Reading Radar - Fresh Of The Press
The latest novels that should be on your radar this June
This June, discover a powerful new wave of fiction that spans lush fantasy, sharp historical insight, and stirring contemporary narratives. These stories explore the many faces of resilience—through characters navigating the ethics of family, the weight of legacy, and the fight for dignity in the face of silence and neglect.
Wander into worlds shaped by myth and magic, where fate is not fixed and truth is a dangerous currency. Witness the quiet bravery of those who challenge deeply personal expectations, and the loud, necessary resistance of communities rising against systemic injustice and political cruelty.
These books delve into the complexities of motherhood, the fragility of identity, and the fire of activism. From speculative retellings filled with beauty and decay to piercing accounts of real-world injustice in the LGBTQ+ community - June’s reads are as expansive as they are intimate.
Together, they form a chorus of voices—each one offering a reminder that storytelling is both a mirror and a call to action. In every page, you'll find the strength of defiance, the ache of transformation, and the quiet, radical power of human connection.
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In The Family Way By Laney Katz Becker
An intimate, emotionally charged exploration of motherhood, choice, and the fragile boundaries of family.
Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult and Celeste Ng, this novel is a compelling, compassionate look at the complexities of modern family-making and the courage it takes to follow your heart—no matter where it leads.
‘A group of suburban women help one another navigate their personal challenges, marriages, and pregnancies—both wanted and unwanted.
In 1965 America, women can’t have their own bank accounts and credit cards or sign their own leases; divorce is scandalous and difficult; and abortion is illegal. Every Tuesday a group of friends meet for a canasta game. As cards are drawn and discarded, these women share advice and confidences.
After prim and proper Lily Berg, a doctor’s wife, discovers she’s pregnant with her second child, she follows her friend Becca’s suggestion and takes in Betsy, a pregnant teen from the local home for unwed mothers. Betsy, who’s never met anyone Jewish before, is to live with the Bergs for six months, help with babysitting and housekeeping, have her own baby, and then agree to never contact the family again. But things quickly get complicated.
Moving and atmospheric, full of history and heart, In the Family Way captures the experiences of women on the cusp of liberation as they struggle with their own complex feelings about being wives, mothers, and women with their own dreams and ambitions.’
Purchase In The Family Way By Laney Katz Becker and add it to your #tbr list here
A Forgery Of Fate By Elizabeth Lim
An enchanting new tale of magic, ambition, and the dangerous power of secrets from the bestselling author of Six Crimson Cranes.
In a world where art holds magic and forgeries can change destinies, one young woman finds herself caught between the life she was born into and the one she dares to create. As political intrigue and forbidden romance swirl around her, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to shape her own fate—and whether the truth is worth the cost.
Brimming with lush worldbuilding, unforgettable characters, and Elizabeth Lim’s signature lyrical prose, this is a must-read for fans of fantasy that weaves emotion and high stakes into every page.
‘A breathtaking romantic fantasy inspired by Beauty and the Beast about a girl who paints the future and a cursed dragon lord, bound by love and deception in a plot to bring down the gods.
Truyan Saigas didn't choose to become a con artist, but after her father is lost at sea, it’s up to her to support her mother and two younger sisters. A gifted art forger, Tru has the unique ability to paint the future, but even such magic is not enough to put her family back together again, or stave off the gangsters demanding payment in blood for her mother’s gambling debts.
Left with few options, Tru agrees to a marriage contract with a mysterious dragon lord. He offers a fresh start for her mother and sisters and elusive answers about her father's disappearance, but in exchange, she must join him in his desolate undersea palace. And she must assist him in a plot to infiltrate the tyrannical Dragon King's inner circle, painting a future so treasonous, it could upend both the mortal and immortal realms. . .’
Purchase A Forgery Of Fate By Elizabeth Lim and add it to your #tbr list here
Storybook Ending By Moira Macdonald
A witty, wistful meditation on the narratives we cling to—and what happens when real life refuses to follow the script.
Moira Macdonald delivers a beautifully observed, emotionally resonant tale perfect for anyone who’s ever wondered whether it’s too late to begin again. Bittersweet, insightful, and filled with literary heart, Storybook Ending is a gentle triumph.
‘A charming story about romance, friendship, and a love of books, in which two women—a lonely remote worker and a widowed single mom—and a handsome local bookstore clerk find themselves in an unusual love triangle when an anonymous note left in a book finds the wrong recipient.
April, a smart and lonely tech worker, worries work from home has gotten out of hand: She’s left an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her Seattle neighborhood bookstore who has a gentle smile and looks great in flannel. But thanks to fate, Laura—a busy single mom who had given up on love—buys the book, finds the note, and thinks Westley has left it for her. A handsome man who loves books seems like just the plot twist she has been looking for.
Meanwhile, Westley—not the most perceptive—is too distracted by the movie filming at the store and the ambition it’s unlocked in him to notice either of the two women. But as April and Laura’s anonymous correspondence continues back and forth, their mundane routines are challenged, sparking a glimmer of hope. Is a happy ending in the cards for them?
A hilarious and intricate web of mistaken identities and serendipitous encounters, Storybook Ending is a playful tribute to romance, friendship, and bookstores, and to the objects—from a forgotten slip of paper to someone’s heart—left between the pages of books we loved.’
Purchase Storybook Ending By Moira Macdonald and add it to your #tbr list here
Ginko Season By Naomi Xu Elegant
A lyrical debut about memory, migration, and the delicate spaces between generations, identity, and belonging. For readers of Elif Batuman and Sally Rooney, a beguiling debut novel about finding oneself after heartbreak.
Set against the quiet rhythms of changing seasons, this novel traces the intertwined lives of three women—grandmother, mother, and daughter—each navigating her own path through displacement, silence, and inherited grief. As the scent of ginkgo trees lingers in the air, their stories unfold in gentle revelations, asking what is passed down through blood, and what is reclaimed through choice.
’After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum’s vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the comfortable company of close friends. One day, she happens to meet Hoang, who confesses to releasing mice from the cancer research lab where he works. Hoang’s openness catches Penelope off guard; from then on, she finds her carefully constructed life slowly starting to unravel. Told in Penelope’s witty, vulnerable, and thoroughly endearing voice, Gingko Season captures three seasons of reawakening, challenges, and transformation.
This wise and tenderhearted novel explores the nature of our deepest friendships as seriously as it does the dizzying terror and thrill of falling in love, and the complications of trying to live a life that matches your ideals.’
Purchase Ginko Season By Naomi Xu Elegant and add it to your #tbr list here
Fight Aids! By Michael G. Long
A powerful chronicle of activism, courage, and community in the face of a public health crisis—and a government’s silence.
Fight AIDS tells the urgent and often overlooked story of the individuals and movements that rose up to challenge inaction, stigma, and systemic neglect during the height of the AIDS epidemic. With unflinching clarity and deep compassion, Michael G. Long highlights the voices of activists, caretakers, and everyday heroes who transformed grief into fuel for change.
Timely, stirring, and deeply human, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how ordinary people, united in purpose, can demand justice and rewrite history. A compelling addition to LGBTQ+ history and social justice shelves alike.
‘Acclaimed author Michael G. Long tells the story of the devastating AIDS crisis and the trailblazing activists who fought for dignity, compassion, and treatment.
Act up! Fight back! Fight AIDS!
This was the slogan for ACT UP—or AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—an activist organization that emerged in the 1980s during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The group was loud, direct, and confrontational as it fought for access to treatment, compassionate care, and recognition for everyone with HIV and AIDS.
Tracing the history of the LGBTQ+ community from the Stonewall Riots and “gay liberation” movements to the groundbreaking protests of the 1980s and 1990s, Fight AIDS! is a gripping narrative of the AIDS epidemic for young readers, told through the lens of the activism it fostered. Focusing on the people most directly affected by the crisis and on the individuals who fought for justice, it is an intimate and humane account of one of the most devastating eras in United States history and an electrifying celebration of the power ordinary citizens have to enact meaningful change.’
Purchase Fight Aids! By Michael G. Long and add it to your #tbr list here
Strange Houses By Uketsu
A surreal and unsettling collection that peels back the wallpaper of ordinary life to reveal the uncanny lurking underneath.
In Strange Houses, horror isn’t loud—it creeps in quietly, room by room. Uketsu crafts a series of eerie tales, each centered on a house that defies the rules of reality. From haunting architecture to sentient staircases, these stories twist domestic spaces into dreamlike—and often nightmarish—landscapes.
Minimalist yet psychologically rich, this collection is a masterclass in atmospheric horror. Whether you're drawn to slow-burning dread or the surreal edge of the supernatural, Strange Houses will leave you questioning what’s behind every closed door.
‘A writer fascinated by the macabre is approached by an acquaintance who is considering purchasing a second-hand house in Tokyo. With its bright and spacious interior, the home seems perfect. But looking closer, the building’s floor plan reveals a mysterious "dead space” hidden between the walls. Seeking a second opinion, the writer shares the floor plan with an architect friend only to discover more “strange spaces” dotted across the house.
What are these mysterious “strange spaces” and why do they exist—are they really there, or is there something off with the floor plan? Who is the home’s former resident who suddenly disappeared?
The freelance writer and his architect friend can’t resist the challenge of solving the riddle of these puzzling floor plans . . . and the terrifying plot behind it all.’
Purchase Strange Houses By Uketsu and add it to your #tbr list here.
Deep House by Jeremy Atherton Lin
A hypnotic and heartfelt novel that explores the beats of love, identity, and the search for belonging in a fractured world. Set against the pulsating backdrop of underground music scenes and vibrant urban life, Deep House follows characters whose lives intertwine through rhythm, memory, and the quest for connection. With sharp prose and emotional depth, Jeremu Atherton crafts a story that dives into the complexities of friendship, passion, and the power of music to heal and transform.
Perfect for fans of lyrical storytelling and culturally rich narratives, this novel invites readers to lose themselves in the soundscape of human experience.
’From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Gay Bar comes a rule-breaking, sweat-soaked, genre-busting story of outlaw love.
It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams — a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.”
With Atherton Lin’s inimitable blend of tenderness and wicked humor, Deep House moves through the couple’s string of rented apartments while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before — smuggling a foreign partner through national checkpoints or going public to stand up for the right to get down in the privacy of their own homes. They include hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subverted the system, activists who went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the celebrated artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Following Gay Bar — called “a rich tapestry” by Vanity Fair and “an absolute tour de force” by Maggie Nelson — Deep House juxtaposes whispered disclosures of undocumented domesticity with courtroom drama and political stunts to explore myriad forms of intimacy while questioning the mechanisms that legitimize love. Deep House is at once a historical kaleidoscope and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle…’
Purchase Deep House by Jeremy Atherton Lin and add it to your #tbr list here.