NEEDLES AND PEARLS (Gil McNeil)

Widow Jo MacKenzie has settled into her new life in the seaside English village of Broadgate and her boys, Jack and Archie, are thriving in the community as Jo's yarn shop, McKnits, slowly grows.  A year has now passed since Jo's husband, Nick, announced that he was leaving her for another woman and then promptly died in an auto accident.  Jo's grandmother, Mary, and best friend, Ellen, have fallen in love and are planning their weddings, both of which will prominently feature Jo and her sons.  In the midst of trying to expand her business online with the help of handsome carpenter Martin and dealing with all of the wedding preparations and other dramas in her life, Jo makes a discovery that will change her life forever.

Needles and Pearls continues where The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club leaves off.  This installment (and I hope there will be more!) is just as charming.  McNeil has a way of making the reader feel like they actually  know her characters and that comfortable feeling permeates the novel.  I hated to see ithe last page!

PUSHING UP DAISIES (Rosemary Harris)

Small town politics, a wise-cracking cafe owner, gardening, murder, a beautiful bff, and a couple of good-looking potential love interests ... What more could you ask for in a good cozy?  Paula Holliday has left her high pressure media job in New York to pursue a new, more relaxing (or so she thinks) career as a master gardener in fictional Springfield, CT.  One of her first accomplishments when she is hired to restore the historic gardens at Halcyon is to dig up a box containing a mummified  baby.  Her investigation into the identity of the baby and its mother leads her into an increasingly complicated web of intrigue and the discovery of several local scandals from the past.  Rosemary Harris does an excellent job of weaving all of the plot lines seamlessly into a delightful novel, the first in her "Dirty Business" series.

KNITTING UNDER THE INFLUENCE (Claire LaZebnik)

I took this novel on a recent trip to Atlanta for my nephew's wedding (Congratulations, Matthew & Brittney!) and managed to finish it soon after our return home.  I was disappointed, but that is not a reflection on LaZebnik's talent.  The book had a little too much "earthy" language for my taste, but a younger reader would probably not even notice because that's the way most people converse nowadays.  I also had a strange feeling that I had read this novel before, but I really don't think I have.

Kathleen, Lucy, and Sari are three longtime friends of around age 27.  Lucy is a respected researcher with an overbearingly egotistical boyfriend, Sari is a therapist who works with autistic children, and Kathleen is a triplet who has spent her adult life working for and catering to her 2 sisters, who are identical and have enjoyed a career much like that of the Olsen twins.  The three meet and bond every Sunday over knitting.  Kathleen, after an unfortunate comment to the press about her famous sisters, quits her job and ends up living in an apartment below a much older man, a friend of the family, who arranges a job for her and becomes her unwilling confidante as she embarks on a romance with the son of her wealthy employer.  Sari, single and lonely, finds herself fighting an attraction for an old classmate, the father of one of her clients, whom she believes tormented her autistic brother during high school.  Lucy finds herself increasingly irritated with James, her intolerant and critical lover.  Through it all, they knit! 

LaZebnik uses the process of knitting a project as the chapter headings in this book, which is a clever way to enhance the knitting theme.  This is definitely a romance, and definitely chick-lit.  I would not recommend it for an older, more conservative knitter, but the under-thirty crowd would definitely enjoy it.

THE THREE WEISSMANNS OF WESTPORT (Catherine Schine)

This novel has been compared to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and rightly so.  The 3 Weissmanns are dumped wife Betty and her daughters, practical librarian Anne, who is divorced and the mother of 2 grown sons, and flighty Miranda, whose successful literary agency has been destroyed by several James Frey-like memoirists.  Betty's husband, Joseph, has recently become enamored of co-worker Felicity and decides that the time is right to end his 48-year marriage and embark on new adventures in love.  Joseph, with Felicity's encouragement, freezes 70-year-old Betty out financially until the details of their divorce are settled, and Betty is forced to leave their New York city apartment and move to a small cottage in Westport, CT, available due to the beneficence of eccentric cousin Lou, to whom almost everyone is "like family".  Miranda, on the verge of bankruptcy and with her professional reputation in ruins, decides to accompany her mother to Westport.  Anne sublets her apartment and moves to Westport with them, commuting daily to her library job in the city.

Betty is in denial about her divorce and decides to adapt the persona of a grieving widow.  Rather than being angry at Joseph's legal maneuverings, she believes that she will return to her home and that things will eventually straighten out financially.  Miranda, whose pattern of short-lived love affairs and poor choices continues, meets a younger man with an adorable son and falls in love with them both while pretending that her business dealings haven't drained her of all her resources.  Both Betty and Miranda spend Anne's money with total abandon while she struggles to maintain their home and keep their heads above water.

This entertaining novel, like Jane Austen's, has a bit of everything: tragedy, thwarted love, revenge, and the universal struggle to survive against great odds.  Schine shows us a family of women who are survivors and whose story is well-worth reading.