"John Peerybingle, a carrier, lives with his young wife Dot, their baby boy and their nanny Tilly Slowboy. A cricket chirps on the hearth and acts as a guardian angel to the family. One day a mysterious elderly stranger comes to visit and takes up lodging at Peerybingle's house for a few days. The life of the Peerybingles intersects with that of Caleb Plummer, a poor toymaker employed by the miser Mr. Tackleton. Caleb has a blind daughter Bertha,...

Charles Dickens' work The Battle of Life: A Love Story has an English village on the site of a historic battle as the setting. Some characters allude to the war as a metaphor for the struggle for life, hence the title. Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA is an English writer and social commentator. He produced some of the world's most renowned fictional characters and is often regarded as the best author of the Victorian era. His writings achieved unparalleled...

This Christmas novella is centered around Professor Redlaw and those close to him, and touches more on the spirit of the holidays than the holidays themselves.

"... Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences...." The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, a Fancy for Christmas-Time, bookends the series of five Christmas stories by Charles Dickens (1812—1870) that began in 1843 with A Christmas Carol. Originally published in 1848, this dark yet redemptive...