Shortlisted for the 2021 Leacock Medal for Humour Longlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Awards How can you say goodbye forever when you've left an important secret unspoken? "I'll tell you what I'm going to do," Zoltan said. "When I die, I'll leave my luck to you." Zoltan Beck is dying. His devoted but long-suffering sons, Ben and Frank, are trying to prepare themselves and their families for Zoltan's eventual departure...but they can't quite bring themselves to believe that the end is really at hand, and neither can Zoltan himself. The head of a family marked by war and tragedy for decades, he "can't stand to be in a room with a miserable person" and has done his best to keep the pain of his refugee past from his beloved children. But as he faces the end of his life, he discovers a heartbreaking secret from the War that will ultimately bring the family together--or irrevocably disrupt it. Set in both mid-20th century Hungary and contemporary Toronto, this is a deeply moving novel that revels in the energy of its extraordinary characters. It is the story of lost love and newfound connections, of a father and his sons desperately reaching out to bridge an ever-widening gap...even as their time together ebbs away.

A short biography of Charles Dickens by acclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow that offers a fresh perspective on one of the greatest novelists in the English language in a lively, highly readable account. "It has all the gusto that a popular biography of Dickens—a man who “could do nothing by halves”—should possess. . . . The best biography for Dickens newcomers and a wonderful read for all."—Library Journal Dickens was one of the first true celebrity authors. Thousands of fans in Britain and America eagerly awaited each new installment of his stories and flocked to see him on his legendary speaking tours. Not only did he create an incredible cast of characters on the page, but he was also a dazzling mimic and storyteller, and he wrote, stage-managed, and acted in plays for the public. Throughout his life, from his childhood performances in pubs to his legendarily powerful reading tours, Dickens was fanatical about the stage. Callow reveals Dickens’s genius on and off the page and offers a compelling insight into a life that was driven as much by performance and showmanship as by literature.

A captivating portrait of some of Charles DickensOCO most memorable female characters presented by popular actress Miriam Margolyes to accompany her hugely successful one-woman show touring the world in 2012. In his novels Dickens presents a series of unrivalled portraits of women, young and old. From Little Nell to Miss Havisham, these girls and women speak to us today, making us laugh and sometimes cry. The popular British actress Miriam Margolyes will be touring the world in 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens birth, with a one-woman show about DickensOCO women, and this book accompanies the show by building on the script and expanding to include many more of the female characters Dickens described and analysed so astutely in his novels. ?Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury.OCO"

When he wrote Hard Times - which can be considered an epilogue to the much longer Bleak House - Dickens was able to conceive a plot neither centered around a hero nor fueled by the kind of wish fulfillment that structure had implied.

This guidebook examines Dickens' novel within its literary and cultural contexts providing an ideal orientation in the novel, its reception history and the critical material which surrounds it.

CLASSIC FICTION. This is a new title in "Young Reading Series Three", part of the Usborne Young Reading Programme, which is aimed at children whose reading ability and confidence allows them to tackle longer and more complex stories. Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, "Bleak House" is a suspenseful tale of secrets, lies and money. It features beautifully produced hardback with ribbon marker to encourage pride in book ownership. Ages 7+.

This book, first published in 1988, is the most comprehensive annotation of Bleak House ever undertaken. It provides authoritative background information about the topical issues of the novel that interested Dickens as a social critic and activist. It also describes the novel’s literary antecedents and identifies the sources of its hundreds of literary and historical allusions. The annotation is based on a wide range of nineteenth-century sources – from newspapers, periodicals and parliamentary papers to travel guides and cookery books – and gives the modern reader unprecedented access to both Bleak House – Dickens’s tract for the times – and the period when it was written.