Following Like You’d Understand, Anyway-awarded the Story Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award-Jim Shepard returns with an even more wildly diverse collection of astonishingly observant stories. Like an expert curator, he populates the vastness of human experience-from its bizarre fringes and lonely, breathtaking pinnacles to the hopelessly mediocre and desperately below average-with brilliant scientists, reluctant soldiers, workaholic artists, female explorers, depraved murderers, and deluded losers, all wholly convincing and utterly fascinating.