By Charles Dickens

The Chimes - A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year in:

This is the second in a series of five novels that Charles Dickens wrote for the Christmas season, and is the immediate successor to A Christmas Carol. Filled with an array of comic characters, The Chimes tells the story of Toby Veck, a humble porter whose loses his faith in human nature at the hands of his presumed social superiors, but regains it thanks to the spirits of the bells.

The book was actually written while Dickens was living in Italy, but remains a quintessentially English tale. Like its predecessor, it carries a heartfelt plea for charity and brotherhood and examines such distressing themes as suicide and infanticide, as well as the question of whether the poor have any right to live at all. The book also continues its predecessor’s vigorous satire on the social injustices of its day, and is perhaps more explicit and confrontational in its approach. The supernatural is also present, this time in the form of the spirits of the bells in a church tower.

The Chimes does for New Year’s Eve what A Christmas Carol did for Christmas.