Paperback Picks
Between all the graduations, weddings, Father’s Day celebrations and Pride parties, June is one of the busiest — and most festive — months of the year.
This month, the publishing industry is releasing some of the biggest blockbusters of the last year in paperback form, ensuring that you’ll be able to find gifts for every dad and grad on your list, while picking up a steamy LGBTQ+-themed romance or two for yourself. Here are some of this month’s highlights.
“Katabasis” by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, $22). A pair of graduate students journey to hell to retrieve the soul of their highly problematic adviser in one of 2025’s most divisive satirical novels, written by one of America’s best young novelists.
“Mark Twain” by Ron Chernow (Penguin Books, $25). Chernow’s accessible and entertaining biography of one of the most important writers in American history garnered a lot of praise from the big newspaper review sections last year. But at 1200 pages, the comprehensive biography is likely to be a lot more successful as a lighter, cheaper paperback. Expect to see lots of banged-up copies peeking out of tote bags at the beach this summer.
“A Marriage at Sea” by Sophie Elmhirst (Riverhead Books, $20). This true story of a married couple who became shipwrecked was a bestselling sensation on its release last year, garnering praise from former President Barack Obama and Stephen Colbert, among others. Somehow, Elmhirst transforms a nature survival narrative about a woefully unprepared man and woman lost at sea into an emotionally resonant metaphor for the challenges of marriage.
“Atmosphere” by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine Books, $20). Not many books sell over a million copies anymore, but “Atmosphere” isn’t just any book. The latest novel from the author of “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” and “Daisy Jones & The Six” combines a nostalgic 1980s setting with an astronaut adventure yarn and a powerful love story.
“Murderland” by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Books, $21). Fraser’s sweeping overview of Tacoma and Seattle in the latter half of the 20th century should be required reading for all PNW booklovers. Half true crime story, half environmental science thriller, “Murderland” explains how Tacoma’s exceptionally high levels of lead, arsenic and copper might have given rise to a generation of ghastly criminals, including Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway and Charles Manson.
“Is a River Alive?” by Robert Macfarlane (W.W. Norton & Company, $19.99). Macfarlane is becoming one of the finest naturalist writers of our time, blending the best of Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson and Edward Abbey. This book is a celebration of rivers all over the world — from unspoiled wild whitewaters to urban rivers recovering from decades of pollution.
“What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan (Vintage, $20). Somehow, more than half a century into his career as a writer, McEwan is still publishing magisterial, thought-provoking novels. His latest, set nearly a hundred years in the climate-ravaged future, centers on an academic trying to recover a long-thought-lost poem that was only read aloud once at a dinner party in the year 2014.
“The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran” by Shida Bazyar, translated by Ruth Martin (Scribe, $19). Shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize, this novel tracks one family’s travels away from and back to Iran across the span of four decades. Readers looking for the human stories behind the headlines of America’s military actions in Iran should look no further.
“The Haves and Have-Yachts” by Evan Osnos (Scribner, $21). Subtitled “Dispatches on the Ultrarich,” this collection of essays originally published in the New Yorker exposes the lifestyles of the handful of superrich people who possess even more of the nation’s wealth than their forebears did during the excesses of the Gilded Age.
“The Last Ferry Out” by Andrea Bartz (Ballantine Books, $20). The latest twisty thriller from the author of “We Were Never Here” centers on a woman who returns to the seemingly paradisiacal island where her fiancée died. Did an accident really claim her life, or was she murdered — and if so, is the killer planning to strike again?
“The Open Era” by Edward Schmit (Berkley, $19). Fans of the “Heated Rivalry” series looking for a new sports romance novel will be thrilled to meet Austin Hardy, the first openly gay tennis player to win a slot in a Grand Slam tournament. Already wracked with anxiety from all the attention, Austin meets and falls hard for a high-ranking (and straight-coded) man named Diego Cruz.
“The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy” by Brigitte Knightley (Ace, $20). The Best Book Title of the Month Award goes to this romantasy novel about an assassin and a healer who team up to fight the recurrence of a deadly Pox that nearly wiped out the kingdom years before.
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