The Open Road Blog

It's December 22nd. . . and whether you're feeling festive, frazzled—or a bit of both—there's no better time of year to curl up with a cozy and a "cuppa tea"—or maybe some cocoa.   

Herewith, a few of our seasonal favorites: 

Treat yourself to four unforgettable tales of holiday romance filled with sugar and spice and everything nice.  This festive collection includes short stories from bestselling authors Beverly Barton (The Ghost of Christmas Past), Joanne Fluke (The Twelve Desserts of Christmas), Fern Michaels (The Christmas Stocking), and Shirley Jump (Twelve Days)....

Today only, every single ebook from Open Road Media is up to 60% off across all major retailers, including Amazon.com, Apple iBookstore, Barnesandnoble.com, Kobo Books, and the Sony Reader Store. Iconic ebooks, science reads, epic dramas and romances, mysteries and thrillers—whatever gets your heart pumping and your mind humming—it is all on sale, with some bestselling books priced as low as 89 cents! If you haven't yet flipped through the pants-wettingly funny Go the Fuck to Sleep on their iPads, discovered the beautiful prose of Stanley Elkin on your Kindles or NOOK, sunk into the ...

Today we are excited to launch Cosmopolitan’s first-ever fiction ebook, Cosmo’s Sexiest Stories Ever, a collection of three sizzling stories by bestselling authors Jane Green, Jennifer Weiner, and Meg Cabot. These red-hot reads were fan favorites in Cosmopolitan’s 2011 summer issues, and now they are available in one delicious collection, for just $0.99.

Download instantly from Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or the Sony eBookstore. (Psst … the ebook makes a great gift, too! Surprise some lucky lady with the perfect guilty-pleasure indulgence.)

Cosmo’s Sexiest Stories Ever includes:

“Sex Under the Stars”

By Jane Green...

Today we bring you the final installment of our Critical Symposium on the importance of Andre Dubus. In a new essay, Edward J. Delaney, a writer and filmmaker, offers a moving portrait of the great writer in his later years. Delaney produced an award-winning film about Dubus called The Times Were Never So Bad. Click here to see a preview of the film, which is available for purchase through Amazon. Delaney's writing has appeared in The Atlantic and other magazines. He is the author of the forthcoming novel Broken Irish. Learn more about him and his work ...

Via Boing Boing, I found and enjoyed General Electric's Instagram feed. It's a visual guide of artistic photos inside their technology, research and history.—Lauren

These are some of the cutest images I've seen in a long time. Check out photos from the National Spelling Bee ("the nation's largest and longest-running educational promotion") over on The Atlantic today. Also, learn the definition of C-Y-M-O-T-R-I-C-H-O-U-S.—Laura

The New York Public Library has gone the extra mile with their new app (to be an ongoing series) released on Tuesday, May 31. The first "issue" of their iPad app, NYPL Biblion, focuses on the ...

Via Tech Crunch: "Twitter has just rolled out a nifty little feature. Now on anyone’s profile, when you click on the “Following” link, you’ll be able to see exactly how they see Twitter. In other words, you can see the same timeline of tweets that they see when they’re looking at their main feed." Frankly, not sure how much I like this!—Libby

It's always an exciting moment to stumble across a book that makes you cry, makes you think, or makes you fall over with laughter. I lucked out this week and found a humor book that made me do all three! ...

James Grime's piece in The Guardian—How YouTube Is Popularizing Science—is a fun opportunity to explore science lessons long forgotten "with no pressure or expectations." Also, if you haven't yet seen posts elsewhere, Rebecca Greenfield's piece on Monday in The Atlantic—Designing a 19th-Century Kindle: An E-Reader for Dickens—took a look at how art student Rachel Walsh elected to convey the concept of the Amazon Kindle to Charles Dickens. Incredible!—Laura

If you use Flickr, I bet you've seen these wonderful photographs: Running ahead of myself, Sunny Side Up, Trees Snow and Shadows. In weeks, ...

Personally, I was very excited to see this: A Spanish company is starting what can only be described as "Netflix for Books," launching later this summer. Also, Amazon to start Kindle Library Lending Program with Overdrive.—Pablo

This week in The Guardian, David Thomson writes about the movies of Terrence Malick and the anticipation surrounding the release of his latest film The Tree of Life. Malick is one of my favorite contemporary American directors and, like countless others, I'm anxious to see The Tree of Life. The movie is set to open May 4 in the U.K., but there ...