Which Book Should You Read, Based on Your Zodiac Sign?

You’re eccentric, free-spirited and adventurous, and magical realism is right up your alley. Nab a copy of Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi’s newest tome about three generations of women in London, and the gingerbread recipe that’s their curse and their legacy. Sound pretty straightforward? It would be, if not for the talking dolls and cookie shivs. Like her previous work, including Boy, Snow, Bird, it’s wildly imaginative and whip-smart.

You’re creative, imaginative and occasionally a little dramatic. You’re gonna love this science-fiction fairy tale about a mysterious illness that pulls the residents of a fictional California community into a deep, seemingly permanent sleep. Equal parts creepy and moving, it asks a lot of big questions (What’s the nature of consciousness? Is the line between dream and reality as clearly drawn as we think it is?) that’ll appeal to your quizzical side.

You can be impatient, Aries, but that’s only because you’re a master multitasker with a miles-long to-do list. Book-wise, you appreciate short stories and essays that can be read piecemeal but also feel cohesive. Ellis’s (American Housewife) latest is a fiercely funny collection about living life as a “proper” Southern lady. Hint: "If you don't have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way.”

In Rivero’s new novel, a woman, her husband and their two young children flee the economic and political strife of mid-90s Peru for a chance at a new life in New York City. Because they're undocumented, though, the American dream proves elusive, and they're forced to lean on loan sharks who cause more problems than they solve. As a stubborn Taurus, you’ll relate to Ana’s unrelenting perseverance. And as a political crusader, you’ll appreciate the timely emphasis on the immigrant experience.

Gemini ladies are marked by their sense of indecision. Luckily, there’s no need to choose between reads in Hempel’s first story collection in more than a decade. In one, a disgraced private school teacher takes on home-care work in Florida. In another, a volunteer relates more to dogs than to people. Minimalist yet thematically ambitious, this book will appeal to an adaptable, quick-witted reader like yourself.

Family comes first for sensitive, intuitive Cancers, who will live for Jaswal’s novel about the British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters who, while never close as kids, have drifted even further apart as adults. That is, until their mother, on her deathbed, requests that they make a pilgrimage to a temple in India to carry out her final rites. Forced to be together, the sisters make unexpected discoveries about themselves, each other and what it means to be a family.

Confident, self-aware and kinda sorta showy, the headstrong Leo needs a big story with in-your-face characters. Enter: Julie Langsdorf’s White Elephant, a vibrant neighborhood drama about a rich newcomer to a Washington, D.C., suburb who builds a ridiculous mansion and cuts down a beloved tree—setting off a chaotic sequence of darkly funny squabbles.

Cathy Guisewite is the creator of the iconic Cathy comic strip. She’s also a textbook Virgo. (Detail-oriented? Check. Self-critical? Check.) After retiring the character that defined her career for 34 years, Guisewite has opened up—in 34 essays—about finding herself at an anxious crossroads, and redefining her purpose in retirement. For pragmatic and perfectionistic Virgos, this is a nice reminder not to take everything so seriously.

Charming and loquacious, if you were a movie genre, you’d be a rom-com. It makes sense, then, that you’ll devour Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie, which has been hailed as a modern-day Bridget Jones’s Diary and takes on the story of a Jamaican British woman working at a London newspaper—and making all the wrong choices when it comes to love. It’s smart, funny and socially-minded, just like you.

Passionate, intense Scorpios need an ambitious story to hold their attention. Enter Miriam Toews’s Women Talking, about a fundamentalist Mennonite community where the women and girls frequently wake up bruised and bloodied with no memory of what happened. Assuming that demons were perpetrating the attacks, they're shocked to find out that it's actually the men in the colony. Toews's novel recounts the two days when—while the men are away—a group of the women gather to decide what to do next. See what we mean? Intense.

Quirky. Free-spirited. Eccentric. All of these words describe you, dear Sag. They also describe Elizabeth McCracken’s wholly imaginative Bowlaway, which is set in small Massachusetts town at the turn of the 20th century, when a mysterious woman is found unconscious in a frost-covered cemetery with only a corset, a bowling ball, a candlepin and 15 pounds of gold. Intrigued? We thought you would be.

In a book, you look for characters as driven, hardworking and responsible as you are. Meet Anuradha Bhagwati who, after spending her whole life trying to please her strict Indian parents, abandoned her Ivy League grad school career to join the Marines. Her powerful and inspiring memoir is about pushing beyond limits—something you’re no stranger to, of course.