An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.

A penetrating work of reportage on Venice. "Searching observations and astonishing comprehension of the Venetian taste and character" (New York Herald Tribune).

Seven “remarkable” stories from the bestselling author of The Group (The New York Times). Two American tourists find themselves seriously befuddled by their unorthodox Italian guide. A hospitalized graduate student turns the sounds of pain and despair into music. A family is tragically taken apart, and then reformed, by a deadly outbreak of influenza. The short fiction in this collection, some of it autobiographical in inspiration, reflects both the adept, witty storytelling and the insightful social commentary of New York Times–bestselling author Mary McCarthy. A National Book Award finalist known for such novels as Birds in America and The Groves of Academe—as well as memoir (Memories of a Catholic Girlhood) and travel writing (Venice Observed)—McCarthy shows in Cast a Cold Eye why she has been called “a brilliant writer with a rare talent for corrosive satire” (The Atlantic Monthly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.

The celebrated author of The Group offers a “clever, witty, polished” portrait of the 1940s NYC literary bohemia she knew so well in this debut novel (The New York Times). Margaret Sargent is young and fearless, a deep thinker inspired by the bohemian energy that abounds in New York City in the years leading up to the Second World War. With careless abandon, she destroys her marriage and numerous love affairs as she moves through the social circles of artists and writers, playing at the fringes of political extremism. She is an enigma, often wanton and frivolous, but possessing intelligence and a razor-sharp wit, as well as a troubling core of inner darkness, self-doubt, and puzzling tendencies toward self-destruction. For Margaret, urban life in the 1930s is an ongoing adventure—ever-changing, always surprising, and deeply, profoundly unsatisfying. Mary McCarthy, author of the bestselling American classic The Group, burst boldly onto the literary scene with her provocative debut, The Company She Keeps. A brilliant, stylistically inventive novel, it offers a rich portrait of a truly fascinating protagonist in six revealing episodes. Love her, despise her, or fear for her, you will never forget Margaret Sargent. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.

The author recalls her childhood in England during the last two decades of Queen Victoria's reign.

In these memoirs, written before her death in 1989, the acclaimed author of The Group chronicles the breakup of her first marriage, her move to Greenwich Village, and the checkered beginnings of her literary career. Captures McCarthy in the act of becoming a writer--and a literary personality.

What secrets are held between friends? Drene, a dramatic, moody sculptor, shares many secrets with his childhood friend, Graylock. Women wed and wooed,

As Told by Herself offers the first systematic study of women's autobiographical writing about childhood. More than 175 works—primarily from English-speaking countries and France, as well as other European countries—are presented here in historical sequence, allowing Lorna Martens to discern and reveal patterns as they emerge and change over time. What do the authors divulge, conceal, and emphasize? How do they understand the experience of growing up as girls? How do they understand themselves as parts of family or social groups, and what role do other individuals play in their recollections? To what extent do they concern themselves with issues of memory, truth, and fictionalization? Stopping just before second-wave feminism brought an explosion in women's childhood autobiographical writing, As Told by Herself explores the genre's roots and development from the mid-nineteenth century, and recovers many works that have been neglected or forgotten. The result illustrates how previous generations of women—in a variety of places and circumstances—understood themselves and their upbringing, and how they thought to present themselves to contemporary and future readers.

This smash bestseller about privileged Vassar classmates shocked America in the sixties and remains “juicy . . . witty . . . brilliant” (Cosmopolitan). At Vassar, they were known as “the group”—eight young women of privilege, the closest of friends, an eclectic mix of vibrant personalities. A week after graduation in 1933, they all gather for the wedding of Kay Strong, one of their own, before going their separate ways in the world. In the years that follow, they will each know accomplishment and loss in equal measure, pursuing careers and marriage, experiencing the joys and traumas of sexual awakening and motherhood, all while suffering through betrayals, infidelities, and sometimes madness. Some of them will drift apart. Some will play important roles in the personal dramas of others. But it is tragedy that will ultimately unite the group once again. A novel that stunned the world when it was first published in 1963, Mary McCarthy’s The Group found acclaim, controversy, and a place atop the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years for its frank and controversial exploration of women’s issues, social concerns, and sexuality. A blistering satire of the mores of an emergent generation of women, The Group is McCarthy’s enduring masterpiece, still as relevant, powerful, and wonderfully entertaining fifty years on. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.