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Thompson Hall, redolent of plum pudding and mince pie, green of holly, warmed by omnipotent Victorian fireplaces, awaits the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Brown from the south of France. But they may never make it to Thompson Hall. The story opens in Paris at Le Grand Hotel, where Mr. Brown is down with "a throat condition"—he is unable to travel to England. Only Mrs. Brown is quite determined they will go on. So begins a Christmas tale complicated and simple, pathetic and farcical, embarrassing—even risque, though of course it could be read aloud to an assembled Victorian family.

Born on Christmas Day, little Carol Bird is a gentle soul who touches every life around her. Despite her physical illness, Carol is loved by everyone who knows her. This year, she is going to make Christmas extra special for her family and the little Ruggles children who live nearby.

Tuktu and her brother, Aklak, are Eskimo children who live happily with their beloved reindeer in the Northland. When Tuktu is lost in a fog, she meets Santa Claus or the Good Spirit as she knows him. This generous little girl wants to share her reindeer with the children of the world and so works to help Santa on his annual Christmas journey.

White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London and the name of the book's eponymous character, a wild wolfdog. First serialized in Outing magazine between May and October 1906, it was published in book form in October 1906. The story details White Fang's journey to domestication in Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush. It is a companion novel (and a thematic mirror) to London's best-known work, The Call of the Wild (1903), which is about a kidnapped domesticated dog embracing his wild ancestry to survive and thrive in the wild.

This is a gentle Christmas story, whose message is that if we didn't already have Christmas, we'd find a way to invent it. It's hard times in Old Trail Town as the Season of Giving approaches. The factory that employs most of the town is closed and not likely to re-open, and town merchants fear that people will try to shop on credit. Unwilling to carry the debt, the merchants work out a scheme to get everybody in town to agree not to have Christmas that year. What happens next proves that Christmas can't be banned from the hearts of those who truly believe in it.

Twenty stories were originally published in the Christmas editions of the magazines “Household Words” and “All The Year Round”. Some of the stories have little holiday sentiment and exhibit much of the indignation Dickens felt at the social and economic injustices of his day. Some of the stories were written in collaboration with other authors.

A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian-era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a humorous critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. Merchant Ivory produced an award-winning film adaptation in 1985.

"Olalla" is a short story by the Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson. It was first published in the Christmas 1885 issue of The Court and Society Review, then re-published in 1887 as part of the collection The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables. It is set in Spain during the Peninsular War. The story is based on a dream that Stevenson had and in his 1888 essay "A Chapter on Dreams", he describes the difficulties he had in fitting his vision into a narrative framework.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. Hamlet is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others".

Washington Irving's Old Christmas tells of an American's travels through England during the Christmas season. Through a chance meeting with an old friend, he is able to experience Christmas in a stately manor house. Through his eyes as a houseguest, he glimpses the uniquely British customs and celebrations of Christmas as it would have been experienced during the Middle Ages, rather than in the early 19th century.

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her twelfth novel and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded Age" New York City.

Mr. Watson is a widowed and ailing clergyman with two sons and four daughters. The youngest daughter, Emma, the heroine of the story, has been brought up by a wealthy aunt and is consequently better educated and more refined than her sisters. But after her aunt contracted a foolish second marriage, Emma has been obliged to return to her father's house. There she is chagrined by the crude and reckless husband-hunting of two of her sisters, Penelope and Margaret.

Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him.