Stone mattress is a short story collection which includes nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in "Alphinland," the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists. In "The freeze-dried bridegroom," a man who bids on an auctioned storage space has a surprise. In "Lusus naturae," a woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. In "Torching the dusties," an elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. And in "Stone mattress," a long-ago crime is avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.