Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy's landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures--and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before. Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity--and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow. Praise for Woman on the Edge of Time "This is one of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning. Whether you are reading Marge Piercy's great work again or for the first time, it will remind you that we are creating the future with every choice we make." --Gloria Steinem "An ambitious, unusual novel about the possibilities for moral courage in contemporary society." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer "A stunning, even astonishing novel . . . marvelous and compelling." -- Publishers Weekly "Connie Ramos's world is cuttingly real." --Newsweek "Absorbing and exciting." -- The New York Times Book Review From the Trade Paperback edition.

Originally published in 1979, Vida is Marge Piercy's classic bookend to the '60s. Vida is full of the pleasures and pains, the experiments, disasters, and victories of an extraordinary band of people. At the center of the novel stands Vida Asch. She has lived underground for almost a decade. Back in the '60s she was a political star of the exuberant antiwar movement--a red-haired beauty photographed for the pages of Life magazine--charismatic, passionate, and totally sure she would prevail. Now, a decade later, Vida is on the run, her star-quality replaced by stubborn courage. She comes briefly to rest in a safe house on Cape Cod. To her surprise and annoyance, she finds another person in the house, a fugitive, Joel, ten years younger than she, a kid who dropped into the underground out of the army. As they spend the next days together, Vida finds herself warming toward a man for the first time in years, knowing the dangers all too well. As counterpoint to the underground '70s, Marge Piercy tells the extraordinary tale of the optimistic '60s, the thousands of people who were members of SAW (Students Against the War) and of the handful who formed a fierce group called the Little Red Wagon. Piercy's characters make vivid and comprehensible the desperation, the courage, and the blind rage of a time when "action" could appear to some to be a more rational choice than the vote. A new introduction by Marge Piercy situates the book, and the author, in the times from which they emerged.

Life is hard in post-Civil War New York, but change is in the air. Women are agitating for the vote and other rights. Immigrants are pouring into the city, bringing a new spirit in their wake. Among them is Freydeh, who lives in a tiny tenement flat with eight others and works at as many jobs as she can handle in hopes of raising enough money to bring her beloved family over to America from Russia. And she has a dream: someday, she will own a place and a business of her own. Then she receives a letter - many months after it was first posted - containing devastating news: her parents have died in a cholera epidemic. After their death, Freydeh's sister set off to America without them, all by herself, and according to the letter would have arrived in the port of New York many months earlier. Freydeh is horrified and terrified for her little sister, who appears to be adrift somewhere in the city. Freydeh puts everything else aside and launches a search to find her, which turns into something of a hunt for a needle in a haystack. Interweaved with Freydeh's story is a vividly wrought account of the suffragette movement and the fight to secure women’s rights. SEX WARS is a fascinating novel that only recreates a turbulent period in history but also illustrates the plight and ultimately the triumph of one woman on a quest.

A novel on an unusual household in our day and age, three generations of women living together in Boston. They are a lawyer who owns the house, her ailing mother--the mother had no time for the lawyer before she fell ill--and the lawyer's daughter, unemployed and on drugs.

The internationally renowned novelist and poet creates a very contemporary version of the story of Romeo and Juliet set in the twin realms of college and national politics. In the prominent political family of the Dickensons, ambition comes first, and Melissa, the third child, has always felt she came last. Going away to college offers a chance at love and a life free from her brilliant mother's constant scrutiny. Blake, a child of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage, has been raised by lawyers whose defence of death row cases has brought them into fierce dispute with Melissa's father, now a senator, then governor of Pennsylvania. When Melissa meets Blake at College, their passion is immediate. Yet Blake is keeping a dangerous secret from Melissa, one that could destroy both them and their families. Dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity and the consequences of ambition, this thoughtful beautifully written story is a page turner with an edge.

Sleeping with Cats is the intimate memoir of acclaimed author and poet, Marge Piercy whose bestselling novels include Woman on the Edge of Time, Body of Glass and Braided Lives. Focusing on her emotional life, rather than her literary or political adventures, here she reveals the life behind her poems and novels, and the origins of her remarkable literary career. Piercy includes several of her memorable poems and revisits the people, the circumstances, and the actions which inspired her to write them, laying bare the origins of both her fiction and poetry. Throughout her life are her cats, steadfast companions who remain while the people in her life come and go. Always honest and thoroughly compelling, Sleeping with Cats is a fascinating account of this extraordinary and complex woman's life.

From the author of Longings of Women and Body of Glass, this novel recreates the role that women played during the French Revolution.

"For Leslie, the heroine of this searching novel, the cost of living - and loving - is getting higher and higher. First of all, she is miserable for having lost her lover, Valerie, to another woman. And she has begun to doubt just about everything about her life. Now, she is involved in a strange erotic triangle with Honor, an adolescent virgin who has romantic ideals and Bernie, a homosexual street hustler trying to settle down. Leslie and Bernie both want Honor. They also want each other. But all Honor wants is a little spice in her life. Here is a powerful, searing novel of three young dreamers caught up in a lifestyle they can neither accept nor change."--Author's website (viewed May 1, 2023).

Originally published in 1970, Marge Piercy's second novel follows the lives of four teenagers in a near-future society as they rebel against a military draft and the system. The occupation of Franklin High School begins, and with it, the open rebellion of America's youth against their channelled, unrewarding lives and the self-serving, ...

Marge Piercy's debut collection of short stories brings us glimpses into the lives of everyday women moving through and making sense of their daily internal and external worlds. Keeping to the engaging, accessible language of Piercy's novels, the collection spans decades of her writing along with a range of locations, ages, and emotional states of her protagonists.