Atwood, Margaret

When all the secrets of her life are about to be exposed, a young woman plans her own "accidental death.".

A feminist painter returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her work and confronts her memories, family, and friends.

Jimmy, perhaps the last living human unaltered by science, struggles for survival in a post-apocalyptic world as he tries to make sense of how everything went wrong, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx, a girl he met through a kiddie porn Web site.

When an economic and social collapse finds Stan and Charmaine, a married couple, living in their car and exposed to the dangers on the streets, they see the Positron Project as an answer to their prayers. Everyone who participates is allowed to live in the comfortable town of Consilience with reliable employment, a roof over their head, and no worry for where their next meal will come from. The only trade off is, after living comfortably for six months, they must spend time as inmates at the local prison, after which time they can return to their home in Consilience. But when Charmaine becomes entangled in a romance with another man, the Positron Project begins to look less like an answer to prayers and more like a doomed prophecy coming to fruition.

Contains nine short stories by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.

Margaret Atwood explores the idea of debt as a central motif in the history of religion, literature, and the structure of human societies, looking at debt as a powerful metaphor in the human imagination.