Christmas Books: Charles Dickens

In this volume: A Christmas Carol: Ebenezer Scrooge, tight-fisted, grasping and miserable, is visited by the ghost of his late business partner, who sends him the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future to make him change his ways; The Chimes: Toby Veck, known as 'Trotty' is a poor working-class man. When Trotty loses his faith in Humanity after overhearing a conversation of those he believes to be his betters he begins to think his poverty is the result of his unworthiness. He is visited on New Year's Eve by spirits to help restore his faith and show him that nobody is born evil, but rather that crime and poverty are things created by man.The Cricket On The Hearth: A cricket who chirps from the hearth of John and Dot Peerybingle appears to have supernatural powers and restores faith to the people of the house as they realise that when he chirps, all is well; but when he is silent, something is amiss. The Battle Of Life: Grace and Marion live happily in a village with their widowed father. But when Marion disappears, it is believed she has eloped with a ne'er-do-well libertine to the sorrow of her fiancé. The Haunted Man: Redlaw, a teacher of chemistry, often broods over wrongs done him and grief from his past. He is attended to by his servants Mr. Swidger and his 87-year-old father who helps the cook, Milly William, decorate Redlaw's rooms with holly. He is haunted by a spirit, a phantom twin an awful likeness of himself...with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in thegloomy shadow of his dress... This Ghost proposes to Redlaw that he can allow him to forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble he has known and cancel their remembrance. And Redlaw will have the power to bestow this gift on anyone he meets. Is it a gift? Or a curse? With illustrations.