Aardvark Book Club is a monthly book subscription box (in both the U.S. & Canada) in which members choose up to 3 hardcover books. In addition to past months’ selections, Aardvark provides 5 newly published books to choose from each month. You can also discuss the books with other members in the Aardvark app.
As the end of the month approaches, Aardvark Book Club starts posting hints for their upcoming month’s selection. While the type of hints changes from month-to-month, they remain fun to follow along with. I typically make guesses as to what books they will be in my Instagram stories, but I thought I would also share them here.
For January, Aardvark posted on shared hints shown immediately below. I have circled the appropriate movie or aesthetic for each book. For the shared Pantheon color combination, each book’s color palette is shown with the cover. The last picture for each book is the mood board, which is posted after the books have been announced.
Book # 1
How to Turn Into a Bird
María José Ferrada
From the award-winning author of How to Order the Universe, María José Ferrada beautifully details the life and lessons of an unconventional man and the boy who loves him.
After years of hard work in a factory outside of Santiago, Chile, Ramón accepts a peculiar job: to look after a Coca-Cola billboard located by the highway. And it doesn’t take long for Ramón to make an even more peculiar decision: to make the billboard his new home.
When a local boy disappears, tensions erupt and forgotten memories come to the surface. And Miguel, no longer perched in the billboard with his uncle, witnesses the reality on the ground: a society that, in the name of peace, is not afraid to use violence. With sharp humor and a deep understanding of a child’s mind, How to Turn Into a Bird is a powerful tale of coming of age, loss of innocence, and shifting perspectives that asks us: how far outside of our lives must we go to really see things clearly?
Publication Date: December 6, 2022
Publisher: Tin House Books
Tags: Award-Winning, Coming-of-Age, Translated, & Literary Fiction
Book # 2
All the Dark Places
Terri Parlato
A savage murder rocks a quiet Massachusetts suburb, revealing the dark secrets at the center of a group of friends and sets two women – one with a traumatic past, the other a Boston police detective – on a hunt for truth in this stylish debut thriller for fans of Megan Miranda and Shari Lapena.
Snow falls softly outside Molly Bradley’s home on a frigid January night. Inside, half a dozen close friends are gathered to celebrate the fortieth birthday of Molly’s psychologist husband, Jay. Candlelight gleams against dark wood, wine flows, and the house rings with laughter. Everybody loves Jay, Molly most of all. Yet next morning, Molly discovers Jay dead on the floor of his office, his throat brutally slashed.
Devastated, Molly tries to make sense of her husband’s death. Jay was her rock, the only person who really understood the nightmare she lived through long ago. He knew the horrors she’s kept hidden even from her friends. But shocking revelations are making her question if Jay was all he seemed to be—and whether someone else knows her past too. And until Molly figures out who she can really trust, she won’t be able to stop herself becoming the next target . . .
Publication Date: December 27, 2022
Publisher: Kensington
Tags: Debut, Thriller, Crime, & Includes a Dog
Book # 3
Desert Creatures
Kay Chronister
A feminist eco-horror set in the near-future American West, Desert Creatures combines the subversive inventiveness of Inland by Tea Obreht with the eco-surrealism of Jeff Vandermeer’s Dead Astronauts and the themes of survival and morality in Corma McCarthy’sT he Road. Award-winning short fiction writer Kay Chronister transfigures genre and the myth of the West in this stylish and original debut novel.
In a world that has become treacherous and desiccated, Magdala has always had to fight to survive. At nine years old, she and her father, Xavier, are exiled from their home, fleeing through the Sonoran Desert, searching for refuge.
As violence pursues them, they join a handful of survivors on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Las Vegas, where it is said the vigilante saints reside, bright with neon power. Magdala, born with a clubfoot, is going to be healed. But when faced with the strange horrors of the desert, one by one the pilgrims fall victim to a hideous sickness – leaving Magdala to fend for herself.
Publication Date: November 8, 2022
Publisher: Erewhon Books
Tags: Debut, Sci-Fi, & Horror
Book # 4
The Key to My Heart
Lia Louis
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Romance
A heartwarming novel about hope after loss as a young widow receives mysterious messages of love from the “must-buy author” (Jodi Picoult) of Eight Perfect Hours.
Sparkly and charming Natalie Fincher has it all—a handsome new husband, a fixer-upper cottage of her dreams, and the opportunity to tour with the musical she’s spent years writing. But when her husband suddenly dies, all her hopes and dreams instantly disappear.
But when someone begins to mysteriously leave the sheet music for her husband’s favorite songs at the station’s piano, Natalie begins to feel a sense of hope and excitement for the first time. As she investigates just who could be doing this, Natalie finds herself on an unexpected journey toward newfound love for herself, for life, and maybe, for a special someone.
Publication Date: December 6, 2022
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Tags: Romance & Contemporary Fiction
Book # 5
The New Life
Tome Crewe
A brilliant and captivating debut, in the tradition of Alan Hollinghurst and Colin Tolbin, about two marriages, two forbidden love affairs, and the passionate search for social and sexual freedom in late 19th-century London.
In the summer of 1894, John Addington and Henry Ellis begin writing a book arguing that homosexuality, which is a crime at the time, is a natural, harmless variation of human sexuality. Though they have never met, John and Henry both live in London with their wives, Catherine and Edith, and in each marriage, there is a third party: John has a lover, a working-class man named Frank, and Edith spends almost as much time with her friend Angelica as she does with Henry. John and Catherine have three grown daughters and a long, settled marriage, over the course of which Catherine has tried to accept her husband’s sexuality and her own role in life; Henry and Edith’s marriage is intended to be a revolution in itself, an intellectual partnership that dismantles the traditional understanding of what matrimony means.
Shortly before the book is to be published, Oscar Wilde is arrested. John and Henry must decide whether to go on, risking social ostracism and imprisonment, or to give up the project for their own safety and the safety of the people they love.
Publication date: January 3, 2023
Publisher: Scribner
Tags: Debut, LGBTQ+, Romance, Literary Fiction, & Historical Fiction
