In the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale

Among Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the guts of the intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, amazing, unscrupulous Zenia is definitely nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former close friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony-university classmates years ago-were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and also have met regular for lunch since, obsessively retracing the damaging swath she once trim through their lives. A brilliantly inventive fabulist, Zenia had a talent for exploiting her friends’ weaknesses, wielding intimacy as a tool and cheating them of cash, time, sympathy, and guys. But 1 day, five years after her funeral, they are shocked to catch view of Zenia: actually her death appears to have been just one more fiction. As the three females plot to confront their larger-than-life nemesis, Atwood shows herself a gleefully acute observer of the treacherous shoals of friendship, trust, desire, and power.