This month’s selections are thick with promising debuts to start your summer, and they touch on subjects related to transformation and migration during a time when nature is transforming and migrating. It’s also Pride Month, and a good chunk of these books are by queer or trans authors and/or include queer or trans characters, but that’s also true of the books on Who Even Reads in general, so we’re not really sure what else there is to say about that. Except that we are planning some actual Pride-specific content for later this month, so stay tuned. We do also want to say that we’re grateful for the overwhelming support for our recent article about indie bookstores with masking policies, and if you’re a new follower or subscriber of ours, we’re glad to have you on board. 

Good-Looking Books Coming Out This June

Rabbit, Fox, Tar by P.C. Verrone

June 2 | Catapult | 304 pages

In this entrancing debut from Catapult, a young Black woman, Baby, arrives in a largely white neighborhood known as Original Hill, and her very presence immediately begins to encroach on the residents’ sense of normalcy. The neighborhood is in an unnamed part of the Midwest that overlooks the Mississippi, with the surrounding area being reminiscent of the Twin Cities, and Rabbit, Fox, Tar appears to reference the real-life history of Minneapolis and St. Paul’s displacement of Black communities through the construction of highways. The opening multi-perspective narration and Verrone’s vivid, fabulistic descriptions evoke an atmosphere of neighborhood gossip amassing, morphing, taking on a life of its own. We can’t wait to continue reading this one.

Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas

June 2 | MCD | 304 pages

Morgan Thomas’s debut novel centers on a trans family: the parents, Ro and Liam, are living in a remote Florida cabin, and they are joined at the beginning of the story by a teenager they consider their adopted son, Quentin. Quentin is seventeen and has fled an unstable home and plans to attend college in Missouri where he will have access to the hormones that make him Quentin. Ro has recently been diagnosed with autism while staying in a mental health facility after a "suicidal gesture," and this revelation has redefined everything they thought they knew about themselves. Further, Ro’s attention has been dominated by "Mad Eden," an online fantasy series about dragons consisting entirely of words culled from a scholarly article about autism. Their relatively comfortable homelife is destabilized by attacks from anti-trans activists leveled at Ro, who is employed as a patient navigator for a nonprofit that helps people find gender-affirming care. But the novel doesn't have a traditional plot arc—its thematic fascination with time as a nonlinear construct, devoid of cause and effect, extends to its narrative structure. Extremely weird but not quirky, full of literary allusions and references to concepts from physics, Mad Eden is profoundly alluring, propelling itself forward on the strength of its intellectual conceits (and its queer Floridian charm). An excerpt is available at the link above.

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

June 2 | Tor | 368 pages

Already a Locus, Nebula, Shirley Jackson, and BSFA Award winner for her short fiction, Isabel J. Kim reportedly signed a seven-figure deal for three books with Tor, who beat out several competitors at auction. Kim’s debut novel Sublimation is an epic speculative thriller centered on immigration and the fracturing of identity. In the world of the book, when a person emigrates from their home country to another place, they split in two—one person, called the “instance,” travels to the new location, while the other stays behind. Soyoung Kang’s instance left Korea with her mother when she was eleven, moving to the United States and becoming Rose. Rose grew up American, keeping thoughts of what and who she left behind far from her mind and avoiding close attachments. At twenty-nine, she is called home by Soyoung to attend their grandfather’s funeral. Despite the existence of technology to prevent this from happening, the two instances merge and become one person, which they immediately regret. Soyoung-Rose then travels to the US in search of a burgeoning new invention that might separate them. The universe of the book is exceptionally well-crafted and immersive—interludes feature imagined allusions to instances in the Bible, The Odyssey, etc., and Kim has invented entire bureaucratic institutions to control instancing and the plethora of immigration and citizenship issues one can imagine this phenomenon would create. Sublimation is a fast-paced, incredibly cinematic novel and the television rights have already been picked up by Universal Studios in what Deadline calls “a highly competitive situation.” We can’t wait to watch it.

Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery

June 2 | HarperVia | 288 pages

This is Daniel Lavery’s first foray into the contemporary—his first two full-length works of fiction being Women’s Hotel (2024) and Christmas at the Women’s Hotel (2025), both set in the mid-twentieth century. Here we follow Barbara Foerster, a woman in her late fifties who works at a high-end deli and has recently had a falling out with her best friend, Susan. We learn that this is in fact the ninth time Barbara has lost a best friend—a category of relationship that is of paramount importance to her (she remarks off-handedly, “...at this point in my life, it’s only women who matter to me”). So Barbara sets out to find her next best friend and the novel unfolds primarily through her interior dialogue—a very Mrs. Dalloway-esque performance that traverses religion, sex, clothing and accessories, food, and more. But around the edges of the chatter, the reader can observe Barbara’s personal growth as she attempts to connect more naturally with her son and evolve beyond her prejudices. Those who appreciated Women’s Hotel will find the same natural charm, mildly caustic humor, low-stakes conflict, and appreciation for the feminine mind and spirit here. You can read a sample on the publisher's page, linked above.

The Cruelty of Nice Folks by Justin Ellis

June 16 | Harper | 432 pages

Like Rabbit, Fox, Tar, this historical nonfiction account draws attention to the history of anti-Blackness in Minneapolis, exploring the discrepancy between its image as a liberal haven today and the reality of systemic discrimination and racial violence linked to events like George Floyd’s murder. It includes a new epilogue addressing how Minneapolis has come back into the national spotlight in 2026. The Cruelty of Nice Folks should add useful context to current events, as public conversations around ICE resistance this year have often centered the actions of individual white people without addressing the ways that systemic anti-Black racism connects to authoritarian violence and anti-immigrant sentiment in America.

Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

June 23 | Tiny Reparations Books | 272 pages

A woman once got involved in something shady for the shaky promise of a glamorous lifestyle and is now on the run—what’s not to like? Balasingamchow’s vivacious debut follows Ophir (not her real name), who grew up in Singapore and was drawn by a charismatic friend into a criminal operation that she convinced herself was benign. Ophir narrates her past life to the reader in the form of podcast episodes she is creating from an unknown location during Covid lockdown in 2020, recounting how she has skipped from country to country in an effort to outrun the authorities, making use of her talent for accents and her multiracial background to hide. The story naturally touches on questions of identity, borders, and migration, while Ophir’s voice reveals a story that is suspenseful, entertaining, and hard to enjoy just one episode at a time. The "Look Inside" option at the publisher's link above takes you to the book's first pages.

All This Want (and I Can't Get None) by T Clark

June 23 | One World | 208 pages

This debut, which explores queer coming-of-age for young Black characters, seems to have the potential to be the kind of collection that renders ordinary scenarios into eminently readable narratives. The title story, originally published in Joyland, is about thirteen-year-old D’asia, who along with her friend Kay is being groomed by Tevin, a man who works in security at their high school. D’asia’s mother is aware of Tevin but doesn’t seem to care, and Tevin seems useful to the girls, as he buys them food and gives them access to his apartment, promising at least the illusion of abundance and autonomy in their precarious lives. This situation blows up in a rather expected way, but not in exactly the way the reader might anticipate, and the ending leaves D’asia with a refreshing sense of agency even as danger and hardship lurk around the corner. 

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