivy’s finds her life in jeopardy after her ex-husband sees her on television.

Meeting weekly with the fellow members of her knitting circle, Massachusetts knitting-shop owner Maggie Messina is wrongfully suspected in the murder of a rival, a situation for which her loyal friends band together to prove Maggie’s innocence.

Interweaving historical fact with fiction, this novel explores the mystery and personal stories behind the creation of the remarkable Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, woven at the end of the fifteenth century, which today hang in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

A couple of surprise openings at the artists’ retreat familiarly known as Elm Creek Quilts brings a host of intriguing candidates.

Scrapbooking shop owner Carmela Bertard is in the middle of making place settings when she stumbles upon a pattern for murder.

In the wake of hurricane Katrina, scrapbooking shop owner Carmela Bertrand struggles to put her business and her relationship with her ex-husband Shamus back together, a goal undermined by the kidnapping of Shamus from their home.

When city girl Rita marries local boy Tom and they move back to the farm, Queenie Bean goes out of her way to welcome them. She also encourages Rita to become part of the local quilting group, known as the Persian Pickle Club, so called because it refers to a particular paisley fabric owned by member Ceres Root. Rita, however, underestimates the importance of the Pickle Club, and in her haste to make a name for herself as a reporter, tries to solve the mysterious death of Ella Crook’s husband, Ben. She discovers the members’ lives are as tightly stitched together as their quilts. Readers may also enjoy heartwarming novels by Fannie Flagg, Camilla Bittle, and Connie May Fowler’s Sugar Cage.

Rebecca Moray comes to an Irish island with her daughter Rowan to research a book on knitting and forget a haunted past, only to meet Sean Morahan, a crabby old fisherman, who she befriends, soon seeing that he too is haunted.

When her husband dies, leaving her broke and evicted, Sydney Webster, getting no sympathy from her angry daughter, takes shelter at a college friend’s B&B in Cedar Key, Florida where she is embraced by a community filled with love, laughter, friendship—and knitting.

Part-time sleuth and needlework shop owner Betsy Devonshire works to clear murder suspect Leona Cunningham and find the real killer after the victim was last seen blaming the peaceful Wiccan and microbrewery owner for a series of local “accidents.”

Needlework shop owner and amateur sleuth Betsy Devonshire becomes embroiled in a dangerous and all-too personal case when her friend Godwin is arrested for the murder of his significant other, John, after a nasty quarrel.

After raising more than $20,000 for charity, the members of the Embroiderers Guild are furious when a representative of the charity vanishes with the check, but with Betsy confined with a broken leg, it falls to her store manager, Godwin, to handle the investigation.

While preparing for two upcoming weddings, California folk art authority Benni Harper suddenly finds herself involved in a decades-old, unsolved murder and dealing with a personal crisis of the heart.

When her boss, Constance Sinclair, insists that she investigate the death of a local socialite, Benni Harper’s search for a killer is threatened by plans to put her quilting museum on the map and a visit from her daunting mother-in-law and “surprise” new husband.

When Angie Archer, her unpopular upstairs tenant, turns up drowned in the harbor, Isabel “Izzy” Chambers, owner of a knitting shop in the village of Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, and her friends, the Seaside Knitters, investigate the suspicious death.

The Seaside Knitters discover surprising secrets about Willow, a fiber artist who wants to showcase her work, and local gallery owner Aiden Peabody when she becomes the prime suspect in his murder.

Enrolling in a scrapbooking class in the hopes of redeeming himself from his history of dreadful gifts to his wife, Sam Gardner inadvertently raises his wife suspicions with his marked absences and finds himself involved in a series of unfortunate mishaps.

Grieving over the sudden loss of her only child, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle in Providence, Rhode Island, whose members not only teach her a variety of knitting techniques but also valuable lessons about friendship, love, and redemption.

Clay Sizemore, a coal miner in love, searches his family history for clues about who he is, uncovering a dramatic story woven into the fabric of his uncle’s quilts.

Five years after the death of her mother, Dakota is running their knitting store part time with the help of members of the “Friday Night Knitting Club,” each of who is seeking solace in their friendship from their own challenges in life.

Dakota Walker—along with her father, her grandparents, and her mother’s best friend, Catherine—visits her Gran for the Christmas holidays in Scotland, where the family members reminisce about Dakota’s mother, Georgia.

Five years after the death of her mother, Dakota is running their knitting store part time with the help of members of the “Friday Night Knitting Club,” each of who is seeking solace in their friendship from their own challenges in life.

A volume of seventeenth-century embroidery patterns that also contains faint diary entries brings together the lives of two women of different eras—Cat Tregenna, kidnapped by Muslim pirates in 1625, and Julia Lovat, a modern-day woman out to authenticate Cat’s story.

When knitting shop owner Ariadne Evans stumbles upon the body of a temperamental customer in her store, she is plunged into the investigation of the crime.

Three twentysomething women in Los Angeles deal with relationships and family, with their weekly Sunday knitting circle as the only thing holding them together.

When Susannah, the owner of a new flower store, and her employee, a young widow named Colette Blake, join the knitting class at A Good Yarn, they meet a group of unforgettable women who offer them life-changing advice, support, and friendship.

Four women going through difficult periods in their lives form a powerful bond of friendship when they meet at a knitting class held at A Good Yarn, a quaint yarn store in downtown Seattle.

Moving to Los Angeles in 1901 to start her life anew, Nell Plat marries and begins a career as a costumer to the stars, but when a visitor from her past comes calling, everything she has worked so hard to achieve for her future is jeopardized.

The death of her beloved grandfather forces bookstore owner Sylvia Lynn to return to her childhood home in upstate New York to confront the grandmother who had raised her, and the nearby woods that had both enticed and terrified her.

Suddenly widowed by a car crash that ended the life of her unfaithful husband, Jo moves to a small seaside community and takes over her grandmother’s knitting shop, where she is introduced to a dessert-addicted knitting club.

Sophie Mae and her detective boyfriend Barr investigate the murder of an artist found strangled with Sophie’s first homemade skein of yarn.

Her date with the local police chief cancelled because of a murder, quilter Nell Fitzgerald signs up for art classes with a famous local professor who becomes smitten with Nell’s grandmother, a situation that turns menacing in the wake of a second murder. By the author of The Lover’s Knot.

The art of quiltmaking becomes a metaphor for being a woman in America, as the stories of members of a quilting group are interwoven with traditional quilting instructions.

Take five knitters, put them in a book club, expand it to include Hannah, a rebellious teen, and you’ve got this agreeable “yarn”. All five women harbor secrets that Hannah’s presence in the group will prompt them to reveal. A sweet story of redemption that will go down well with knitters as well as the knitting-challenged.

The local church ladies society and their eligible daughters decide to make a quilt for the new circuit-riding preacher and try to outdo one another to gain the attention of the young minister, whose endearing mistakes may not cover up his deception.

When local minister Sam Kinkade’s plans to welcome the area’s growing Hispanic community to the church are met with resistance, he asks Elisa Martinez for guidance, and together they make things work with the help of a special group of women.

Surviving a physical assault from which she recovers by leaning on Kelly and her knitting-circle buddies, Jennifer decides to take a retreat at a mountain ranch with her friends and is shocked when the ranch owner turns out to be her attacker.

When an alpaca sheep rancher with a reputation as a unrepentant playboy turns up dead in Bellevue Canyon, ardent knitter and occasional sleuth Kelly Flynn launches a personal investigation into the murder.

Finding a killer becomes a quest for Kelly Flynn when she returns to Colorado from Washington, D.C., to uncover the truth about the death of her beloved Aunt Helen, turning to the knitting regulars at the House of Lambspun for a few lessons in knitting and in capturing a murderer.

Kitzi Camden, a retired stateswoman who has taken up beading as a hobby, is forced to turn sleuth when talented beader May Feather turns up dead during a beading retreat at Camp Green Clover and Kitzi embarks on a search for an elusive killer.