Excerpt from Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Concerning my conversations with the president," I say, "I just want to point out that you spend a third of your life listening to Nirvana, whose songs are by a guy who blew his brains out."

Charlotte tilts her head and looks at me like I'm a stranger. "Kurt Cobain took the pain of his life and made it into something that mattered. What did the president leave behind? Uncertainties, emptiness, a thousand rocks to overturn."

She talks like that when she's high. I tap out the joint and lift her headphones.

"Ready for your Nirvana?" I ask.

She looks toward the window. "That sound, I hear it again," she says.

At the window, I peer out into the darkness. It's a normal Palo Alto night—the hiss of sprinklers, blue recycling bins, a raccoon digging in the community garden. Then I notice it, right before my eyes, a small black drone, hovering. Its tiny servos swivel to regard me. Real quick, I snatch the drone out of the air and pull it inside. I close the window and curtains, then study the thing: its shell is made of black foil stretched over tiny struts, like the bones of a bat's wing. Behind a propeller of clear cellophane, a tiny infrared engine throbs with warmth.

"Now will you listen to me?" Charlotte asks. "Now will you stop this president business?"

"It's too late for that," I tell her, and release the drone. As if blind, it bumbles around the room. Is it autonomous? Has someone been operating it, someone watching our house? I lift it from its column of air and flip off its power switch.

Charlotte looks toward her voice remote. "Play music, "she tells it.

Closing her eyes, she waits for me to place the headphones on her ears, where she will hear Kurt Cobain come to life once more.

From the book, Fortune Smilesby Adam Johnson. Copyright (c) 2015 by Adam Johnson. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.