The Christmas Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini

I bought this paperback at Boston airport a couple of years back and it is a very cosy sentimental Christmas read...
Sylvia Bergstrom, a quilter, single and in her 70s, of German descent, has moved back into the old family home of Elm Creek Manor, now that her estranged sister has died. A young friend helps her find decorations in the attic on Christmas Eve and discovers an unfinished Christmas quilt that stirs up memories of times past.

She had never forgotten the Christmas Quilt, nor had she expected to see it again. From what she could see of the folded bundle of patchwork and applique, not a single stitch had been added since she last worked upon it. And yet every intricate Feathered Star block, every graceful appliqued cluster of holly leaves and berries had been tucked away as neatly as if a conscientious quiltmaker had had every intention of completing her masterpiece. Even the scraps of fabric had been sorted according to colour – greens here, reds there, golds and creams in their own separate piles. The Christmas Quilt had been abandoned, but it had not been discarded.

Tonight in the last few hours of Christmas Day, Sylvia intended to work on the Christmas Quilt, to complete a task too long neglected. In her home full of memories, she felt the presence of all those whom she loved, blessing her and wishing her well. At last she understood the true lesson of the Christmas Quilt, that a family was an act of creation, the piecing together of disparate fragments into one cloth – often harmonious, occasionally clashing and discordant, but sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and strong. Without contrast there was no pattern and each piece, whether finest silk or faded cotton, would endure if sewn fast to the others with strong seams – bonds of love and loyalty, tradition and faith.

The Mysteries of Glass by Sue Gee

I like all Sue Gee's novels but this is my favourite, just right for a wintry evening and frost at midnight.
It is 1860 and Richard Allen takes up his post in a remote country parish in Herefordshire. An amiable, devout young man and son of a clergyman, he finds parish life claustrophobic until he falls in love with an unhappily married woman who returns his love. Dramatic consequences follow; Victorian society is scandalised but true love knows no shame. Richard and Susannah are good people who deserve to find happiness in this fleeting world despite the hypocrisy surrounding them.
Gee's descriptions of the countryside are exquisite, like extracts from Kilvert's diary of the same period.
The lantern swung before them, shining on frozen ruts of earth, on bank and frosty hedgerow.

In the morning the window was thick with frost. Downstairs there was ice on every pane and the shutters in the snug cloaked a passage of freezing air. The world was yet in darkness: for a moment he felt like a ghost, returned to an unlit empty house, with no one to hear his voice or have any sense of his presence here at all.

Palm Sunday, 1861. The woods filled with paper-white anemones; catkins swaying over the stream; the birds a concert hall. The lambs and the ewes cried for one another long after dark, and Richard was woken by them long before the dawn.

And so, as the firelight played upon them, they went on gazing at each other's eyes, searching, finding, while outside the cold April wind stirred the trees, and across the darkening highway the house behind the laurels now was silent.