The Immortalists -Chloe Benjamin

t's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness-sneak out to hear their fortunes.

. The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco, dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy, eldest son Daniel struggles to maintain security as an army. doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

Both a dazzling family love story and a sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving restatement to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.