Every fairy tale seems to end with a woman finding love after years of pining away for the Man of Her Dreams. They then settle down, buy a house with a white picket fence, have 2.4 children and live happily ever after. Well buckle up, because this is what really happens after 'I Do'.Meet Maggie, Eva and Lisa, founders of The Scarlet Letter Society. Named as such due to their various infidelities, both physical and emotional, the 'SLS' is these womens' refusal to be shamed like Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale of forbidden longing. Maggie is twice-divorced and juggling three lovers—one of whom is her first ex-husband. Eva is trapped in a loveless marriage and has turned to her young intern and a seductive French chef for satisfaction. Lisa dreams of one day becoming a mother, but her husband has more romantic interest in her footwear than he does in her.Once a month, these women meet at their local bookstore to discuss love, life and literature....

A poignant and evocative novel of self-discovery that follows a young man in America and abroad, on a journey into adulthood during the turbulent 1960sIt is 1964, and Peter Levi, a young student and bird watcher, has come to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Shy and innocent at nineteen years old, he arrives fresh from an extended Maine holiday with his vivacious mother, and is determined to live a life free of unwanted complications and unnecessary stress. But this is an era of great change in the world, a time when war is looming in Southeast Asia and social unrest is simmering. There is much to trouble and confuse the young American as he journeys through foreign countries—and feelings—into adulthood. For Peter, the simplicity of childhood is over—and his new life is becoming increasingly complex in a world growing more unrecognizable by the day.Mary McCarthy's splendid Birds of America is a moving and surprising coming-of-age tale: the unforgettable...

A suspenseful and sometimes horrifying novel of manners, whose plot and odd mix of characters combine to produce an unorthodox thriller about the hijacking of a Middle East-bound jetliner over France in early 1975. "Psychologically astute, ironic and ultimately heartbreaking"(Publishers Weekly).

In the first volume of the definitive edition of her fiction, four novels and eight classic stories by the witty and provocative writer who defined a generation.Seventy-five years ago Mary McCarthy provoked a scandal with her electrifying debut novel, The Company She Keeps (1942), announcing the arrival of a major new voice in American literature. A candid, thinly-veiled portrait of the late-1930s New York intellectual scene, its penetrating gaze and creative fusion of life and literature—"mutual plagiarism," she called it—became the hallmark of McCarthy's fiction, which the Library of America now presents in full for the first time in deluxe collector's edition. The Oasis (1949), a wicked satire about a failed utopian community, and The Groves of Academe (1952), a pioneering campus novel depicting the insular and often absurd world of academia, burnished her reputation as an acerbic truth-teller, but it was with A...

This is the author's first novel, which relates the experiences of a young bohemian intellectual. The six episodes create a fascinating portrait of a New York social circle of the 1930s. McCarthy's bold insight and virtuoso style won her immediate recognition as one of the most accomplished, versatile, and penetrating writers in americanca.

Written with a trenchant, sardonic edge, "The Group" is a dazzlingly outspoken novel and a captivating look at the social history of America between two world wars. Mary McCarthy's most celebrated novel follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, known simply to their classmates as "the group." An eclectic mix of personalities and upbringings, they meet a week after graduation to watch Kay Strong get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives--traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City. Through the years, some of the friends grow apart and some become entangled in each other's affairs, but all vow not to become like their mothers and fathers. It is only when one of them passes away that they all come back together again to mourn the loss of a friend, a confidante, and most importantly, a member of the group.

Martha Sinnott returns with her second husband to the New England artists' colony she left behind seven years earlier when she divorced her first husband. The townfolk have remained much the same, including Martha's former husband, who has relocated nearby. Martha is in touch with her former friends, who are in touch with her former husband, so Martha should be able to see him as well, shouldn't she?

The seven stories collected here showcase McCarthy's formidable powers of observation, her deliciously witty writing style, and her celebrated talent for dissecting characters with biting acuity. A young woman looks for subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways to escape her unsatisfying marriage; an innocuous single man's friends realize his companionship has an enormous price; and an Italian guide puzzles a traveling pair of Americans.