Showing results by narrator "R J Hart" in All Categories

Toby, a survivor of the man-made plague that has swept the earth, is telling stories. Stories left over from the old world, and stories that will determine a new one. Listening hard is young Blackbeard, one of the innocent Crakers, the species designed to replace humanity. Their reluctant prophet, Jimmy-the-Snowman, is in a coma, so they've chosen a new hero—Zeb, the street-smart man Toby loves. As clever Pigoons attack their fragile garden and malevolent Painballers scheme, the small band of survivors will need more than stories.

The sun brightens in the east, reddening the blue-grey haze that marks the distant ocean. The vultures roosting on the hydro poles fan out their wings to dry them. The air smells faintly of burning. The waterless flood—a man-made plague—has ended the world. But two young women have survived: Ren, a young dancer trapped where she worked, in an upmarket sex club (the cleanest dirty girls in town); and Toby, who watches and waits from her rooftop garden. Is anyone else out there?

Good Bones, Simple Murders and The Tent collects together three classic books of short stories. Queen Gertrude gives Hamlet a piece of her mind and a reincarnated bat explains how Bram Stoker got Dracula hopelessly wrong in Good Bones Knowing when to stop is of deadly importance in a game of Murder in the Dark . And a cat goes to heaven and discovers new playthings in The Tent In this bewitching cocktail of prose and poetry, fiction and fairytales, Margaret Atwood brings her astonishing world view to the comings and goings of ordinary life.

A leathery bog-man transforms an old love affair; a sweet, gruesome gift is sent by the wife of an ex-lover; landscape paintings are haunted by the ghost of a young girl. This dazzling collection of ten short stories takes us into familiar Atwood territory to reveal the logic of irrational behaviour and the many textures lying beneath ordinary life.