Stone Mattress

From the #1New York Timesbestselling author ofThe Handmaid's Tale

In this extraordinary collection, Margaret Atwood gives us nine unforgettable tales that reveal the grotesque, delightfully wicked facets of humanity. ';Alphinland,' the first of three loosely linked tales, introduces us to a fantasy writer who is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. In ';Lusus Naturae,' a young woman, monstrously transformed by a genetic defect, is mistaken for a vampire.

And in the title story, a woman who has killed four husbands discovers an opportunity to exact vengeance on the first man who ever wronged her. By turns thrilling, funny, and thought-provoking, Stone Mattress affirms Atwood as our greatest creator of worldsand as an incisive chronicler of our darkest impulses.