A Tale of Two Cities
In this great novel Charles Dickens spares us no detail of the day-to-day horrors of the French Revolution. But injustice and tragedy hit the Manette family earlier when the Marquis de St. Evremonde imprisons Lucie's father for eighteen years in the Bastille. On his release Dr. Manette is nearly demented and does not realize that Lucie is his daughter. In England Lucie slowly nurses him back to life before she is inexorably caught up in the terrifying events of the revolution in Paris culminating in her husband's sentence to the guillotine.

A Christmas Carol
Scrooge's mean and miserly reputation is well-known amongst his acquaintances and no-one suffers more from his penny-pinching ways than Bob Cratchit, his ill-used clerk. But on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Marley, his late partner in business who shows him terrifying visions of the past, present and future including one of what his own death will be like unless hie is quick to mend his ways.

The Cricket on the Hearth
John Peerybingland his young wife Dot are perfectly happy - that is until John catches Dot in conversation with a handsome young stranger and begins to doubt hs wife's love for him. But with the help of the cricket (who has always brought them luck in the past) and in spite of old Tackleton's venomous comments, John is brought round do forgive his wife and then discovers there is no occasion for forgiveness.
(jacket flap)