In the second volume of the definitive edition of her fiction, three novels bythe witty and provocative writer who defined a generation, including thelandmark classic The Group. In Mary McCarthy's most famous novel, The Group (1963), she depicts the lives ofeight Vassar College graduates during the 1930s as they grapple with sex, sexism, money, motherhood, and family. McCarthy's final two novels--Birds of America(1971), a coming of age tale of 19-year-old Peter Levi, who travels to Europeduring the 1960s, and Cannibals and Missionaries (1979), a thriller about a groupof passengers taken hostage on an airplane by militant hijackers--are bothconcerned with the state of modern society, from the cross-currents of radicalsocial change to the psychology of terrorism. As a special feature, this secondvolume contains McCarthy's 1979 essay "The Novels that Got Away," on herunfinished fiction."