A collection which brings together perhaps the four finest of Charles Dickens' shorter novels, filled with event, character, and the brilliance of his story-telling.

This witty and amusing collection of short pieces shows Dickens liberated from the more formal and sustained demands of the novel and experimenting with a diverse range of fictional techniques. In his tales of the supernatural, he creates frighteningly believable, spine-tingling stories of prophetic dreams and visions, as well as more fantastical adventures with goblins and apparitions. Impressionistic sketches combine imaginatively heightened travel journals with wry observations of home and abroad, while in his dramatic monologues, Dickens demonstrates his talent for exploring the secret workings of the human mind. These short works display Dickens's exuberant sense of comedy and character as his imagination is given free rein.

Charles Dickens wrote a number of supernatural and horror stories, some of which were included in his longer works, while others were published in magazines. This collection gathers them together in one volume, providing an invaluable insight into the author’s storytelling apprenticeship and his steady growth towards excellence. As well as offering a further dimension to the world of his better-known masterpieces, these tales—from "A Madman’s Manuscript" to "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" to the celebrated "The Signalman"—illustrate Dickens’s well-known love of a spooky story told around a blazing fire, the pastime of a bygone age to be rediscovered for our own delight.

Charles Dickens is rightly hailed as the grand master of Victorian literature. His astonishing range extends from tales of political intrigue to poignant coming-of-age sagas, and his superb eye for detail has conjured some of the most memorable characters in English fiction - from the cruel Miss Havisham of Great Expectations to the treacherous Uriah Heep of David Copperfield. This timeless collection brings together his most iconic novels. David Copperfield Hard Times The power of [Dickens] is so amazing that the reader at once becomes his captive.' William Makepeace Thackeray

The Chimes A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, a short novel by Charles Dickens, was written and published in 1844, one year after A Christmas Carol. It is the second in his series of Christmas books five short books with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840's.