What makes Christmas so special? Sam is eager to find out, but none of Santa's other elves will tell him. Would spending Christmas Eve as a stowaway on Santa's sleigh provide the answer? Join Sam as he unwraps the secret of Christmas.
This volume explores the fraught relationship between Futurism and the Sacred. Like many fin-de-siècle intellectuals, the Futurists were fascinated by various forms of esotericism such as theosophy and spiritualism and saw art as a privileged means to access states of being beyond the surface of the mundane world. At the same time, they viewed with suspicion organized religions as social institutions hindering modernization and ironically used their symbols. In Italy, the theorization of "Futurist Sacred Art" in the 1930s began a new period of dialogue between Futurism and the Catholic Church. The essays in the volume span the history of Futurism from 1909 to 1944 and consider its different configurations across different disciplines and geographical locations, from Polish and Spanish literature to Italian art and American music.
Embarking on a mystery seminar cruise during the holiday season, amateur sleuth Alvirah, private detective Regan, and their family members find their voyage overshadowed by a ghost spotting, the disappearance of a fan, and an unexpected storm.
One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy. “A reflective novel about dark times that tells us life goes on, love stories develop, humanity remains in the most inhumane of times.” —Irish Independent Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either. Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival. Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.
Santa Claus. Kris Kringle. Père Noël. He answers to many names, but who is beneath the iconic white beard? Embarking on a journey into a world seldom explored, journalist K.A. Witte spent months interviewing professional and amateur Santas worldwide, compiling their most cherished experiences. These are tales of holiday magic, faith, personal growth, and triumph over adversity—all woven together by the enduring power and warmth of Christmas. A child’s heartfelt wish fulfilled…a man experiencing Christmas joy for the first time…a Santa on a mission to lift the burdens of the sick… With hearty laughter, occasional tears, and an unwavering commitment to serving others, these men keep the holiday spirit burning bright. These are true stories from true Santas.
My wife, Karen and I, (Karen has passed away) had four children and 14 grandchildren. The birth of those grandchildren brought great joy to us and motivated me to create a story upon the birth of the first eight grandchildren, the first in 1986 and the last in 1998. Each chapter lists chronologically the names of these eight grandchildren. One of the stories was created as I was driving one night from a YMCA job interview in Chattanooga, Tennessee to Kokomo, Indiana, where I served as CEO. This book contains Christmas stories I created for children to enjoy. It begins with Santa’s dog who gets lost and must be found so he can accompany Santa on his trip. Other unique characters are introduced, the Blue Angel, Miss Frilly Fox, a little boy named Bo who could fly, the walking trees, how snow began, the batmasters Desmo and his brother Rufus, the twin girls I and Y and many more. My grandchildren took great pleasure from reading their stories and I’m hoping to instill imaginative minds in others. Older children will enjoy reading the stories themselves and younger children having them read to them. The stories provide the children with something to think about. Many people said I should put these stories in a book, and so I did!
The immigration station at New York's Ellis Island opened in 1892 and remained the largest U.S. port for immigrant entry until World War I. In popular memory, Ellis Island is typically seen as a gateway for Europeans seeking to join the "great American melting pot." But as this fresh examination of Ellis Island's history reveals, it was also a major site of immigrant detention and exclusion, especially for Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian travelers and maritime laborers who reached New York City from Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean, and even within the United States. And from 1924 to 1954, the station functioned as a detention camp and deportation center for a range of people deemed undesirable. Anna Pegler-Gordon draws on immigrants' oral histories and memoirs, government archives, newspapers, and other sources to reorient the history of migration and exclusion in the United States. In chronicling the circumstances of those who passed through or were detained at Ellis Island, she shows that Asian exclusion was both larger in scope and more limited in force than has been previously recognized.