Dark and witty tales from the gleefully inventive Margaret Atwood . Witty verve, imaginative inventiveness and verbal sizzle vivify every page' Peter Kemp, Sunday TimesA recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.'Stone Mattress, a collection of nine acerbic, mischievous, gulpable short stories, addresses themes that will resonate with anyone familiar with Atwood's writing. Atwood's gimlet eye and sharp tongue are turned on the ageing process to painfully accurate effect' Harper's Bazaar