This Compendium brings together the three best-loved Christmas novellas of Charles Dickens. 'A Christmas Carol' is probably the most famous Christmas story of all time, and also one of the best ghost stories ever written...the miser Scrooge is confronted by three ghosts on Christmas Eve, and forced to come to terms with his own spiritual impoverishment. 'The Chimes', another piece with supernatural elements, is a goblin-story about a working-class man who loses his faith in human nature, but is shown a redeeming spirit-vision on New Year's Eve. And 'The Cricket on the Hearth' is a fairy-tale with a difference, the story of a family with a chirping cricket for a guardian angel.