Parallel Lives
These stories illuminate the possibilities and choices that forge a life. Consider these juxtaposed lives by traversing the multiverse, jumping through time, or peering into the world of the person next door.
The midnight library by Matt Haig
Somewhere there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. Nora has the opportunity to choose a new life: following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams. She must decide what is fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living.
Trigger warning: suicide attempt
The space between worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Multiverse travel is possible, but no one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be good at dying, is identified as a perfect candidate for multiverse travel. But when one of her doppelgängers dies, Cara discovers a plot that endangers the entire multiverse.
Trigger warning: emotional and physical abuse
If I had your face by Frances Cha
Kyuri, an achingly beautiful woman, prides herself on her realism, but an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood. Miho is an orphaned artist who studied in New York. Now she's in a precarious relationship with the heir to a conglomerate. Down the hall lives Ara, a hairstylist obssessed with a boy-band pop star. And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed wanting to have a baby while struggling in Korea's brutal economy. Their tentative friendships may turn out to save them.
Or what you will by Jo Walton
He has been a dragon with a boy on his back, a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been a god. But "he" is in fact a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author. But Sylvia won't live forever. When she dies, so will he. Now Sylvia is starting a new novel, and of course he's got a part in it. But he also thinks he knows how he and Sylvia can step off the wheel of mortality altogether.
4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster
Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley, is born. Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Readers will take in the pleasures and pains of each Ferguson as his life rushes on.
Finna by Nino Cipri
When a customer at a furniture store slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse. Two unfortunate souls who broke up a week ago. To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and mutual resentment. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, anything is possible.
Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi; translated by Geoffrey Trousselot
In a small alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving coffee for over 100 years. Local legend says that this shop also offers the chance to travel back in time. Four customers visit the café, hoping to make that journey. But time travel isn't so simple, and there are rules to be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.
Silver sparrow by Tayari Jones
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, this novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode.
Here and now and then by Mike Chen
Stranded for eighteen years since the 1990s, time-traveling agent Kin Stewart, suffering from memory loss, has started a new life. But when rescuers from the year 2142 finally arrive, he must choose between his current family and the one he left behind in the future.
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