Aardvark Book Club is a monthly book subscription box in which members choose up to 3 hardcover books each month from a selection of new releases or previous selections. Aardvark Book Club ships to both the U.S. and Canada and provides a platform to discuss books. To get your first book for $4, use the promo code READBETWEENTHESPINES.
Hints #1 & 2
Hints #4 & 5
Book #1
Hint 1.1: Let’s debate this topic: The “Butterfly Effect” vs. historical inertia. My go-to karaoke song is “Good Luck Charm” by Elvis Presley. Dating me is like brining your Statistics 101 textbook with you everywhere.
Hint 2.4: Lady Luck – She’s a gambler, risk-taker, and expert card-counter. Wanted by at least 20 Las Vegas casinos. Curious to know the odds of pulling off a heist? Ask her.
HInt 4.2: The X Files, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle, Flashforward, Final Destination, 21, When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and Beau Is Afraid (first 45 min only)
Lucky Day
Chuck Tingle
Lucky Day is the instant USA Today and Indie bestseller from Chuck Tingle, where one woman must go up against horrifying odds to save the world.
Four years ago, an unthinkable disaster occurred. In what was later known as the Low-Probability Event, eight million people were killed in a single day, each of them dying in improbable, bizarre ways: strangled by balloon ropes, torn apart by exploding manhole covers, attacked by a chimpanzee wielding a typewriter. A day of freak accidents that proved anything is possible, no matter the odds. Luck is real now, and it’s not always good.
Vera, a former statistics and probability professor, lost everything that day, and she still struggles to make sense of the unbelievable catastrophe. To her, the LPE proved that the God of Order is dead and nothing matters anymore.
When Special Agent Layne shows up on Vera’s doorstep, she learns he’s investigating a suspiciously―and statistically impossibly―lucky casino. He needs her help to prove the casino’s success is connected to the deaths of millions, and it’s Vera’s last chance to make sense of a world that doesn’t.
Because what’s happening in Vegas isn’t staying there, and she’s the only thing that stands between the world and another deadly improbability.
Genre: Literary Fiction; Horror
Publication Date: August 12, 2025
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Book #2
Hint 1.2: What if I told you that I can hear a twig snap in the woods from a mile away. The best way to ask me out is by catching me in a game of tag. One thing that I’ll never do again: hide in that damn tree.
Hint 2.3: The Location Scout – An eager explorer keen to map out the area ahead of time. Bonus skills: her supernatural hearing which comes handy when sneaking around.
Hint 4.6: Alone, Small Favors by Erin A. Craig, Yellowjackets, Barkskins by Annie Proulx, The Village, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, Into the Woods, Upon A Starlit Tide by Kell Woods, and Midnight Mass
A Land So Wide
Erin A. Craig
A retired serial killer’s quiet life is upended by an unexpected visitor. To protect her secret, there’s only one option left—what’s another murder? From bestselling author Samantha Downing.
Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her.
Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends.
When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that.
But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young. And when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her…
Genre: Fantasy
Publication Date: September 2, 2025
Publisher: Pantheon
Book #3
Hint 1.3: My friends ask me for advice about their marital woes and unrequited love. I’m weirdly attracted to famously messy love triangles. #drama What if I told you that your “great” parties don’t impress me?
Hint 2.2: The Great Hacker – He can hack into any network, but don’t expect him to get in on the action. He’s content to wait in the hover-car with his gear and a strong drink.
Hint 4.3: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Blade Runner, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Cyberpunk, The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Yo, Gatsby, Poor Things, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, and Moderation by Elaine Castillo
Local Heavens
K.M. Fajardo
A corporate hacker. An elusive billionaire. A society trying to survive the American Nightmare.
New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions—shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.
When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem—and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He’s the reason they don’t. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.
As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite—and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable—he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. What takes precedence: Love or truth? Heart or soul?
A brilliant reimagining of Fitzgerald’s classic tale of glamour, desire, and desperation, Local Heavens examines the guardrails of morality . . . and the price of desire.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Date: October 14, 2025
Publisher: Bindery Books
Book #4
Hint 1.4: Change my mind about my sister. We’ll get along if you take a DNA test. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what happened that night.
Hint 2.1: The Mystery Woman – Who is she? Where did she come from? No one knows, but she can whip up a fake ID in record time. Her motives for joining the team remain unclear at this time.
Hint 4.7: Saltburn, The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson, Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica, First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston, Everyone Here Is Lying by Shari Lapena, No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall, The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll, The Disappearing Act by Catherine Steadman, and The Better Sister
The Wrong Daughter
Dandy Smith
In a shockingly twisty, addictively dark, engrossingly intense psychological suspense for readers of Freida McFadden, Adele Parks, and B.A. Paris, a woman’s world is shattered when her sister returns 16 years after she was abducted from their childhood bedroom.
“Do you have a sister, Ms. Fairview?” The little girl’s question, in all its buttery innocence, slices through me, and the answer catches in my throat. It isn’t as simple as yes or no. It hasn’t been, in nearly sixteen years.
The evening Caitlin and Olivia’s parents leave them to go to a dinner party, both girls are bubbling with excitement. At ages 10 and 13, they are at last old enough to stay home alone. After all, in their idyllic town no one even bothers to lock their doors.
As the summer light fades, after TV and popcorn, the sisters finally put themselves to bed. They’re unaware of the figure watching them through an open window. Or of the back door opening once they’ve fallen asleep.
When their parents return, they will find Olivia’s bed empty. Their golden-haired, long-limbed, eldest daughter gone. Never to return. Until now.
But is the woman who claims to be Olivia all she seems? Is everything Caitlin said she saw that night the whole truth? Their family have dreamed of this moment, but both sisters are keeping more than one secret. What price will they all pay if they end up believing the wrong daughter?
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Publication Date: August 26, 2025
Publisher: Kensington
Book #5
Hint 1.5: The best way to ask me out is by explicitly inviting me over the threshold. The one thing I’d love to know about you is your blood type. A+ for O-negative. This year I really want to settle the score.
Hint 2.7: The Getaway Driver – A grisly war vet with a soft heart. Once he starts driving he won’t ever stop. Curiously, he does his best work at night…
Hint 4.1: Sinners, Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, No Country for Old Men, Django Unchained, Blade, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, and Strange Darling
Coffin Moon
Keith Rosson
From the author of the “exciting, suspenseful, horrifying” (Stephen King) Fever House, a Vietnam veteran and his adopted niece hunt—and are hunted by—the vampire that slaughtered their family.
It’s the winter of 1975, and Portland, Oregon, is all sleet and neon. Duane Minor is back home after a tour in Vietnam, a bartender just trying to stay sober; save his marriage with his wife, Heidi; and connect with his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, now that he’s responsible for raising her. Things aren’t easy, but Minor is scraping by.
Then a vampire walks into his bar and ruins his life.
When Minor crosses John Varley, a killer who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon, Varley brutally retaliates by murdering Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia filled with rage. What’s left of their splintered family is united by only one desire: vengeance.
So begins a furious, frenzied pursuit across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. From grimy alleyways to desolate highways to snow-lashed plains, Minor and Julia are cast into the dark orbit of undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men transfixed by Varley’s ferocity. Everyone’s out for blood.
Gritty, unforgettable, and emotionally devastating, Coffin Moon asks what will be left of our humanity when grief transmutes into violence, when monsters wear human faces, and when our thirst for revenge eclipses everything else.
Genre: Horror; Mystery/Thriller
Publication Date: September 9, 2025
Publisher: Random House
Book #6:
Hint 1.6: I’m into someone when sparks fly figuratively but not literally (safety first)!!! Like for tips about the best fake moustache adhesive. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about our relationship to social media.
Hint 2.6: The Good Witch – Call her “Miss Direction” because she’s serving up spells that will distract any target.
Hint 4.4: Is It Cake?, The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, Happy Medium by Sarah Adler, The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic by Breanne Randall, Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot, Practical Magic, A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna, Wizard Wars, and The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling
Witch You Would
Lia Amador
When a young witch gets a life-changing chance to compete in a magical reality show, sparks fly as she’s partnered with a man she can’t stand.
In a Miami where enchantment is just another college major, the magic of television could change two lives.
Penelope Delmar, a broke salesgirl, has been chosen to compete on Cast Judgment, a spellcasting reality show. The winner gets a big cash prize, and for extra hype, this season is the Spellebrity Edition: every contestant will be paired with a celebrity teammate. Unfortunately, her partner, Leandro Presto, is best known for his goofy viral spell videos, not his skills.
Gil Contreras, alias Leandro Presto, has been crushing on his pen pal Penelope for months. Now they’re working together to win a contest that could save his grandfather’s charity—except he has to stay in character the whole time, so his dream girl thinks he’s a total loser.
Can they beat snobby rivals, fix spells gone wrong, and survive increasingly dangerous sabotage attempts to win the grand prize—and each other’s hearts? Or will Gil’s secret make both their magic and romance fizzle out?
Genre: Romance; Magical Realism
Publication Date: September 2, 2025
Publisher: Avon
Book #7
Hint 1.7: A green flag I look for is not stepping on worms in puddles after it rains. Most spontaneous thing I’ve done is run away from home. A typical Saturday entails communing with the hive.
Hint 2.5: The Hive Mind – He harnesses the powers of a collective consciousnesses: two is better than one and a whole swarm is even better still.
Hint 4.5: I Saw the TV Glow, Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, Midsommar, Mother!, Alien, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, Overgrowth by Mira Grant, Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfit, and The Fly
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human
Andrew Joseph White
Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.
Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.
Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca.
Genre: Literary Fiction; Horror
Publication Date: September 9, 2025
Publisher: Saga Press
