The Author’s Library
The Further Adventures of Gentleman Jack and Mr. Twist:
The Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist
The characters in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens have become well known. Yet, many of them are known only as they relate to Liver. In this novel, Alan Montgomery takes the characters and gives them a background before the Dickens novel, and follows that with changes for the future, including growing up, marrying and dealing with a few people who are trying to do away with the legacy of Fagin. The young heroes are forced to face the changes from England to the USA, and that includes love, a fight with a bear, and once again encountering some “friends” from England. Overbearing mothers-in-law are also in their experience. Oliver particularly deals with the pain of falling in love with a person for whom social do’s and don’ts say he cannot have love. Slavery is, after all, just raising its head. “It doesn’t matter what you were when you were young, but only what you become when you grow up.
Thirty Tales for Christmastide
This series of fifteen stories began as a group of ten. Those ten were in a different order and have each been improved in the editing process. Two of those were eliminated entirely – they didn’t “fit” the general plan of the book. Only one of the stories is based on a previously known story – and that was an opera. I hope that in adapting that story for this series, I have been able to give it new meaning and charm.
To my readers, my friends, and my former teachers, let me say that I hope you enjoy the groups of stories. Writing them has given me great joy. Revising them slightly for this edition has been illuminating, too.
