Extracts from Fiction

Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Fiction’

115
‘Please Sir, I Want Some More!’ Charles Dickens

Oliver was elected as the unwilling spokesman for all the hungry children.

After he was left orphaned by the death of his mother, little Oliver Twist was ‘cared for’ in a State-run workhouse. The officials who ran it were satisfied that the boys were fed according to Government guidelines, but if so the boys found the guidelines wanting. Eventually they decided they must do something about it — or at any rate, that one of them must do something about it.

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116
The Insect on the Leaf Charles Dickens

Scrooge begs the Spirit of Christmas to tell him what will happen to Tiny Tim.

Once, Ebenezer Scrooge thought that disabled children should be left to die. Now, he is all anxiety to know what will become of his clerk’s lame and frail boy, tiny Tim.

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117
A King-Sized Conspiracy Anthony Hope

Rudolf Rassendyll is on holiday in Ruritania when he stumbles across a plot by the King’s brother to steal the crown.

It is the eve of the coronation of the King of Ruritania, and his loyal courtiers have discovered him unconscious, drugged by his wicked brother Michael. But it just so happens that Rudolf Rassendyll, a British holidaymaker, is in the capital, and he looks exactly like the King...

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118
The Footprints at the Gate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

What Dr Mortimer saw beside the body of Sir Charles Baskerville sent him hastily to London, to consult Sherlock Holmes.

The legend of the Baskerville hound, a ghostly dog haunting every generation of that respectable Devonshire family, was not the kind of thing a man of science like Dr Mortimer took seriously. Yet after Sir Charles Baskerville was found dead, something made him rush up to London to consult Sherlock Holmes.

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119
Angel Cat Jerome K. Jerome

Cats do have a conscience: it tells them when to look innocent.

According to Jerome’s friend Jephson, alongside Nonconformists cats are the only creatures in this world with a functioning conscience. ‘You might almost think they had a soul.’

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120
Typical Cat! P. G. Wodehouse

When a cat comes into your life, resistance is futile.

Aspiring author Elizabeth had been needing a little bit of good luck, and finding a stray black cat she named ‘Joseph’ seemed like a good omen.

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