Offred is a Handmaid. She has only one function: to breed. If she refuses to play her part she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. She may walk daily to the market and utter demure words to other Handmaid's, but her role is fixed, her freedom a forgotten concept.

* Atwood's Booker prize-winning novel reissued with a striking new jacket along with other titles from Margaret Atwood's backlist

A feminist retelling, Penelope's slyly brilliant side of the story, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

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.

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; and Toby, who watches and waits from her rooftop garden. Is anyone else out there.