title: The Wishing Thread: A Novel
author:  Lisa Van Allen 
description: Gift or curse, the magic of the Van Ripper family is in the knittingso the residents of Tarrytown, New York, speculate. Van Allen knits together this pleasantly entertaining tale as easily as the Van Ripper women knit together the often unraveling threads of peoples lives. When matriarch Mariah Van Rippers death reunites her three niecesawkwardly shy Aubrey; cynical, uptight Bitty; and free-spirit Meggietogether they must decide how far they will go in order to preserve the Stitcherys secrets. The Stitchery, their ancestral home, located in contemporary Rip Van Winkle territory, has housed generations of Van Ripper women, whose gift for magic is intimately tied in with the beautiful items they knit. Casting spells on and off with the clicks of their needles, the sisters contend with the wishes and wants of others as well as their own deepest desires. Chick-lit cozy meets magical realism with inevitably warm and fuzzy results. --Margaret Flanagan
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  “I could wish you had not come here, Helen Faraday.”
  
  “No one calls me Helen.”
  
  The utterance had a husky quality. Without volition, he turned his head. “What
  do they call you?”
  
  “Nell, sir.”
  
  The instant it was out of her mouth, she knew it was a mistake. His gaze
  became intimate, probing hers. She wanted, needed to look away. She could not.
  What had possessed her to speak of her name she could not imagine. Except that
  his expressed wish so closely mirrored her own. It should have distanced her
  that he said it. Instead it had created the opposite effect. As if a kinship
  had sprung up between them.
  
  His voice came softly. “If I were not an honorable man, Nell, I might well be
  carried away by the romance of the occasion.” A wisp of a smile curled his
  lips. “Moonlight and a pretty girl—balm to ease a troubled heart. It is
  unbearably tempting.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Dear Reader,
  
  I have often thought with sympathy of that army of sad spinsters in bygone
  days whose lot in l