In McCarthy's most famous novel, The Group (1963), she depicts the lives of eight 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) and Cannibals and Missionaries (1979 - are both concerned with the state of modern society, from the cross-currents of radical social change to the psychology of terrorism. As a special feature, this second volume contains McCarthy's 1979 essay 'The Novels that Got Away,' on her unfinished fiction.