The Sunday Book Club (Los Angeles)

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch is a science fiction thriller about a physics professor, Jason Dessen, who is abducted and wakes up in an alternate reality where he is a celebrated scientist who chose his career over his family. The novel follows his desperate journey across infinite parallel universes to return to his original life, exploring themes of choice, identity, and the multiverse, and has been adapted into a major Apple TV+ series.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833670-dark-matter

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a dark, sapphic vampire fantasy novel by V. E. Schwab, following three women across different centuries—María (1532 Spain), Charlotte (1827 London), and Alice (2019 Boston)—as they navigate forbidden love, revenge, and immortality, exploring themes of female rage and hunger. The book is praised for its lyrical prose, gothic atmosphere, and character-driven story, blending historical fiction with supernatural elements.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215020997-bury-our-bones-in-the-midnight-soil

My Friends: A Novel by Fredrik Backman is a 2025 novel about four teenagers who form a powerful bond during a summer on a pier, a friendship that later impacts a stranger's life 25 years later, exploring themes of art, friendship, and finding connection. The book, a #1 New York Times bestseller, won the 2025 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fiction and is praised for its humor, heart, and emotional depth, typical of Backman's work.

The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time.

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.