Grammy Award-winning contemporary Christian/pop singer Amy Grant has announced an April 7 concert at the First Interstate Center for the Arts.

Spokane is kicking off 2020 on a high note with plenty of theater, comedy and dance shows happening in the coming months.

Forget New Year’s diet resolutions to boost your health. Recent research has shown that visiting art galleries and museums can lower anxiety and depression, increase critical thinking skills and even make you feel like you are falling in love.

Ever since her death, those creatively involved with the Skywalker Saga – which seemingly concluded with the Dec. 20 opening of “Rise” – have tried to honor Carrie Fisher’s memory while also wrestling with how to present her iconic character, Leia Organa, on screen.

John Cho is breathing new life into a deadly story. In the third version of “The Grudge,” the “Harold & Kumar” star is trading in his comedy chops for a new kind of horror rooted in “very real adult grief.”

On Tuesday night, a packed house at the Fox was led on this journey by Morihiko Nakahara, resident conductor of the Spokane Symphony, joined by the Spokane Symphony Chorale, directed by Kristina Ploeger-Hekmatpanah, and four soloists.

So you received a restaurant gift card or certificate. Visions of good times on a friend’s dime are dancing in your head.

My family and I are phone addicts, so we’ve never purposely searched out vacation destinations with restricted Wi-Fi access. Then, a few months ago, we took off on a small ship for a cruise through the Bahamas.

When Shawn O’Donnell’s American Grill & Irish Pub opened on Dec. 2 on Monroe Street and Broadway Avenue, the restaurant had big plates and pints to fill in the building just north of downtown Spokane and Kendall Yards.

The features staff here at The Spokesman-Review is a small, talented, dedicated and hard-working group comprised of health and features writer Treva Lind, entertainment writer Azaria Podplesky, deputy features editor Kimberly Lusk and yours truly, Don Chareunsy, features editor.

Not many things in life are certain aside from birth, death and taxes, and my Top 10 albums list for 2019 will be different from any other best albums list you see this year. This makes sense in a year where there was no consensus best album, and I ran across a few under-the-radar releases.

The ballet “The Nutcracker” has become an annual holiday tradition for families and friends alike across the country, and the beautiful production, performed by the Spokane Symphony and Santa Barbara, California-based State Street Ballet, at Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox is an absolute delight.

Jessica Cochran fell in love with ballet when she was 2 years old after she saw a ballet performance at the Chataqua festival in her hometown of Chewelah. She immediately asked her mother if she could start ballet classes.

Holiday lights are strung up all over the city, and Christmas shows are lighting up local stages. Just this week, the offerings run the gamut from the circus and ballet to stage and screen classics, including the sold-out screening of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” featuring star Chevy Chase tonight at the Fox.

Black Angus Steakhouse - Thursday. Full turkey dinner with all the trimmings. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. 14724 E. Indiana Ave., Spokane Valley. $22 adults; $10 youth. (509) 927-1177. Clinkerdagger - Thursday. Thanksgiving dinner with a special day menu. Reservation required. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. 621 W. Mallon Ave. (509) 328-5965.

Cornish game hens cook up fast and are ultra moist and tender – no slaving over the oven and worrying about them drying out like you would with a turkey. I’ve been wanting to try game hens with one of my favorite cooking methods for chicken: beer-can style.

One of the easiest ways to handle Thanksgiving leftovers is to deal with them that very night before you’ve gone through the hassle of pulling out 90 million Tupperware containers to store everything individually in the fridge.

Tom Hanks unintentionally found a more immersive form of method acting: sharing DNA with his character. Hanks, 63, recently discovered he’s related to Fred Rogers of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” fame.

One of my remaining big aspirations in life is to become a father. Single or with a husband, I would like to be called Dad before I die. In the meantime, being called Uncle Don is pretty fantastic, too. (And perhaps will do, but that’s another story.)