A collection of essays about the author's life with a focus on his life in prison.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved author of The Handmaid’s Tale reimagines Shakespeare’s final, great play, The Tempest, in a gripping and emotionally rich novel of passion and revenge. “A marvel of gorgeous yet economical prose, in the service of a story that’s utterly heartbreaking yet pierced by humor, with a plot that retains considerable subtlety even as the original’s back story falls neatly into place.”—The New York Times Book Review Felix is at the top of his game as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. Now he’s staging aTempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, but it will also heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge, which, after twelve years, arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, retribution, and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own. Praise for Hag-Seed “What makes the book thrilling, and hugely pleasurable, is how closely Atwood hews to Shakespeare even as she casts her own potent charms, rap-composition included. . . . Part Shakespeare, part Atwood, Hag-Seed is a most delicate monster—and that’s ‘delicate’ in the 17th-century sense. It’s delightful.”—Boston Globe “Atwood has designed an ingenious doubling of the plot of The Tempest: Felix, the usurped director, finds himself cast by circumstances as a real-life version of Prospero, the usurped Duke. If you know the play well, these echoes grow stronger when Felix decides to exact his revenge by conjuring up a new version of The Tempest designed to overwhelm his enemies.”—Washington Post “A funny and heartwarming tale of revenge and redemption . . . Hag-Seed is a remarkable contribution to the canon.”—Bustle

A PopSugar Best Book of the Year To call these unsettling times is an understatement: our political leaders are less and less respectable; in business, cheating, lying, and stealing are hazily defined; and in daily life, technology permits us to act in ways inconceivable without it. Yet somehow, people still draw lines between what is acceptable and what is not. In Behaving Badly, Eden Collinsworth speaks with a wide range of figures—from experts to everyday people—to parse out the parameters of modern morality. In her quest, she squares off with, among others, a neuroscientist who explains why we’re not necessarily designed to be good; a CEO fired for blowing the whistle on his multinational corporation; and the cheerfully unrepen­tant founder of a website facilitating affairs for married people. Fearless, timely, and always thought-provoking, Behaving Badly takes us on an unforgettable journey through the treacherous territory of right and wrong.

The United States incarcerates far more people than any other country in the world, at rates nearly ten times higher than other liberal democracies. Indeed, while the U.S. is home to 5 percent of the world's population, it contains nearly 25 percent of its prisoners. But the extent of American cruelty goes beyond simply locking people up. At every stage of the criminal justice process - plea bargaining, sentencing, prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole, and societal reentry - the U.S. is harsher and more punitive than other comparable countries. In Unusually Cruel, Marc Morjé Howard argues that the American criminal justice and prison systems are exceptional - in a truly shameful way. Although other scholars have focused on the internal dynamics that have produced this massive carceral system, Howard provides the first sustained comparative analysis that shows just how far the U.S. lies outside the norm of established democracies. And, by highlighting how other countries successfully apply less punitive and more productive policies, he provides plausible solutions to addressing America's criminal justice quagmire.

In this satirical send-up of the Canadian music scene, maverick band manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final, flailing, and destructive bid for glory as he attempts to pull the ultimate scam on the Calgary Folk Festival.

Maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final destructive bid for glory at the Calgary Folk Festival. Travel in the entertaining company of a man made of equal parts bullshit and inspiration, in what is ultimately a twisted panegyric to the power of strange music to change people from the inside out. At turns funny and strangely sobering, this “found memoir” is a picaresque tale of inspired, heroic deceit, incompetence, and — just possibly — triumph. Follow the flailing escapades of maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette at the Calgary Folk Festival, as he leaves a trail of empty liquor bottles, cigarette butts, bruised egos, and obliterated relationships behind him. His top headlining act has abandoned him for the Big Time. In a fit of self-delusion or pure genius (or perhaps a bit of both), Ouiniette devises an intricate scam, a last hurrah in an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of his girlfriend, the music industry, and the rest of the world. He reveals his path of destruction in his own transparently self-justifying, explosive, profane words, with digressions into the Edmonton hardcore punk rock scene, the Yugoslavian Civil War, and other epicentres of chaos.