Philosophical SFF Like The Alchemist and Theo of Golden

Rachel can’t die. She’s lived in dozens of countries, loved countless men, and mothered hundreds of children. It all started 2,000 years ago when she struck a bargain trying to save her son’s life. Since then, she’s tried everything to free herself from immortality. It’s a burden and a curse that not even her own children and grandchildren understand. 

As technology begins to catch up and potentially offer eternal life to everyone, Rachel realizes that now more than ever, she has to find a way out.

While teaching a Creative Nonfiction class, Russell Stone meets a woman who will change his life. Refugee Thassadit Amzwar’s happiness and exuberance is a puzzle to Russel. How can someone who survived such tragedy seem so unaffected? His curiosity turns more serious as his inquiries put Thassa in the path of a notorious geneticist, who believes he has found the gene for happiness. He just needs Thassa to prove it. 

But will the public scrutiny and attention be the thing that breaks her? Or will her genetic secret change the world forever?

After devoting a life to teaching law, 70-year-old Frederick Gray finds he is no longer useful. His best friend and fellow professor is dead, his career is at its end, and he has no family to take care of. Before he moves into a retirement home, he wants to go on one last adventure. But when everything goes wrong and he ends up injured, he is forced to seek help. He never imagined he’d find new reasons to live.

While hiking in the Appalachian Mountains searching for the tenth insight, Charlene Billings disappears. When John Woodson goes to find her, he discovers far more is happening that just her disappearance. He journeys through other dimensions, travels to different times, and experiences all there is between life and death and beyond. Each person he encounters shares the same mission: to evolve the universe beyond what it is now. It’s a vision, a calling, a prophecy. And maybe it holds the key to a new spiritual awakening.

It’s a house unlike any other. The rooms are infinite. The corridors endless. And within the walls is an ocean. Rooms can flood. Waves can crash up staircases. This is where Piranesi lives. But he isn’t afraid of his home. He understands the patterns of the tides and knows his way through the maze. 

There’s someone else in the house. A man called The Other visits Piranesi twice a week to ask for help in his research. As Piranesi explores his home and answers The Other’s questions, he starts find evidence of another person, and that discovery reveals a world beyond what Piranesi has always known.

What if quantum technology allowed you to go back into your past to change your present life? Marsh watched that happen for the last contestant on the global sensation All This and More, a show that displayed the power of this new technology in real time. So, when she’s chosen as the next contestant, she jumps at the chance for a do-over. But as she lives the life of her dreams in every iteration, something feels off. Is it really that easy, or are some things simply too good to be true?

Nora Seed has lived a life of regret. All she’s done is let everyone down, including herself. When she enters the Midnight Library, she suddenly has a chance to make everything right. Every book offers her a way to undo every wrong. But her choices have more weight than she ever realized. Soon, her decisions threaten not just her life, but the library itself. As time runs out and she finds herself in danger, she has to ask herself the only question that matters: Is there actually a best way to live?