Charles Dickens
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Dickens portrays a dark, macabre London, inhabited by such disparate characters as Gaffer Hexam, scavenging the river for corpses; enchanting, mercenary Bella Wilfer; the social-climbing Veneerings; and the unscrupulous street-trader Silas Wegg. The novel is richly symbolic in its vision of death and renewal in a city dominated by the fetid Thames, and the corrupting power of money.
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Old Ebenezer Scrooge, the meanest miser in London, is visited one Christmas eve by three spirits who change his life forever. Patrick Stewart stars as Scrooge in this brilliant presentation of Charles Dickens' holiday classic the most heartwarming, compelling and powerful adaptation ever filmed.
10) Marley: a novel
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A reimagined tale of the relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley, which goes back to their younger days of simple fraud and forgery, and grows to a shipping enterprise based on deception, false identities and murder, which set the stage for Marley's ghostly return.
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Slade, the president of a finance company, has chosen the day before Christmas to mercilessly hound the townsfolk for their loan payments and repossess their goods. That evening, alone in his apartment, Slade receives three ghostly visitors who take him on an enlightening journey through time-- to Christmas past, present and future.
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"Who will inherit the riches of wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit? The only person he trusts is his companion and nurse, the young orphan Mary Graham, but she is employed on the understanding that she will not inherit a penny. He has disinherited his grandson, Young Martin, suspicious of the motives of the young man's love for Mary. With such a fortune at stake, the rest of the family closes in like sharks. The obsequious Pecksniff, with his daughters...
13) Hard times
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Local MP and schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Louisa and Tom, in the utilitarian fashion, stressing reason and fact and dismissing imagination and emotion. Under his influence, Louisa grows cold while Tom turns to a secret life of drinking and gambling. To be nearer her brother, Louisa accepts an offer of marriage from his boss, the self-mad, self-important banker Josiah Bounderby, though she does not love him. But soon finds herself...
15) Oliver Twist
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Born into a miserable workhouse orphanage, Oliver eventually flees to London, where the cheerful Artful Dodger immediately befriends him and introduces him to the villainous Fagin and his gang of thieves. Temporarily rescued from the prospect of a life of crime by the kindly Mr. Brownlow, Oliver finds himself pursued by savage thief Bill Sikes and the enigmatic Monks.
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David Copperfield's idyllic life changes when his mother marries Mr. Murdstone. When she dies, David's stepfather takes David from school and forces him to do back-breaking work in his winery. Eventually, David runs away to his eccentric Aunt Betsy's home, where he might find the respect and love he never had as a child.