Showing results for "The Chimes" in World Literature

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature was stirring.... But something must be stirring. Something hidden in the shadows. Something which kills the servants of an old Edwardian mansion in the most brutal and macabre manner possible. Exactly on the chiming of the hour, every hour, as the grandfather clock ticks on towards midnight. Trapped and afraid, the Doctor and Charley are forced to play detective to murders with no motive, where even the victims don't stay dead.

A poverty stricken old man, Toby "Trotty" Veck, who does odd messenger jobs for cash is in wonder at the cruelty and heartlessness of the world. He contemplates whether people are good or bad and through a series of events with a prostitute and her abusive pimp, corrupt politicians, purse thieves, and a mother who commits suicide after killing her child, he sees that people are indeed vile and evil beings who must be born that way to be so awful.

Most people think the reason Prudy Millings married the best-looking preacher in the Carolinas—who inexplicably turned psychotic and mowed her down with the church van—is that she was raised all wrong. So not true. Prudy's reclamation of her life begins two years after the crime spree that nearly stopped her heart. She packs up her two precocious children and settles in her parents' South Carolina hometown where she deals with a delightful Proverbs-spewing mama who pretends her grown daughters are virgins.