Book cover of Reincarnation Blues

Book description

A wildly imaginative novel about a man who is reincarnated over ten thousand lifetimes to be with his one true love: Death herself.

“Tales of gods and men akin to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman as penned by a kindred spirit of Douglas Adams.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

First we live. Then we…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Reincarnation Blues as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Not only is this novel about death and dying (10,000 times, to be exact), but it also features Death as a main character. So it gets bonus points for hitting both of those marks when it comes to my love of dark comedies about death. But it’s also a story about finding a reason for living, that reason being the aforementioned Death, who just so happens to be the main character’s love interest. It’s complicated. At turns both thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. Reincarnation stories have always intrigued me and this one does it in a fashion unlike any other.

Just when I thought I'd heard every take on spiritual and physical rebirth -- I stumbled upon Reincarnation Blues. On its surface, it's the story of a man who is reincarnated over 10,000 lifetimes to be with his one true love, but that doesn't do it justice. The narrator describes a world too weird to be true but speaks with such off-handed authority I found it hard not to believe him: "Died, in a future life, in a starship crash at the speed of light, in a moment that resonated forever inside the envelope of time." Poetical, adventurous,…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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