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A Christmas Carol has never been out of print since it was first published in 1843, and no wonder! This ghostly little book creates the feeling of Christmas that we still enjoy today. Marley was dead... and so too was Christmas to Scrooge. Haunted by three spirits on Christmas eve the old miser is taken on a journey to his past, his present and his future. With such memorable characters as Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit it will warm your heart with favorite memories, and remind you how the true Christmas spirit comes from giving with love.

Great Expectations is arguably Dickens' finest work. Chapter one opens up in a lonely graveyard on the marshes in southern England where we first meet young Pip and witness a terrifying meeting with an escaped convict. The novel charts the life of Pip from boy to young man during which Dickens treats us to array of unforgettable characters from the lovable Joe and the servile Pumblechuck to the jilted Miss Havisham and the faithful Herbert Pocket.

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet. His short story "The Dead", the concluding story in Dubliners, often considered as one of the best works of short fiction, concerns a Christmas-time gathering in Dublin. With a beautiful use of language and the epiphany common to all the stories in Dubliners, this book will remain in your thoughts long after the final emotional passages.

Our Laodicean Paula Power, the daughter of a wealthy Victorian railway engineer, is the sole inheritor of the ancient De Stancy Castle. The castle requires much modernization and repair so she sets about securing a young, up-and-coming architect, George Somerset, to undertake the project. Immediately captivated Somerset falls in love with our heroine but alas, he is not her only suitor. Paula, "the modern flower in a mediaeval flower-pot" while attracted to him yearns for the dashing Captain De Stancy and the aristocratic background he represents.

Reputed as Eliot’s favourite novel Silas Marner is set in the early years of the 19th century. Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small congregation in Lantern Yard. Falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit, he leaves his home and lives a solitary life near the village of Raveloe. Dedicating his life to weaving and hoarding gold for the next 15 years, circumstances beyond his control shape his destiny and when his gold is stolen, he is rescued from despair by the arrival on his lonely hearth of a beautiful little girl, whom he adopts.

Under the Greenwood Tree, Hardy's second novel, was published in 1872 and became the first of his great series of Wessex novels. The book, subtitled A Rural Painting of the Dutch School, tells the endearing tale of a group of church musicians who accompany the hymns at the local Mellstock parish choir and we follow the fortunes of one of its member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's semi-autobiographical first novel. It traces the early life of Stephen Dedalus and his inner struggle with the oppression of Irish society and the Catholic Church, ending with his awakening as a poet and writer and self-imposed exile from Ireland.