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  The Short Stories of George...

  George Gissing

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  George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.  
  He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent.  By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero. 
  In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. 
  On release he decided to start over.  In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. 
  Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell.  His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static.  Something had to change.  And it did. 
  By 1884 The Unclassed was published.  Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. 
  In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. 
  Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250.  
  Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience.  
  Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. 
  George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk. 
   This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing.  Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations. 
   
  01 - The Short Stories of George Gissing - An Introduction 
  02 - The House of Cobwebs by George Gissing 
  03 - An Inspiration by George Gissing 
  04 - A Capitalist by George Gissing 
  05 - A Profitable Weakness by George Gissing

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  Stories and Songs for Children

  Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian...

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  An enchanting collection of stories, fables and songs, perfect for bedtime.

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  The Shadow in the Rose Garden

  D H Lawrence

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  'The Shadow in the Rose Garden'. Lawrence is often accused of misogyny and this story used as evidence against him. There is the simple but honest mine worker, who has taken on a wife who is 'above' him but who is struggling to understand her and her feelings for him. Slowly, the story unravels the woman's past. The reader cannot be entirely unsympathetic to her plight, Lawrence is too good a writer to let that happen, but her dishonesty has probably ruined two lives and our feelings are for the husband.

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  Man of the Month Club: JUNE - An...

  Ann Omasta, Callie Love

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  Peaceful, free-spirited Summer is the last person anyone expected to be paired with angry, tough-guy Killian, but the Man of the Month Club matchmaking application is full of surprises. 
  Summer Flynn is a modern-day flower child. She believes there’s no problem that crystals, sage, and positive thoughts can’t fix. 
  Killian Jenkins has had a hard life. He knows that certain problems can only be handled by roughing-up the bad guy. 
  These two have fundamentally different approaches to life. Summer believes in peace, love, and harmony. Killian believes in the absolute power of his fists. 
  Will these two extreme opposites be able to meet in the middle? Or did the Man of the Month Club matchmaking application make a terrible mismatch this month? Find out when you read Man of the Month Club: JUNE. 
  The Hot Shots of Romance Quickies are scorching short stories featuring sexy heroes, curvy heroines, seductive instalove, sizzling bedroom scenes, and satisfying happily-ever-after endings. Start anywhere. Binge-listen to them all. Grab JUNE now and enjoy a perfectly-portioned taste of steamy romance to satisfy your craving.

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  Brontë Sisters The: Essential...

  Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë,...

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  This Audiobook contains The Essential Collection of The Brontë Sisters.- Agnes Grey [Anne Brontë]The novel tells the story of Agnes Grey, the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn the money to care for herself, she takes one of the few jobs allowed to respectable women in the early Victorian era – the role of governess to the children of the wealthy. In working with two different families (the Bloomfields and the Murrays), she comes to learn about the troubles that face a young woman who must try to rein in unruly, spoiled children for a living, and about the ability of wealth and status to destroy social values. After her father's death, Agnes opens a small school with her mother and finds happiness with a man who loves her for herself. They have three children at the end of the novel, Edward, Agnes and Mary - Jane Eyre [Charlotte Brontë]Jane Eyre is not your typical romance. It is a story of a woman who struggles with a world in which she doesn't quite fit. Once finished with her schooling, and with no family that really cares of her she strikes out on her own as a governess. Jane Eyre searches for love, someone to care for her, and someone to care for, and finds it in unexpected places.- Wuthering Heights [Emily Brontë]A tale of passion set in the bleak Yorkshire moors in mid 19thC, far from the Victorian uprightness, Wuthering Heights depicts the mutual love of Catherine and Heathcliff till destruction rends the narration; yet cruelty is only to be met with forgiveness in the following generations. Romantic, impassioned and wild, it is also a dark journey in the human soul.

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  Bernice Bobs Her Hair

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
   
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
   
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack. 
   
  His classic ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’ carefully pulls apart the relationship between two cousins one hot summer.  Something has to give and with Fitzgerald its an absolute certainty that the brittle lives of young women finally snap in unique ways.

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