Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress is Charles Dickens's second novel, and was published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and released as a three-volume book in 1838, before the serialization ended. The story centres on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. After escaping, Oliver travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin....

The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin. Oliver, an innocent child, is trapped in a world where his only options seem to be the workhouse, a life of crime symbolized by Fagin’s gang, a prison, or an early grave. From this unpromising setting, Ol...

Our Mutual Friend, written in 1864-1865, is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quoting the book's character Bella Wilfer, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life".Most reviewers in the 1860s continued to praise Dickens's skill as a writer in general, but did not review this novel in detail. Some fou...

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, C...

Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story features Amy Dorrit, youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London. Arthur Clennam encounters her after returning home from a 20-year absence, ready to begin his life anew.The novel satirises some shortcomings of both government and society, including the institution of debtors' prisons, where debtors were ...

The Old Curiosity Shop is one of two novels (the other being Barnaby Rudge) which Charles Dickens published along with short stories in his weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock, from 1840 to 1841. It was so popular that New York readers stormed the wharf when the ship bearing the final instalment arrived in 1841. The Old Curiosity Shop was printed in book form in 1841.The plot follows the life of Nell Trent and her grandfather, both resi...

Dombey and Son is a novel by English author Charles Dickens. It follows the fortunes of a shipping firm owner, who is frustrated at the lack of a son to follow him in his footsteps; he initially rejects his daughter's love before eventually becoming reconciled with her before his death.The story features many Dickensian themes, such as arranged marriages, child cruelty, betrayal, deceit, and relations between people from different British social classes. The novel ...

Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (commonly known as Barnaby Rudge) is a historical novel by British novelist Charles Dickens. Barnaby Rudge was one of two novels (the other was The Old Curiosity Shop) that Dickens published in his short-lived (1840-1841) weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock. Barnaby Rudge is largely set during the Gordon Riots of 1780.Barnaby Rudge was the fifth of Dickens' ...

“During the last twenty years, seven books of mine have been published as historical novels which to me are biographies of previous lives I have known. Far Memory is the autobiography of my first thirty years in the twentieth century. From early childhood, I was sometimes aware beyond the usual range of the five senses. I tried to ignore the implications of this awareness, but it was too insistent; so in an attempt to understand what was happening I laboriously trained the faculty...

Follow the life of Piyanah, daughter of a clairvoyant Indian mother, in Scarlet Feather.Piyanah demanded new freedom and an end to her tribe’s sexual segregation and brutality. Trained and educated with the young braves, she develops strength and courage, and soon she will succeed the tribal chief―that is if she can at last overcome a series of ordeals which prove her worthy of the Scarlet Feather.This book in the author’s Far Memory series brings to life the intri...

The second of Joan Grant’s Far Memory novels, Life as Carola gives a fascinating glimpse into life in Italy just before the height of the Renaissance.As a child growing up in Edwardian England, Joan Grant became aware of an astonishing ability to remember previous lifetimes. As an author, she professed her seven novels to be based on her personal recollections of other incarnations, male and female.Carola was the illegitimate daughter of an Italian nobleman, the Lo...

In Winged Pharaoh, Joan Grant tells the story of Sekeeta, the Pharaoh’s daughter. The ancient Egyptians reserved the title of Winged Pharaoh for ruler priests who possessed extrasensory powers. When Sekeeta demonstrates psychic abilities, she is sent to the temple and trained to heal others and recall past lives. Upon the death of her father and her initiation as Priestess of Anubis, she becomes a Winged Pharaoh, a coruler with her brother—she is both priestess and pharaoh—and lea...