A Vintage Shorts "Short Story Month" Selection The author of such towering novels as The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood's imaginative prowess dazzles just as vividly in her short fiction. "Stone Mattress"--witty, grotesque, and utterly hilarious--is an exemplar of Atwood's tremendous capacity for capturing our darkest impulses on the page. Verna, aging widow, boards a cruise ship bound for the Arctic in search of her next husband. The last four had suffered regrettable tragedies and left Verna wickedly wealthy in their wake. But, instead Verna finds unwitting Bob, the first man to have ever wronged her. Single, reasonably near to his grave, ordinary, attracted to her like all the others were--Bob is all-too-easy prey for Verna's merciless revenge. An ebook short.