The Ghosts of Christmas Past

<H2><i>Before A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens meets three ghosts out of time...</i> Christmas Eve. 1842. New Street, Birmingham. The present and the future haunt the past when a pair of reluctant time travellers find themselves stranded in Victorian Britain.</H2>Fred Smith is a young man caught in a street riot in 1934. Mrs Hudson is an old lady who can't remember why she's at the station in 2019. Fred wants to change the world, Mrs Hudson wants to protect time. Can they work together to get back to the future?Is the secret to their timeslip something to do with Belle, the young orphan girl staging the Christmas pantomime for the city's poor children? Or the 'Worst Man in Birmingham', notorious miser and vicious businessman, Ebenezer Swingeford? Is it oppressed clerk, Bob Cratchit and his rebellious son, not-so-tiny Tim?Or could it be something to do with Charles Dickens, the young author visiting the city on secret business, on the verge of bankruptcy and desperate for his next big literary success?Whoever holds the answer, the city's notorious criminal gang, the precursors to the Peaky Blinders, are out to rob a fortune, and they will murder anyone who gets in their way... just like their leader, Slogger Pike, murdered  old Jacob Marley on this very night, eight years ago. As the snow falls on Christmas Eve, ghosts lost in time haunt the dark heart of the city in search of the true meaning of Christmas.The Ghosts of Christmas Past is the thirteenth novel in the bestselling time travel historical fantasy series.