This Newbery Award-winning children's classic tells the story of Jessie, a young boy snatched off the docks in New Orleans and thrown aboard a slave ship in a suspenseful and horrifying depiction of survival.

A freed slave escapes his bad debts in New Orleans by stowing away on a slave ship en route to Africa.

Irish fiddler Sullivan escapes from prison after being implicated in the loss of Erasmus Kemp's slave ship, only to reencounter his nemesis in a struggle that pits Kemp's desire for wealth against Sullivan's advocacy for the disadvantaged.

Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge, is a rapacious and cunning boy who grows up to be a forger, a scoundrel, and the man who will be both the making and the undoing of Scrooge. They meet as youths in the gloomy confines of Professor Drabb's Academy for Boys, where Marley begins their twisted friendship by initiating the innocent Scrooge into the gentle art of extortion. Years later, in the dank heart of London, their shared ambition...