More Knowledge by the Volume

Attention, reference-book junkies: Three new releases may help satisfy that never-ending craving for one more juicy morsel of information.

Anyone who instantly recognizes the names of Daniel Quilp, Sir Dinglby Dabber or Charity Pecksniff, for example, will want to peruse “The Charles Dickens Encyclopedia.”

In this new book from the Carol Publishing Group, Michael and Mollie Hardwick examine Dickens’ 15 novels, numerous plays, short stories and lectures--and also offer details about Dickens’ life and times.

Rockers who have pondered what groups lie between ABBA and ZZ Top can find the answers in Adam Dolgins’ “Rock Names,” also from Carol.

And for those who think the dictionary is just too big , the august Oxford University Press has come up with “The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.”

Billing itself as “truly global” in scope, the new abridged OED covers history and literature, technology, science and medicine, popular culture, music and legal affairs.

It’s also not all that short. After all, it does come in two volumes.