The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern 

A fascinating book from the storytelling and the writing.  We follow the life of a young man who fails to try to open a door painted on the side of a building, to his days as a graduate student meeting some unusual people at a party.  From there he finds himself opening another door into an impossible world that descends below the surface of the world and bends time, where he wanders through a library in a city on the shore of the starless sea.