Charles Dickens

Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton may look the same but their personalities are very different. When Charles returns to Paris to attempt to save his servant, having fled to London from the French Revolution, he endangers his own life. Sydney may be able to help with his strong resemblance, and hopefully can also save Charles' life.

Tells the story of a poor orphan's adventures in the criminal underworld of mid-nineteenth-century London.

        
"        Like so many fond parents I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child," wrote Charles Dickens. "And his name is David Copperfield."
        Of all of Dickens's novels, David Copperfield most closely reflects the events of his own life. The story of an abandoned waif who discovers life...

“Facts alone are wanted in life.” The children at Mr. Gradgrind’s school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. The effects of Gradgrind’s teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them, they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus

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"When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr. Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard,...

Nicholas, his mother, and his sister Kate have been left penniless by the death of Mr. Nickleby. In their poverty and desperation they seek help from Nicholas's uncle, the difficult and oppressive Ralph Nickleby who is a usurer. Nicholas's independent attitudes immediately bother his uncle and he is sent to Dotheboys Hall to teach. There he witnesses the mistreatment of orphans by the evil-hearted Wackford Squeers. Nicholas and the orphan boy, Smike,...

In addition to "A Christmas Carol", "The Haunted Man" and a short story from the Pickwick Papers that was the basis for "A Christmas Carol", several of the author's shorter stories celebrating the season, are included. Additionally the editor discusses Dickens' influence on how we celebrate the season, and an appendix on Dickens' use of The Arabian Nights, plus a further reading list and notes.

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

"Charles Dickens's first historical novel - set during the anti-Catholic riots of 1780 - is an unparalleled portrayal of the terror of a rampaging mob, seen through the eyes of the individuals swept up in the chaos." "Those individuals include Emma, a Catholic, and Edward, a Protestant, whose forbidden love weaves through the heart of the story; and the simpleminded Barnaby, one of the riot leaders, whose fate is tied to a mysterious murder and whose...