Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of northern Michigan, he gives little thought to his own talent. But with his acceptance at U.C. Berkeley, he realizes the extent --- and the risks --- of his singular gifts. California in the ’70s is a seduction, opening Milo’s eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there --- and the rival he meets alongside her --- will haunt him for the rest of his life. For Milo’s brilliance is entwined with a dark need that soon grows to threaten his work, his family, even his existence.

Diana Athill charmed readers with her prize-winning memoir, SOMEWHERE TOWARDS THE END, which transformed her into an unexpected literary star. Now, on the eve of her 98th birthday, Athill has written a sequel every bit as unsentimental, candid and beguiling as her most beloved work. Writing from her cozy room in Highgate, London, Athill begins to reflect on the things that matter after a lifetime of remarkable experiences, and the memories that have risen to the surface and sustain her in her very old age.

In THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS, acclaimed travel writer Eric Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places --- like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley --- to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity. And he walks the same paths as the geniuses who flourished in these settings to see if the spirit of what inspired figures like Socrates, Michelangelo and Leonardo remains.

The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture, we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind and more interested in creating and mastering technologies that will yield material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope. In THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS, Marilynne Robinson delivers an impassioned critique of our contemporary society while arguing that reverence must be given to who we are and what we are: creatures of singular interest and value, despite our errors and depredations.

A poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A WILD SWAN, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away --- the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder --- are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation.

Anthony Marra’s collection introduces a cast of remarkable characters whose lives intersect in ways both life-affirming and heartbreaking. A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina. A chorus of women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love. Young men across the former USSR face violence at home and in the military. And great sacrifices are made in the name of an oil landscape that is unremarkable except for the almost incomprehensibly peaceful past it depicts.

A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads young Pip Tyler to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world --- including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.

In six masterly stories, Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. He returns to his signature subject, North Korea, in the title story, which depicts two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. FORTUNE SMILES gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering a new way of looking at the world.

Many of these stories are set in Maine, but THE STATE WE'RE IN is about more than geographical location. Some characters have arrived in Maine by accident, others are trying to escape. Ann Beattie's collection is woven around Jocelyn, a wry, disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle while attending summer school. As in life, the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn’s --- sometimes challenging, sometimes embellishing her view.

From 1957 to 1964, Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa channeled nearly all of their considerable powers into destroying each other. Kennedy's battle with Hoffa burst into the public consciousness with the 1957 Senate Rackets Committee hearings and intensified when his brother named him attorney general in 1961. RFK put together a "Get Hoffa" squad within the Justice Department, devoted to destroying one man. But Hoffa, with nearly unlimited Teamster funds, was not about to roll over.