Books for Scorpio

Scorpio, you’re the sign of spies and secrets, so I’m hoping you’ll like this historical tale of an unlikely detective. It’s the summer of 1936, when the Nazis are secretly making plans for WWII, and the English aristocracy is sending its debutantes to the Berlin Olympics as part of a timeless strategy for political allyship: marriage. Viviane Alden is one such debutante, but she has secret plans of her own. She’s going to use her photography skills to prove that Germany is indeed re-arming. Though on the surface everything seems charming, undercover Viviane and her journalist partner soon find themselves in darker territory.

Scorpio, here’s a beautiful novel about two outsiders who are brought together in unlikely ways. Yejide carries her family legacy: she has the power to help souls in their journey to the afterlife. It’s a legacy she’d like to escape. Darwin, raised Rastafarian, has always followed the religious commandment not to interact with death, and yet the only job he can find is digging graves. The two have their fated meeting in an ancient cemetery.

Scorpio, a good thriller is essential for you. Morrow delivers a chilling social horror about a Black girl named Farrah who attempts to manipulate her friend Cherish Whitman. Cherish is also Black, but unlike Farrah, has adoptive white parents who give her everything. Farrah finds when she gets close to the Whitman family that she may not be the only calculating person in Cherish’s world.

Scorpio, you’re not afraid of the truth and it’s important to you to look beneath the surface of things. In this political biography, two award-winning Washington Post reporters have told the story of George Floyd’s life in the context of institutional racism. The result is a portrait not only of the man whose tragic death became emblematic of the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, but of the country itself.

Scorpio, Portrait of a Thief is a clever and entertaining heist story you’ll be enthralled by. When a mysterious benefactor reaches out to Harvard art history major Will Chen with a fifty-million dollar proposal, he can’t say no. He is going to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures that were looted from Beijing centuries ago — and he’ll do it with a crew of four other Chinese Americans, each of whom brings their specific skills to the risky adventure. The whole story is inspired by the true story of Chinese art mysteriously disappearing from Western museums.

Scorpio, from the grisly to the political, this literary mystery will hold your attention. Nobel Prizewinner Soyinka delivers a story about stolen body parts sold on the black market, a Yoruba royal who is poised for a coveted position in the United Nations, and the enemy who wants to prevent his rise to power. You’ll devour this story from a committed activist and literary giant.

Scorpio, in this imaginative epic, Hamid asks intense and probing queries about race, transformation, and redemption. Across the country, people are waking up with their skin color transformed, suddenly getting used to a new reflection in the mirror. Anders is one, who suddenly found himself with dark skin, and shares the secret of his mystical reincarnation only with his lover, Oona, at first. As reports continue to surface, people wrestle with fears, loss, unease, and love.

Scorpio, if you’re in the mood for a scare, read this translation of Mariana Enriquez’s macabre stories. Socially conscious, bridging urban realism and horror, her stories feature witches, ghosts, and the monstrous within us. In one story, a neighborhood is cursed after its residents make the wrong choice, in another a woman has a strange sexual fetish for a human heart, and in another a rotting baby crawls into a bedroom. Utterly original and terrifying.