For Leslie, the cost of living--and loving--is getting higher and higher. She has become involved in a strange erotic triangle with Honor, a romantic young woman, and Bernie, a homosexual street hustler. Both Leslie and Bernie want Honor, but all Honor wants is fun. Here is a powerful novel of three young dreamers cuaght up in a life-style they can neither accept nor change.... "A fiercely brilliant writer." MADEMOISELLE

The High Cost of Living

PIERCY, Marge

Harper&Row

Post-Civil War New York City was the battleground of the American dream: an era of vast fortunes and crushing poverty; a time notorious for free love and the emerging rights of women, yet one that saw the rise of brutal sexual repression and the enforcement of prejudice. Though life was hard, the promise of change was in the air. Women were agitating for civil rights, including the vote. Immigrants were pouring into the city, bringing with them a new energy.
Embodying the times is Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish woman from Russia. Living in a tiny tenement flat with eight others, Freydeh juggles numerous jobs to earn passage to New York for her beloved family. Then she learns that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city and begins a search that carries her through brothels and prison.
Interwoven with Freydeh's story is a vividly wrought account of such real-life heroines -- often at odds with the law as well as societal customs -- as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president and an activist for sexual freedom. They were tireless fighters who strove to elevate the position of all women. Depicted as well is the fundamentalist crusader Anthony Comstock, who fought to eliminate sexual expression, pushing for the passage of laws that still haunt our legal system.
In the tradition of her World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy re-creates a turbulent period in American history witnessed through the lives of its most notorious figures and explores the changing attitudes toward women, minorities, religion, and sexuality in nineteenth-century America, a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.

Sex Wars: A Novel of the Turbulent Post-Civil War Period

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

William Morrow

PostCivil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison—as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books. In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.

Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York

United States

William Morrow Paperbacks

Under her mother's constant scrutiny and lost in the shadow of her famous senator father, Melissa is the third child in the politically prominent Dickenson family, where ambition comes first and Melissa often comes last. In college, she meets Blake, a man of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage. His adoptive parents are lawyers whose defense of death-row cases in the past brought them head-to-head with Melissa's father when he was the governor of Pennsylvania. While Melissa and Blake's attraction is immediate and fiery, a dangerous secret lurks beneath their relationship - one that could destroy them . . . and their families. Provocative and beautifully written, and dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity, and the consequences of ambition, The Third Child is a remarkable page-turner.

The Third Child: A Novel

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

Marge Piercy, a writer who is highly praised as both a poet and a novelist, turns her gaze inward as she shares her thoughts on life and explores her development as a woman and writer. She pays tribute to the one loving constant that has offered her comfort and meaning even as the faces and events in her life have changed -- her beloved cats.
With searing honesty, Piercy tells of her strained childhood growing up in a religiously split, working-class family in Detroit. She examines her myriad friendships and relationships, including two painful early marriages, and reveals their effects on her creativity and career. More than a reminiscence of things past, however, Sleeping With Cats is also a celebration of the present and the future, as Piercy shares her views on aging, creativity, and finding a lasting and improbable love with a man fourteen years younger than herself.
A chronicle of the turbulent and exciting journey of one artist's life, Sleeping With Cats is a deeply intimate, unforgettable story.

Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Suzanne Blume has known success and disappointment in equal measure. A respected lawyer who survived two marriages and put two children through college, she now faces the disquieting prospect of her wayward older daughter moving back home. But more troubling still is the news that her mother, a woman of legendary independence who has never truly accepted her daughter nor approved of her choices, has been felled by age and illness. And, for the first time in her life, she needs Suzanne's help.
Intertwining the lives of three generations of contemporary women, master storyteller Marge Piercy plunges into the deepest, most elemental basics of life - love, aging, illness, and death - and emerges with a brave, compassionate exploration of the volatile ground between mothers and daughters.

Three Women: A Novel

Three Women

There is a place where your worst fears meet fresh opportunities...and new chances to know love.
Suzanne Blume has known success and disappointment in equal measure. A respected lawyer who survived two marriages and put two children through college, she now faces the disquieting prospect of her wayward older daughter moving back home. But more troubling still is the news that is delivered to her at court: Her mother, a woman of legendary independence who has never truly accepted her daughter or approved of her choices, has been felled by age and illness. And, for the first time in her life, she needs Suzanne's help.
Intertwining the loves of three generations of contemporary women, master storyteller Marge Piercy brings her exceptional talents to bear on some of the most pressing questions we face today: How do we choose between our own needs and those of the people we love? And how do we overcome our deep resentments and learn to become a family again after years of carving out independent lives?

Manga

HarperTorch

A stirring memoir from the acclaimed writer praised by Thomas Pynchon for having "the guts to go into the deepest core of herself, her time, her history, and risk more than anybody else has so far, just out of a love for the truth and a need to tell it."
Called "breathtakingly ambitious" by the New York Times for her novels' forays into war, history, the lives of the homeless, and the minds of cyborgs, Marge Piercy, one of the few writers of our time to be highly praised as both a poet and a novelist, turns her lens inward for the first time as she shares her thoughts on life and explores her development as a woman and writer. She revisits the people and places that have shaped her experiences and inspired her work. And she pays tribute to the one loving constant that has offered her comfort and meaning even as the faces and events in her life have changed: her beloved cats.
With searing honesty Piercy tells of her strained childhood growing up in a religiously split working-class family in Detroit. She examines her myriad friendships and relationships, including two painful early marriages, and reveals their effects on her creativity and career. More than a reminiscence of things past, however, Sleeping with Cats is also a celebration of the present and the future, as Piercy shares her views on aging, creativity, and finding a lasting and improbable love with a man fourteen years younger than herself. A chronicle of the turbulent and exciting journey of one artist's life, Sleeping with Cats is a deeply intimate, unforgettable story.

The Third Child

The renowned novelist and poet Marge Piercy tells a contemporary love story set in the twin realms of college and national politics
In the politically prominent Dickinson family, ambition comes first, and Melissa, the third child, has always felt that she comes last. Going away to college offers her a chance at a life free from her brilliant mother's constant scrutiny and her famous father's lack of interest.
There she meets Blake, a man of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage. His adoptive parents are lawyers whose defense of death- row cases has brought them head-to-head with Melissa's father, the former governor of Pennsylvania who is now a U.S. senator.
Melissa and Blake's attraction is immediate; their affair, fiery. Yet Blake is keeping a dangerous secret from Melissa, one that could destroy them -- and their families. 
Dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity, and the consequences of ambition, this thoughtful, beautifully written story is a remarkable and provocative page-turner.

William Morrow & Co.

First published in 1979, Vida is Marge Piercys classic bookend to the sixties. Vida is full of the pleasures and pains, the experiments, disasters and victories of an extraordinary band of people. At the centre of the novel stands Vida Asch. She has lived underground for almost a decade.

Vida

Contemporary

Penguin??Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PIERCY, Marge. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by PIERCY, Marge

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PIERCY, Marge. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The High Cost of Living

Sex Wars: A Novel of the Turbulent Post-Civil War Period

Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York

The Third Child: A Novel

Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir

Three Women: A Novel

Three Women

Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir

The Third Child

Vida