Mark Osmun's great imagination has taken us behind the scenes of a story we have read or watched on television annually since we were kids. Even with our familiarity with the story we knew virtually nothing about Jacob Marley, without whom The Christmas Carol would never have been written. Five stars for cleverness alone. To his credit, Osmun chose not to imitate the Dicken's style yet he put coal dust in my teeth together with a clostrophobic shortness of breath as I read through Marley's experience. Marley's journey is a wonderful metaphor for the journey we all travel as we ask questions about good and evil and our relationships with God and our fellow man. Marley's quest to save Scrooge is a journey of love from a man who has known everything but love. "When the time comes - How will you choose?"

Marley's Ghost departs from Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" style to good effect. Dickens wrote for readers of the 1800s and there are very few of them reading today. Rather than invite the wrath of modern readers and academia by trying to redo Dickens, the author of "Marley's Ghost" instead writes in a style suitable to today's readers yet is able to make us believe we are IN the 1800s, if not OF the 1800s. He also, for the first time, tackles problems left unaddressed by Dickens. Dickens, a devoted Christian, has Marley not only ascend from hell, but do so with an offer of redemption for Scrooge -- thus contradicting any number of Christian doctrines. "Marley's Ghost" invents, among other things, ways to reconcile such problems. The novel brings a new, dark edge to the story and contributes a fresh way of seeing the classic. A great holiday present.

In Marley's Ghost, Mark Osmun has written a brilliant "prequel" to Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol". Here is the story of Jacob Marley whose ghost appeared to Ebenezer Scrooge to announce the coming of three spirits that legendary Christmas Eve. Jacob was a fugitive, prodigy, gambler, miner, mentor, corruptor and Ebenezer's partner in exploiting the vulnerable, the unwary, and the needy. Jacob was himself both victim and villain, capable of nobility and vile behavior. After his death Jacob wanders a frozen hell seeking answers and redemption. There he becomes a pawn in the battle between Light and Dark, ultimately compelled to choose between God and the Devil as the future of all human kind hangs in the balance. Marley's Ghost is a compelling, superbly crafted, original novel that does full justice to Dickens and is a memorable testament which may well become a classic itself!