In each of these tales Margaret Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: in a few brief pages we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age.  By superimposing the past on the present, Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery.  Richly layered and disturbing, poignant at times and scathingly witty at others, the stories in <i>Wilderness Tips</i> take us into the strange and secret places of the heart and inform the familiar world in which we live with truths that cut to the bone.<br><br><br>Margaret Atwood is the author of over twenty-five books, including fiction, poetry, and essays.  Among her most recent works are the bestselling novels <i>Alias Grace</i> and <i>The Robber Bride</i> and the collections <i>Wilderness Tips</i> and <i>Good Bones and Simple Murders.</i>  She lives in Toronto.