One of Dicken's great middle period novels, in which fairy tale, melodrama and realism mingle with halluncinatory power, Dombey and Son weaves together a number of stories which centre upon the family of the self-important merchant, Paul Dombey, and his children Paul and Florence. Supplied with the usual extraordinary cast of Dickensian grotesques, both comic and sinister, the novel also boasts a wonderful villain, in the person of Mr Carker, who tries to seduce Florence and meets his death under a train - the first such death in literary history.