" If you're not in the holiday mood, Scrooge & Marley Detective Agency will make sure you stand pat. Marley's dead. Scrooge's on the wagon. And one cockeyed Christmas Eve, someone or something is needling Ebenezer to solve his old partner's murder. In fact, some holiday spirits gather to help Scrooge sort the straight dope from the humbug before the old detective winds up being shovel-ready himself. "

" Behind the masks of yesteryear’s Avenging Dervish are Barnabas and Dutch. Brothers. Twins, actually. Conjoined twins, in fact. And it’s hard to be a super-hero with your brother on your back. “If you read this chronicle, it proves that I manage to outwit and successfully wink the hood of some very shifty fish in Uncle Sam’s considerable tributary.” So begins the kept-under-the-Stetson saga of reporter Lovester Baxter. Baxter chronicles the adventures of The Avenging Dervish. As Baxter tells it, the Dervish is not some run-of-the-mill crusader in a cape. Brothers Barnabas and Dutch each possess a set of whammies that, when they work together, let them dish comeuppance aplenty. And despite being opposites personality-wise, Barnabas and Dutch must unite to fight as they are conjoined twins, fused back-to-back like a couple of cockeyed bookends. But when they spin their marvels — Hot Socks! — The Avenging Dervish runs circles around the Nogoodniks in that fabled borough just off old Broadway where guys and dolls kibitz amid craps, cards, coppers and cut-throats as a matter of course — Runyonland! "

This comprehensive survey of the screen adaptations of the works of Charles Dickens covers the worldwide film, television and video dramatizations from 1897-1993. It contains a catalog of more than 350 TV productions with cast lists and credits.

The acclaimed author of Finn “digs down to the bones of a classic and creates must-read modern literature” (Charles Frazier, New York Times bestselling author) with this “clever riff” (The Washington Post) on Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol that explores of the relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley. “Marley was dead, to begin with,” Charles Dickens tells us at the beginning of A Christmas Carol. But in Jon Clinch’s “masterly” (The New York Times Book Review) novel, Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge, is very much alive: a rapacious and cunning boy who grows up to be a forger, a scoundrel, and the man who will be both the making and the undoing of Scrooge. They meet as youths in the gloomy confines of Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys, where Marley begins their twisted friendship by initiating the innocent Scrooge into the art of extortion. Years later, in the dank heart of London, their shared ambition manifests itself in a fledgling shipping empire. Between Marley’s genius for deception and Scrooge’s brilliance with numbers, they amass a considerable fortune of dubious legality, all rooted in a pitiless commitment to the soon-to-be-outlawed slave trade. As Marley toys with the affections of Scrooge’s sister, Fan, Scrooge falls under the spell of Fan’s best friend, Belle Fairchild. Now, for the first time, Scrooge and Marley find themselves at odds. With their business interests inextricably bound together and instincts for secrecy and greed bred in their very bones, the two men engage in a shadowy war of deception, forged documents, theft, and cold-blooded murder. Marley and Scrooge are destined to clash in an unforgettable reckoning that will echo into the future and set the stage for Marley’s ghostly return. “Read through to the last page of this brilliant book, and I promise you that you will have a permanently changed view, not just of Dickens’s world, but of the world we live in today” (Elizabeth Letts, New York Times bestselling author).

Since most low-end PCs come with Works Suite installed, new users can read this single book to learn how to use both their operating system and desktop applications.

In this clever reimagining of Charles Dickens’s life, he and fiancée Kate Hogarth must solve the murder of an old miser, just before Christmas . . . London, December 1835: Charles and Kate are out with friends and family for a chilly night of caroling and good cheer. But their blood truly runs cold when their singing is interrupted by a body plummeting from an upper window of a house. They soon learn the dead man, his neck strangely wrapped in chains, is Jacob Harley, the business partner of the resident of the house, an unpleasant codger who owns a counting house, one Emmanuel Screws. Ever the journalist, Charles dedicates himself to discovering who's behind the diabolical defenestration. But before he can investigate further, Harley's corpse is stolen. Following that, Charles is visited in his quarters by what appears to be Harley's ghost—or is it merely Charles’s overwrought imagination? He continues to suspect Emmanuel, the same penurious penny pincher who denied his father a loan years ago, but Kate insists the old man is too weak to heave a body out a window. Their mutual affection and admiration can accommodate a difference of opinion, but matters are complicated by the unexpected arrival of an infant orphan. Charles must find the child a home while solving a murder, to ensure that the next one in chains is the guilty party . . . Praise for the Dickens of a Crime Mysteries! “Mystery fans and history buffs alike should cheer.” —KirkusSTARRED Review “Sharp, incisive, and delightfully twisty. I’m sure I won't be the only reader exclaiming, ‘What the Dickens?!’” —Anna Lee Huber, bestselling author. “As easy to read as one of Mr. Dickens’ actual novels and as entertaining.” —New York Journal of Books “Fans of Anne Perry will love this one.” —Dianne Freeman, award–winning author