Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks.

What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett’s hearth and home.

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“Table for McGregor?”

“Let me see . . . Ah, yes, just for two?”

Amy nodded and we were led through the restaurant to a table at the back, next to the toilets.

“I thought I’d better book,” she said as we sat down.

An immediate bestseller when it was first published in December 1843, A Christmas Carol has endured ever since as a perennial Yuletide favorite.

Anne Perry has dazzled readers for decades with her gripping Victorian novels and has won new fans with her acclaimed World War I series.