If you have ever read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch—that breathless tale of a man stolen from his life and thrust into infinite branching worlds—then you know the particular enchantment of a story that makes you question the very ground beneath your feet. You turned the final page, I daresay, feeling rather like someone who has been shown a secret door in their own house and can never quite forget it exists.
Now you find yourself wanting more. You wish to tumble down another rabbit hole, to have your certainties pleasantly shattered once again. Dear reader, I have gathered here fifteen such adventures—tales of parallel worlds, twisted time, and identities as slippery as shadows. Come along, won’t you?
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Imagine, if you will, waking aboard a spaceship with no memory of who you are or why you are there—only the growing certainty that the fate of all humanity rests upon your rather confused shoulders. This is the predicament of Ryland Grace, a schoolteacher turned reluctant astronaut, who discovers that our sun is dying and he alone might save it.
What makes this tale particularly delightful is the friendship that blooms between Ryland and the most unexpected of companions—an alien creature whom he calls Rocky, who communicates through musical tones. Together they puzzle through impossible problems with the sort of infectious enthusiasm that makes even the densest science feel like play. The book won a 2022 Audie Award, and a film adaptation starring Ryan Gosling arrives in 2026.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Poor Harry August has a rather peculiar problem: he cannot seem to stay dead. Born in 1919, he lives his life, dies, and promptly finds himself born again—same year, same circumstances—with all his memories perfectly intact. He is what the initiated call a kalachakra, one of a secret society of souls caught in eternal return.
This tale of memory and morality won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and with good reason. When a message reaches Harry that the end of the world is accelerating with each cycle, he must use centuries of accumulated knowledge to stop an old friend turned terrible adversary. It is a story about what we would truly become if consequences were always temporary.
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
A man awakens in a forest, calling for someone named Anna, remembering nothing—not even his own name. He stumbles to a grand manor house where a masquerade ball is underway, and there he learns a terrible truth: he must solve the murder of young Evelyn Hardcastle or live this day again and again, each time in a different guest’s body.
This Costa Book Award winner has been called “Gosford Park meets Inception by way of Agatha Christie.” Eight hosts. Eight days. One murder to solve. The mystery is fiendishly clever, the characters deliciously flawed, and the resolution will leave you rather breathless.
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Tom Barren comes from the year 2016—but not our 2016, mind you. His is the gleaming utopia we were promised: flying cars, perfect health, no war or want. When heartbreak drives him to do something terribly foolish with a time machine, he wakes up in our world, which he finds rather disappointingly shabby.
But then he discovers that this inferior timeline contains versions of his family who are actually happy, and a woman who might be the love of his life. This Sunburst Award–nominated novel asks: would you sacrifice a perfect world for an imperfect love? The prose has been compared to Vonnegut—playful, self-deprecating, and surprisingly moving.
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
In this future, death has become rather inconvenient but hardly permanent. Human consciousness is stored in devices called “stacks,” which can be slotted into new bodies—called “sleeves”—like changing clothes. The wealthy live for centuries. The poor sell their bodies to survive.
Into this noir nightmare steps Takeshi Kovacs, a former soldier hired to investigate the apparent suicide of a very rich man who insists he was murdered. This Philip K. Dick Award winner is hard-boiled and philosophical, violent and questioning—a story about identity in a world where bodies are disposable.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
This exquisite novel braids together lives across centuries: a British exile in 1912 Canada, a writer on a book tour during a pandemic in 2020, and inhabitants of a moon colony in the 23rd century. What connects them is an impossible anomaly—a moment where violin music echoes through a forest where no violin should be.
Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, this book ponders whether we might be living in a simulation and what it would mean if the universe had glitches. Mandel’s prose has been called “beautiful but unfussy,” and the plot resolves with the quiet grace of a held breath finally released.
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
Shannon Moss is an NCIS agent with a secret: she can travel to possible futures. Not the future, mind you, but futures that might occur—shadow timelines that may never come to pass. She uses this gift to solve impossible crimes, gathering evidence from tomorrows that exist only as probability.
When investigating a brutal family murder, Shannon discovers connections to a lost spaceship and an apocalyptic event called the Terminus—the moment humanity ends—which appears to be creeping closer with each mission. Called “True Detective meets Twelve Monkeys,” this mind-bending thriller has been optioned for film by director Neill Blomkamp.
Brilliance by Marcus Sakey
Since 1980, one percent of children have been born different. They are called Brilliants—not superheroes, exactly, but humans with extraordinary gifts. One can read your darkest secrets by the way you fold your arms. Another senses patterns in the stock market that make him obscenely wealthy.
Nick Cooper is a Brilliant who hunts other Brilliants for the government. His target is the most dangerous terrorist alive—a man who may ignite a civil war between the gifted and the ordinary. This million-copy bestseller was optioned for film with Will Smith attached to star. It asks: what happens when fear of the exceptional becomes more dangerous than the exceptional themselves?
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Multiverse travel is possible, but there is one absolute rule: you cannot visit a world where your counterpart still lives. Cara is extraordinarily valuable because on 372 parallel Earths, she is already dead. Her hard life in the wastelands outside Wiley City made her fragile—but it also made her indispensable.
This New York Times Editors’ Choice and Locus Award finalist uses its brilliant premise to examine privilege, survival, and belonging. When one of Cara’s remaining doubles dies mysteriously, she is drawn into a conspiracy that threatens not just her world but the entire multiverse.
The Fold by Peter Clines
Out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented something impossible: a door that folds space, allowing you to step hundreds of feet in a single stride. Teleportation, essentially. The Albuquerque Door works perfectly—but after three years, the scientists still refuse to share it with the government that funds them.
Mike Erikson, a genius with an eidetic memory, is sent to discover why. What he finds is a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes and a terrifying truth about what happens when you bend dimensions. Fans of Peter Clines’ novel 14 will recognize the shared horrors lurking at the edges of this thriller.
The Peripheral by William Gibson
In the near future, Flynne Fisher earns money by playing what she thinks are video games. One night, filling in for her brother on a security job, she witnesses a woman being murdered in the most surreal manner imaginable—and slowly realizes it was not a game at all.
The murder happened in the far future, in a London that has survived an apocalypse called the Jackpot. And now people from that future want Flynne dead. This Irish Times–praised novel features one of the most plausible depictions of time travel in recent fiction, where information—but not matter—can cross between eras. An Amazon television adaptation premiered in 2022.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
One night when Tyler Dupree was ten years old, he watched the stars go out. Every light in the sky flared brilliant white, then vanished, replaced by a flat black barrier surrounding the Earth. Time outside this membrane moves one hundred million times faster than within.
This means the sun will expand and destroy us in a few decades of our time—unless humanity can find a way to escape. Tyler’s brilliant friend Jason dedicates his life to saving the world; Jason’s twin sister Diane turns to spiritual comfort. This Hugo Award winner is surprisingly poignant, mixing hard science with deep questions about faith, love, and what we owe the future.
The Breach by Patrick Lee
Thirty years ago, a particle accelerator in Wyoming tore a hole in reality itself. Through this Breach, alien artifacts fall—three or four per day—each with impossible properties. Some seem useless. Others could destroy the world.
When Travis Chase, an ex-cop seeking solitude in Alaska, stumbles upon a crashed plane carrying the First Lady and evidence of a conspiracy, he is drawn into a secret war for control of the Breach. Lee Child called this novel “unrelenting suspense,” comparing it favorably to the best of Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton.
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
Imagine waking one morning to discover that instructions for a simple device—powered by a potato, of all things—have appeared online, and that this device allows anyone to step sideways into parallel Earths. Infinite Earths, stretching east and west like beads on a string, each one empty of humanity but otherwise familiar.
Joshua Valienté, a natural stepper who needs no device, and Lobsang, an AI who claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan motorcycle repairman, set out to explore these empty worlds. What they find are trolls and elves (of a sort), evidence of extinct civilizations, and something vast and dangerous moving through the parallel worlds. From the minds of two beloved authors comes a tale of exploration and wonder.
A Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen
Neuroscientist Mariana Pineda is grieving her best friend when she takes a consulting job at a top-secret particle accelerator—just for one week, she promises herself. Then a stranger named Carter Cho stops her and insists they have met before, that she must remember everything he is telling her, because time is about to loop.
Together, Mariana and Carter relive the same four days over and over, falling in love between explosions. But Carter’s memories of the loop are slowly disappearing, and their only chance at forever is breaking free of the cycle. Library Journal praised this novel as combining “the sweet redemption of Groundhog Day with the multiple explosive resets of Edge of Tomorrow.”
Finding Your Next Mind-Bending Adventure
Each of these fifteen books shares something essential with Dark Matter: they all ask what would happen if the rules of reality suddenly changed. Whether through multiverse travel, time loops, memory manipulation, or tears in the fabric of existence, they invite you to question everything you thought was solid and permanent.
Some, like Project Hail Mary and The Long Earth, offer wonder and hope. Others, like The Gone World and Altered Carbon, venture into darker territory. All of them will leave you with that delicious feeling of having glimpsed something extraordinary.
So choose your next adventure, dear reader. The multiverse awaits.
