Teenage eroticism is central to The Catch Trap (1979), one of her few works of standard fiction. A gay relationship between two young acrobats plays out against a richly detailed backdrop of American circus life in the 1940s and 1950s. Although the furtiveness and self-doubts of those decades affect the characters' actions, the youths struggle to maintain their bond despite the objections of adults.

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Bradley also edited Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine and numerous Sword and Sorceress anthologies. She is also credited with co-founding the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1966.

Although coy about her views on Neo-paganism, Bradley explored occult spirituality, was ordained in a modern Gnostic denomination, and considered contemporary goddess worship to be consistent with a historically pure form of Christianity. By the 1990s she identified as Christian and her funeral rites took place in a Berkeley Episcopal church.

In 1964 Bradley married eccentric numismatist Walter Breen, who shared her interests in science fiction and Gnostic Christianity; they had two children. Breen, who under the pseudonym J. Z. Eglinton wrote Greek Love (1964), was an advocate of man/boy love and there has been speculation that awareness of this side of his personality influenced the undercurrent of sexual plots involving young people in some of Bradley's fiction.

Bradley and Breen were Berkeley neighbors after their 1979 separation. Bradley's final years were scarred by a lawsuit implicating her in Breen's 1991 conviction for sex with a minor; Bradley was accused of knowing about but not acknowledging his activities. The lawsuit was dropped as the result of a financial settlement with the victim just prior to Bradley's death in 1999. Breen, meanwhile, died in prison in 1993.

After a series of strokes beginning in 1987, Bradley died in Berkeley of a heart attack on September 25, 1999. Her ashes were scattered on Glastonbury Tor in England.

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