Searchable Dickens

Speaking of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens' 1843 classic seasonal ghost story, the folks at askSam have posted a free, searchable e-book version of it, including illustrations. It's at www.asksam.com/ebooks/Dickens/Christmas_Carol.asp.

A "Dickens" of a Ghostly December

A Christmas Carol not only is (possibly) Charles Dickens' most famous work of fiction but is, as you undoubtedly know, a ghost story. Unless you've dabbled more deeply into Dickens' legacy, you may not know he followed up during the course of his career with various other short stories and longer pieces returning to the Christmas ghost theme. Next week we will be posting one of them, "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," among our December additions to the free "Vintage Short Mystery Classics" e-book series.

Historical Mystery Quiz of the Week

What was young Sherlock Holmes first case?
a) "The Musgrave Ritual," b) "The Gloria Scott," c) "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton," d) "The Bravoes of Market-Drayton."

A Lunar Mystery

Have you noticed that in the “Radiance” image of the moonscape (one of the desktop backgrounds available in Windows), along with the myriad pockmarks of various-sized meteor craters is the partial rim of what appears to be a vast, circular lunar mountain ridge? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that must have been formed by some ancient mega-meteor, and that a wallop from a meteor that size could have knocked the moon out of . . . or into . . . its present orbit. Obviously the latter—unless, surprisingly, the great blow in fact did not alter the moon’s trajectory.

One of God’s many, mighty mysteries.