With a beautiful wife, a great son, and a job teaching college physics, Jason -Dessen is content with his life. Sure, he has a twinge of envy when he meets an old friend who has just won a prestigious science prize, but on the whole, he wouldn't trade his situation. Which makes it all the more horrible when someone takes that existence from him, and worse when it turns out to be an alternate version of himself. This exciting technothriller hinges on the idea of multiple realities. Jason's desperation to return home to his family and the struggles he goes through to figure out how to navigate the multiverse make this an irresistible read. Despite a few small missteps, including the introduction of a sidekick for Jason that peters out in a vaguely unsatisfying way, it is not hard to see why this title was preempted by Sony in a big bid for the movie rights. VERDICT While stories of the multiverse are not new, Crouch ("Wayward Pines" trilogy) brings a welcome intensity to the trope.-MM © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Jon Lindstrom delivers an excellent reading of Crouch's mind-bending novel. Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a small Chicago college, whose more ambitious career aspirations in quantum physics were set aside for the tranquil normalcy of homelife with a wife and teenage son. He is content with his life, until one day when he's abducted and drugged and wakes up into a world in which his particular quantum many-worlds theory has become a fully realized technology for interdimensional transfer. In this world, Jason didn't marry his girlfriend and never had a son. Lindstrom's strong, well-modulated voice relays Dessen's travels through a multitude of alternate worlds and realities with a solid conviction that keeps the story moving forward at a steady pace. He pulls the listener fully into the story with an earnestness that perfectly captures Jason's bewilderment, despair, and desperate desire for home. There's plenty of action and unexpected, even shocking, turns in the story, which Lindstrom handles with expert skill. A Crown hardcover. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Brilliant scientist Jason Dessen was on the verge of a major breakthrough when his life took a different turn instead of completing his work on quantum superposition, he married his pregnant girlfriend and now lives a relatively happy life as husband to the gorgeous Daniela, father to teenage Charlie, and professor of undergrad physics at a small Chicago-area college. All is well if not very exciting until the night he is abducted and bludgeoned, and wakes up in a different time and place . . . or, perhaps, it's a different plane. Turns out there's another world, one where Jason didn't marry Daniela but went on to create a box that can transport someone into a parallel universe don't worry, all that's needed is a basic understanding of Schrödinger's cat. It's very strange and a little thrilling to him, but all Jason really wants is to get home to his wife and son. This proves quite daunting, as every trip through the box takes him to yet another plane, mostly with disastrous results (think butterfly effect). Crouch keeps the pace swift and the twists exciting. Readers who liked his Wayward Pines trilogy will probably devour this speculative thriller in one sitting; also offer this one to those who enjoy roller-coaster reads in the vein of Harlan Coban and can appreciate the need to suspend their disbelief. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: If buzz at the recent Public Library Association conference is any indication, Crouch has something very big here.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2016 Booklist

NOBODY: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, From Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, by Marc Lamont Hill. (Atria, $16.) Hill analyzes such high-profile deaths as Michael Brown's, Sandra Bland's and Trayvon Martin's to explore a system of negligence and indifference. The state has effectively abandoned those whom Hill calls "Nobodies": people marked as black, brown, immigrant, queer. LOSING IT, by Emma Rathbone. (Riverhead, $16.) Julia, the heroine of Rathbone's novel, is 26, professionally adrift and - most vexing of all - still a virgin. During previous opportunities, she always demurred, certain that a better one would come along, but now, "my virginity composed about 99 percent of my thought traffic." When she goes to live with her aunt, her quest to finally have a sexual encounter is complicated by a family member's revelation. THE WICKED BOY: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London, by Kate Summerscale. (Penguin, $17.) In 1895,13-year-old Robert Coombes and his younger brother were traipsing alone around East London. Days later, their mother was found dead, and Robert was sent to one of England's most infamous prisons. Summerscale reconstructs the case and its aftermath with forensic care. DARK MATTER, by Blake Crouch. (Broadway, $16.) After he is violently kidnapped, Jason, a married professor in Chicago, awakes as a different man entirely: His wife is not his wife, his child has not been born and he is working on a brilliant project. As Jason's various selves confront one another and he embarks on multiple paths, he must grapple with the question of which of his lives is real. Crouch draws on disparate influences in his thriller, which our reviewer, Andrew O'Hehir, called "alternate-universe science fiction bolstered by a smidgen of theoretical physics." UNFORBIDDEN PLEASURES, by Adam Phillips. (Picador, $16.) In a series of essays, Phillips, a British psychoanalyst, explores the meaning and the role of everyday indulgences in contemporary life. While others focus on the taboo, Phillips writes, "the seekers of unforbidden pleasures may know something about pleasure that has never occurred to the transgressive." SWEET LAMB OF HEAVEN, by Lydia Millet. (Norton, $15.95.) After her daughter, Lena, is born, Anna begins hearing streams of voices - both foreign and English, and not violent - a hallucination that resists diagnosis. When her marriage dissolves, she and Lena escape from Alaska, where they were living, to a hotel in Maine; but when her husband considers a political run, they must constantly evade his reach.

A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller. Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago's Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers "a sucker punch" as he heads home that leaves him "standing on the precipice." From behind Jason, a man with a "ghost white" face, "red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes" points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignantprovided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.