Welcome to our second installment of the Soho Press Book Club! Each month will feature the latest and greatest from our literary fiction imprint and a fine lineup of award-winning and bestselling writers to boot. You can check out our April pick, THE ANGEL MAKERS here, and the wrap up post here. We hope you enjoy!

This month, we’ll be reading LUMINARIUM, by Alex Shakar, winner of this year’s LA Times Book Prize. LUMINARIUM left the Washington Post “stumbling around the house in a mixture of wonder and awe,” served as the LA Times‘ “ultimate, luminous fantasy,” and was “heady and engrossing” for the New York Times. It had starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and in Booklist. And, next week on May 8, it’s out in paperback, with one of my favorite covers ever. What’s not to like?

Fred Brounian and his twin brother, George, were once co-CEOs of a burgeoning New York City software company devoted to the creation of utopian virtual worlds. Now, in the summer of 2006, as two wars rage and the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, George has fallen into a coma, control of the company has been wrenched away by a military contracting conglomerate, and Fred has moved back in with his parents. Broke and alone, he’s led by an attractive woman, Mira, into a neurological study promising to give him “peak” experiences and a newfound spiritual outlook on life. As the study progresses, lines between the subject and the experimenter blur, and reality becomes increasingly porous. Meanwhile, Fred finds himself caught up in what seems at first a cruel prank: a series of bizarre emails and texts that purport to be from his comatose brother.

Read a synopsis and more about the book here. Pick it up and join in for a discussion on May 31!