Stone Mattress

Stone Mattress: Nine Tales gathers nine stories by Margaret Atwood. In one, a fantasy writer who has lately lost her husband hears his voice as she makes her way through a winter storm. Another follows an older woman with Charles Bonnet syndrome as she reckons with the small figures she sees while a new populist group prepares to burn down her retirement residence. Elsewhere a woman with a genetic abnormality is taken for a vampire, and an old crime is avenged in the Arctic through a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatalite. Betrayal and relations between men and women run through the tales.

Why You Should Read?

• Follow a fantasy writer who hears her late husband's voice during a winter storm.
• Meet an older woman who lives with Charles Bonnet syndrome and the small figures she sees.
• Discover a story in which a woman with a genetic abnormality is taken for a vampire.
• Experience a long-ago crime avenged in the Arctic through a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatalite.

About the Author

Margaret Atwood, born November 18, 1939, is a Canadian inventor, literary critic, poet and novelist. Since 1961 she has published 18 novels, 18 poetry books, 11 nonfiction works and nine short fiction collections. She is best known for The Handmaid's Tale, a 1985 dystopian novel. Her honors include two Booker Prizes, the Franz Kafka Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Order of Canada, a Prince of Asturias Award for literature, and lifetime achievement honors from PEN Center USA and the National Book Critics. She helped found the Writers' Trust of Canada and the Griffin Poetry Prize and invented the LongPen.