The Rebel ♒ 

Aquarius: January 20 – February 17

Character Traits: Esoteric, independent, rational, contrary, inscrutable, outcast

Famous Aquarians: Harry Styles, Oprah Winfrey, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes

Book: The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan

Release date: January 2, 2024

Aquarians are the rebels of the Zodiac; they think for themselves and don't let anyone write the rules of their lives. There's never much you can predict about an Aquarian's next step as they live in the present moment and tend to roll with whatever comes their way, much like Cecily Alcantara, a Malayan mother who becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII--and the shocking consequences that rain upon her community and family. Alcantara's family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth. Spanning years of pain and triumph, told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters, The Storm We Made is a dazzling saga about the horrors of war; the fraught relationships between the colonized and their oppressors, and the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake.

The Dreamer ♓ 

Pisces: February 18 – March 19

Character Traits: Dreamy, emotional, imaginative, romantic, fluid, introspective

Famous Pisceans: Rhianna, Albert Einstein, Simone Biles

Book: Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Release date: January 16, 2024

This one goes out to all the dreamers. Pisceans have a gift for intuition and sensitivity. These innate talents allow them to feel their way through an inward-facing boundless life full of dreaminess and imagination. Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth. At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced but reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different; she also possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings. For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. But at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone? A blazing novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life in our universe, Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland is a remarkable evocation of feeling in exile at home and introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

The Ram  ♈ 

Aries: March 20 – April 19

Character Traits: Competitive, honest, intense, spontaneous, hot-headed, impulsive

Famous Aries: Reese Witherspoon, Lady Gaga, Tennessee Williams

Book: This Plague of Souls by Mike McCormack

Release date: January 2, 2024

An Aries gives zero F's and they can come across as too harsh on others because they are wholly unafraid of conflict, highly competitive, and brutally honest. They are driven by a desire to prove themselves and their strength, much like Nealon, the protagonist of McCormack's metaphysical thriller, named a most anticipated book of the year by The Guardian, The Irish Times, and The New Statesman. Nealon returns from prison to his house in the West of Ireland to find it empty. No heat or light, no sign of his wife or child. It is as if the world has forgotten or erased him. Then he starts getting calls from a man who claims to know what's happened to his family. In a hotel lobby, in the shadow of an unfolding terrorist attack, Nealon and the man embark on a conversation shot through with secrets and evasions, a verbal game of cat and mouse that leaps from Nealon's past and childhood to the motives driving a series of international crimes launched against "a world so wretched it can only be redeemed by an act of revenge." McCormack's existential noir is a terse and brooding exploration of the connections between rural Ireland and the globalized cruelties of the twenty­first century. It is also an incisive portrait of a young and struggling family, and a ruthless interrogation of what we owe to those nearest to us, and the world at large.

The Naturist ♉ 

Taurus: April 20 – May 20

Character Traits: Dependable, practical, patient, committed, fears change, stubborn

Famous Taureans: Queen Elizabeth II, Charlotte Brontë, William Shakespeare

Book: Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Release date: February 27, 2024

Taureans are often known for being bullish or stubborn, but this earth sign also has a unique connection to nature causing them to be grounded, stable, and resolved. They’re the perfect audience for the masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel, There There. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous. Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage and is a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.

The Twin  ♊︎ 

Gemini: May 21 – June 20

Character Traits: Intelligent, analytical, inconsistent, versatile, expressive, worried

Famous Geminis: Marilyn Monroe, Louise Erdrich, Joyce Carol Oates

Book: Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky

Release date: January 9, 2024

A Gemini mind is an endless race track. They are perceptive and analytical with an unreserved, childlike curiosity scanning under the surface of their current reality for something that they haven’t seen before. Gemini’s namesake is the twin, a symbol of duality, and we can’t think of a better example of duality than the confusing, joyful, and painful experience of growing up. Poor Deer is a wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss--and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life--from PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire Oshetsky. Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died. No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic--that always end happily. Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret's made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes's death. Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deer explores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life's most difficult moments.

The Empath  ♋ 

Cancer: June 21 – July 21

Character Traits: Highly sensitive, layered, moody, guarded, deep, empathetic

Famous Cancers: Mindy Kaling, Susan Sontag, Tom Hanks

Book: Grief Is For People by Sloane Crosley

Release date: February 27, 2024

The Cancer personality is layered and sensitive, often weighed down by their own sorrows and the sorrows of those around them, feeling haunted by grief. It’s hard for Cancers to share their pain and vulnerability with others, fearing that their weaknesses may be used against them. They’re an exposed nerve, just like writer Sloane Crosley was as she struggled to process the pain and confusion of multiple losses in a short span of time, including the death of her closest friend by suicide. Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief. Crosley's search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with a resounding empathy. Upending the "grief memoir," Grief Is for People is the category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A modern elegy, it rises precisely to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.

The Lion  ♌

Leo: July 22 – August 22

Character Traits: Warm, creative, vain, brash, charismatic, confident

Famous Leos: J.Lo, Meghan Markle, Aldous Huxley

Book: Tehrangeles: A Novel by Porochista Khakpour

Release date: June 11, 2024

Ruled by the heart, Leos are bold, warm, and loving. They’re ambitious, captivating, natural performers confident in their instincts and abilities. They live for praise, but when they’re hurting, it shows. In Tehrangeles, Iranian-American multimillionaires Ali and Homa Milani have it all--a McMansion in the hills of Los Angeles, a microwaveable snack empire, and four spirited daughters. There's Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and the impressionable health fanatic Haylee. On the verge of landing their own reality TV show, the Milanis realize their deepest secrets are about to be dragged out into the open before the cameras even roll. Each of the Milanis--even their aloof Persian cat Pari--has something to hide, but the looming scrutiny of fame also threatens to bring the family closer than ever. Dramatic, biting yet full of heart, Tehrangeles is a tragicomic saga about high-functioning family dysfunction and the ever-present struggle to accept one's true self.

The Perfectionist  ♍

Virgo: August 23 – September 22

Character Traits: Perfectionist, critical, particular, self-contained, anxious, productive

Famous Virgins: Prince Harry, Zendaya, Mary Oliver

Book: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Release date: January 23, 2024

Virgos need to feel useful and can be flooded with ideas, solutions, and quick fixes. They often put helping others over their own comfort and can become so busy fixing the lives of those around them that they don't put much work into providing for their own needs. We see this drive in the protagonist, Cyrus Shams, a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss. Cyrus is a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction. Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, and others.

The Charmer  ♎

Libra: September 23 – October 22

Character Traits: Social, indecisive, receptive, empathetic, sensitive, needy, adventurous

Famous Libras: Serena Williams, Ursula K. Le Guin, Cardi B.

Book: Sugar, Baby by Celine Saintclare

Release date: January 9, 2024

In the vein of Luster and Queenie, comes an unflinching portrayal of high-paid sex work in the age of the internet. Sugar, Baby follows Agnes, a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. In true Libra fashion, Agnes is a charming constellation of personalities. Libras are simultaneously extroverted and introverted, strategic and spontaneous, focused and intuitive and they want to be seen as the responsible figure who can balance out the turbulent elements around them. Still living at home, Agnes works as a cleaner and spends all her money in clubs on the weekends searching for distractions from her mundane life. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model . . . and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money. Emily's life is the escape Agnes has been longing for: extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, and designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. As she is thrown from one precarious relationship to the next, she finds herself searching for fulfillment just as desperately as she was before. A compelling journey of self-discovery that offers sharp commentary on race, beauty, and class, Sugar, Baby is an electric, original, spellbinding novel that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.

The Enigma  ♏

Scorpio: October 23 – November 21

Character Traits: Probing, complex, popular, manipulative, mysterious, perceptive

Famous Scorpios: RuPaul, Zadie Smith, Kurt Vonnegut

Book: The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul

Release date: March 5, 2024

Perhaps the darkest sign of the zodiac, Scorpios are notoriously difficult people to get to know. They’re blunt, yet tactful, and very intentional about what they reveal and what they conceal. Scorpios boldly confront the things most other people fear: darkness, pain, and death. From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date--a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance. A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

The Empiricist  ♐

Sagittarius: November 22 – December 20

Character Traits: Friendly, optimistic, exploratory, reckless, restless, insatiable

Famous Sags: Joan Didion, Brittany Spears, Brad Pitt

Book: Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

Release date: March 5, 2024

The Sagittarius is a devoted empiricist concerned with justice and seems to spend much of their life on a quest to promote truth. They are explorers of the human condition and are unafraid of change. But in addition to being fearless adventurers, they can be jaded critics as well. For these reasons, Sag readers will be drawn to the new mesmerizing novel of New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death. In 1998, our protagonist, Raquel, stumbles upon the story of Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, suddenly found dead in New York City in 1985. Following Anita's story raises questions about the dynamics of Raquel's romantic relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist. Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.

RELATED CONTENT:

For more book club inspiration, learn How to Book Club Blog Series and check out our Book Club Reading Lists below:  

• Most Anticipated Reads of 2024
• Set Your New Years Reading Resolutions
• Top Book Club Books of 2023
• The Indies Recommend Best Book Club Books
• Grow Your Book Club With These Powerful Tips

If you enjoyed this feature, subscribe to our blog and create a Bookclubs account to access more reading, discussion guides, and club inspiration! Already have an account? Rate and review books that you've read, and recommend your favorites to a friend.