It is the time of the year that puts everyone in festive spirits. With Christmas just around the corner, and that means it is time to pull up your sleeves and sparkle your home with the Christmas elements. When we think

Kanye West earlier this year, re-committed himself to Christianity and started performing with the choir Sunday Service. Back in October, the songwriter-rapper had announced a collaboration with the Sunday Service Choir for the new album and dropped it on Christmas Day as

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Blue Door is proud to announce its very own Super Thursday. Yes, that’s right, today we release not one, not two but three fantastic novels. First up is Rachel Trezise’s wonderful Sixteen Shades of Crazy. Tipped as the Valleys’ answer to Trainspotting, here’s Rachel giving us an insight into why she decided to dissect the morals and mores of life in ex-mining towns:
Already popular on the literary festival circuit you can catch Rachel this summer at Hay, Latitude and Green Man. You can also catch up with all of her news at her website www.racheltrezise.com. Recognised by the Orange Futures list (amongst the likes of Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters) we are very proud to be publishing her first novel.

Next up is something completely different. Meg Gardiner’s thrillers have been praised by Stephen King, Jeffery Deaver and Tess Gerritsen which is a pretty impressive roll call of fans. Her Evan Delaney series of novels was a hit with adults and teens alike and was regularly in the top ten of teen thrillers on Amazon.com. Her new super sleuth, Jo Beckett, is a forensic psychiatrist, investigating a person’s life to discover why they died. The Memory Collector (released early May) tells the story of Ian Kanan, a passenger on board a flight to San Francisco, who has been restrained by crew members for his erratic behaviour. Jo is immediately called in when it is established that Kanan has no memory of who he is or where he has been. Convinced that he holds the key to a potential terrorist plot (and may have been exposed to a deadly biological agent himself), Jo must race against time to unravel a series of clues and save her beloved city. Meg’s next Jo Beckett thriller, The Liar’s Lullaby will be released in June so watch out for some guest blogging on the site soon.

Last but by no means least is Warren Fitzgerald’s The Go-Away Bird. Perfect for fans of Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand, this is a heart-wrenching story of how friendship can develop in the most unlikely of places between the most unlikely of people. Fourteen-year-old Clementine arrives in London from war-torn Rwanda, having witnessed horrendous cruelty and unimaginable loss during the 1994 genocides. Lonely, grieving and displaced in a daunting new city, she flees her abusive uncle and befriends Ashley, a middle-aged, loner for whom teaching singing is the only escape from his London life. The story that unfolds is deeply moving and at times sad but throughout is a positive and uplifting tale of how two utter strangers can collide, bond and ultimately save each other. Here’s Warren telling us about the novel:

Have you mailed your holiday cards yet? The United States Postal Service lists December 20th as the last day to post letters for arrival by Christmas! In the early 20th century, artsy students at the Ethical Culture School in Manhattan printed Christmas festival programs on the school’s own press. Most of the illustrations feature motifs you might...

The post Ethical Christmas Wishes appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

What’s Christmas without Christmas cards? The fanciful greetings here are the work of Oscar Fabres (1894–1960), a Chilean illustrator who studied art in Paris and settled in New York in 1940, where he lived and kept a studio at 715 Madison Avenue. The Oscar Fabres Collection (PR 079), bequeathed to the New-York Historical Society by the artist’s agent,...

The post Santa in the City: The Christmas Cards of Oscar Fabres appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Christmases during the Civil War were marked with equal parts of sadness and hope. “Uncivil Christmas,” a Williamsburg music program, captures the mood in songs of the period. Carson Hudson narrates this musical podcast.

The Governor’s Musick is Colonial Williamsburg’s resident 18th-century musical ensemble. Jane Hanson, Herb Watson, Jenny Edenborn and Wayne Moss perform.

The heart of Christmas remains unchanged, even as each generation lends new customs to the celebration. Historian Lou Powers talks Christmastide in three centuries.

A quest for films that genuinely reflect the spirit of the holidays leads the Angry Nerd to create an all-new celebration in honor of the best Christmas movie-maker of all time: Shane Black.

It’s an outdoor version of the claw game, but with fast, low flying helicopters as the claw and Christmas trees as the prize. At the Hunter Family Farm in Olympia, Wash., helicopter pilots fly across nearly 400 acres, picking up bundles of trees and transporting them, so they can be processed and loaded for your holiday pleasure.

It's not all twinkly lights, wrapped presents, and Yule logs. Uncover the darker side of Christmas from the 83 million trees that get chopped down to the $616.9 billion spent in November and December.

These were your favorite studies on this topic.

Christmas 2015

Watch this fun video.

The annual tradition of Christmas bunch at Shashi Kapoor's house was carried forward by his son Kunal.

Dewey Library - PS3613.A7543 C57 2019

Mix up your holiday listening with releases from Phil Wickham, Audrey Assad, and others.

Carols, motets, hymns, songs, and madrigals reflect the enthusiastic joy and high spirits of Yuletide celebrations in Williamsburg.