Stone Mattress Nine Wicked Tales [Paperback]

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 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 Mattressaffirms Atwood as our greatest creator of worlds—and as an incisive chronicler of our darkest impulses.    

A Best Book of the Year: NPR, BookRiot

“Eclectic, funny, vibrant, terrifying, beautiful, and utterly delightful.” —The Boston Globe

“A tour de force of wit, style, and discernment.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Astonishing. . . . Powerful. . . . I loved these strange, sharp and wild stories.” —Meg Wolitzer, NPR

“Pure, simple and stunning. . . . Endearing, subtle, quite brilliant.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Powerful. . . . Witty and frequently biting,Stone Mattressis keen to the ways in which we choose, all our lives, to love and to hurt—and in Atwood’s world these two actions are always choices, creating consequences for which we will one day be held to account.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[These] stories have the caustic wit and giddy deviance . . . along with the probing interiority and flinty insights of Atwood’s novels.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
l“r