• Two of English author George Gissing’s Victorian-age novels are in this Kindle ebook: The Odd Women & The Nether World

The Odd Women (1893)
A story about four women in London, their lives and loves. The book is believed to have been named for a time during the Victorian era where there were one million more women than men. The women who remained single were called the "odd women."
As the novel begins Alice and Virginia Madden move to London and renew their friendship with Rhoda. She is living with Mary Barfoot, anrmed they teach secretarial skills to young middle-class women. Monica Madden, the youngest and prettiest sister, is living-in above a shop in London. She is "stalked" by Edmund Widdowson who eventually brow-beats her into marriage but his jealous obsession suffocates Monica's life.
Meanwhile Mary's cousin Everard court Rhoda, who seems determined to turn down a proposal to show her solidarity with the "odd women". Monica meets Bevis, a middle-class man who represents the romantic ideal.

The Nether World (1889)
One of Gissing's finest novels involves Michael, the heir to a fortune. He soon returns to London to rescues his granddaughter.
This is a highly dramatic, tale of a man shaped by poverty. It involves life among the artisans, factory-girls, and slum-dwellers lays bare the economic forces that determine the life of those born to labor.

About The Author
British author George Robert Gissing (1857 –1903) was born in Yorkshire and later moved to America where he wrote for the Chicago Times. His best known novels include The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893). Gissing visited Italy in 1897-1898, recounted in his travel book By the Ionian Sea (1901). While in Siena, he wrote Charles Dickens: a Critical Study.
In 1897 Gissing met H. G. Wells and his wife, who spent the spring with him and his sister at Budleigh Salterton. Wells said Gissing was "no longer the glorious, indefatigable, impracticable youth of the London flat, but a damaged and ailing man, full of ill-advised precautions against the imaginary illnesses that were his interpretations of a general malaise."
In July 1898, he met Gabrielle Marie Edith Fleury (1868–1954), a Frenchwoman who approached him with a request to translate New Grub Street. Ten months later, they became partners in a common-law marriage. They moved to France, where he remained, returning to England in 1901 for a six-week stay in a sanatorium.