New Release Spotlight: June 9, 2026

Welcome to the New Release Spotlight for this second week of June!

Today, we’re diving into a fresh batch of literary gems, which are entries #5266 through #5276 on The Ginormous Book List. Whether your shelves are already overflowing or you are actively hunting for your next great read, this week’s lineup has something spectacular across the genres.

Before we dive into the full list, here is a quick look at the top three releases stealing the spotlight this week. It looks like I’ve got a theme this week: All three of my favorites are based in ancient history or ancient mythology!

• Their Will Undone by R.J. Valldeperas (YA Romantasy) – This book is inspired by the history of the Inca Empire, packed with ancestral magic, intense political intrigue, and a fierce protagonist who refuses to let others decide her fate.

• Rostam Wrecks the Realm by Olivia Abtahi (MG space opera) – This book blends sci-fi adventure with Persian mythology. It follows a boy who accidentally plunges a planet into darkness after a deal with an ancient demon.

• Tajín and the Twelve Thunders: A Pre-Columbian Myth by Magaly Morales (picture book mythology) – A beautifully illustrated, energetic retelling of a Totonac (pre-Columbian indigenous Mexicans) myth about a mischievous boy whose antics with the thunder gods explain the origins of hurricanes.

You can see all the June titles together on this cumulative Amazon list. I will continue to add to this list through the end of June.

A Quick Summer Scheduling Note: Enjoy these spotlights while they last! Our final new release spotlight for the summer will drop at the end of this month. I am taking the entire month of July off to rest, recharge, and naturally, tackle my own ever-growing reading pile.

Let’s look at the rest of this week’s incredible titles…

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

In the summer of 1994, seventeen-year-old Cal ”California” Garcia can’t seem to escape the gossip and horrified looks of his fellow La Sombra residents. They judge him on nothing more than the long scar on his face, his beat up ’68 Mustang, and always being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Cal constantly feels like he’s been set up to fail. His father left his family after the tragic accident that gave him his scar. His mother spends all her time at church, enchanted by the words of a crooked pastor. And his new-old Mustang brings more trouble and chaos than it’s worth.

Everything about being in La Sombra tells him he is and always will be a nothing. But as his senior year is coming to an end, his life is turned drastically upside down. Out by the railroad tracks, Cal finds Nora, valedictorian Nora, fallen off a bridge. The monarch butterflies stitched onto her jeans are seared into his memory forever. Having found her body, Cal becomes a person of interest in Nora’s suspicious death.

As Cal tries to escape suspicion, an opportunity for a way out of La Sombra emerges from nowhere, and Cal is forced to choose his own fate. Will Cal finally decide who he is and where he wants to be? Or will he let circumstance choose for him and live his life as just another statistic in a farm-worker town?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

In Amaru, it is an honor to be chosen in the annual harvest and serve the gods’-favored emperor. Nina’s brother has already been chosen, but when the emperor’s men come a second time for her sister, Nina volunteers instead. She is taken to the acllahuasi, a gilded cage where women train to become servants or wives for the ruling class. It is there that a soldier comes to collect her, and Nina learns of her fate—to become a wife…to the emperor.

As the emperor’s trusted friend and soldier, Kasik is ordered to retrieve Nina and deliver her untouched. But the emperor’s betrothed is not as he expected. The distrust between Nina and Kasik is thicker than the trees surrounding them, and Kasik’s honor is put to the test when their path back to the capitol leads them into dangerous territory. Their lives and hearts are in peril as forbidden desires are unearthed, along with a stirring of dark magic in Nina that inexplicably ties her to the gods.

What begins as a simple task becomes a tense journey that forces Nina and Kasik to confront where their true loyalties lie—with the emperor and the fate of their people, or with the desires of their own hearts.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

I feel invincible.
Like I could run and run
and never stop for breath.

I feel a power in me
I didn’t know I had.

The power to speak,
to say what I need.

Surya knows exactly who they are. Coming out as non-binary to their queer parents and best friend? A total non-event. Catching feelings for Blessing – the boy in drama club whose smile makes their heart race? That’s trickier.

As their final year of school unfolds and the two of them grow closer, Surya starts to question: Does Blessing really see them? Or just a version of them that doesn’t exist? They’d ask their best friend for advice, but she’s busy falling in love too.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Fifteen-year-old Blue Collins’s parents own the only Black beach in Santa Monica in 1929. She loves spending time there with her handsome friend Ben Clark. It’s a quiet spot where they can be alone and where Ben’s darker skin won’t be judged by onlookers—or Blue’s own family.

During a sunset rendezvous after a summer parade, the pair discovers the body of Dottie Whitehouse, a white debutante. Blue Beach is already threatened by local white property owners. Now their whole community could be at risk. In their panic, Blue and Ben move Dottie’s body into the waters of a nearby white beach.

Dottie’s body washes ashore, and it isn’t long before all eyes are on Ben. Everyone saw how Dottie teased him and how they shared smiles. And their history goes deeper than Blue ever realized. But to save Ben from the outraged white townspeople, she’ll need to do whatever she can to dig up the truth and prove his innocence. Ben isn’t the only one whose life depends on it.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

After leaving Earth, Rostam Zamini had just gotten used to life on Enceladus—one of Saturn’s many moons—only to once again have to move when one of his moms gets a fancy new job on dusty and dull Pars-1.

Rostam had worked hard and managed to make friends on Enceladus, but none of the Pars-1 kids seem to be impressed with Rostam’s big-city background. In desperate need of some space cred, Rostam makes a deal with Zahhak—a centuries-old demon prince—for popularity in exchange for the golden mace described in The Persian Book of Kings.

But when Rostam hands the mace over, he unknowingly plunges the planet into darkness by accidentally killing their ancient sun, a red giant. Now he must right his wrongs and save his new home before it’s too late.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Faye Fitzgerald does not remember what she’s done to land herself at the Auk Island School. She remembers so little about the night that changed her life. Growing up surrounded by nature with her botonist father in the Forest House, she can’t cope with the bleak and treeless island where the school sits in seclusion.

Where she and the other children are treated more like prisoners than pupils.

While her fellow students begin to defy the horrible headmaster within the walls of the school, something is begging for Faye’s attention on the outside. “The Knife,” the only mountain on the island, is calling for her. And it will draw her into a web of secrets that she could have never thought possible.

In this gripping mystery that weaves in and around the line between science and magic, a murdered prince, a majestic stag, and a key that will open any door lead Faye on a dangerous journey across the desolate landscape to uncover what happened and the truth about her father’s scientific discoveries.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Campbell Cole has a big heart for all living things, especially strays. It might be because her father, the director of the local animal control, is as aloof as they come, so Campbell knows what it’s like to feel alone.

When she spots an adorable dog being dumped on the street, the last thing Campbell can do is tell her dad. He might take the pup straight to the shelter, where new rescues have just three days to be adopted. The only person she can trust with the truth is her best friend, Luz.

The more time Campbell spends trying to catch the dog, the more he starts to trust her, which is both great and terrible because Campbell knows she can’t keep him. But perhaps she doesn’t have to. With the help of Luz’s father, an army vet grappling with PTSD, she just may find a solution that benefits not only the dog, but everyone else, too.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Meet the narrator of this book: the mountain. It’s cold and windy up here, so you might want to shut your eyes; you don’t need them to see the mountain best, anyway.

Stay with the mountain for all four seasons, and you can truly get to know it. See the mountain with your hands in the winter, digging in the snow. With your nose in the spring, breathing in the rain and mud. With your ears in the summer, when the birds caw caw and thunder booms, and in autumn, with your tongue, biting into sweet apples and earthy mushrooms.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Based on powerful memories of Nayeri visiting his grandfather, this story-within-a-story brings a young boy in a hot car ride across the desert. The destination is an oasis, where gardens perfume the air, and tales are lovingly told.

Here is the gate to a magical world full of princesses, valiant brothers, dangerous giants, and one perfect, enchanted lemon. Will any of the brothers be able to foil the giant, retrieve the lemon, and free the princess? In the warm embrace of Nayeri’s storytelling, readers will lean into the enchantment until the story’s end.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

A young child addresses a loved one who is no longer there, while narrating the process of building a rocket ship in the backyard. Dad is nearby, as the child explains their progress and decisions about what to pack as they build.

Musing that something is still missing, the child remembers past building projects, stargazing and a warm and loving relationship with the person they’ve lost. Now, this person feels as far away as the stars – which is where the rocket is aimed.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY

Tajín is a fun-loving child full of energy and mischief. When his antics prove too rough for even the monkeys of the forest, he’s sent to the pyramid of Los Nichos.

There live the Twelve Thunders, who, with their sweeping capes, thunderous boots, and flashing swords, make the weather. For a time, the boy is on his best behavior while in their service . . . but all too soon, he yearns to join the Thunders in the sky.

Based on a popular Mexican myth, Tajín and the Twelve Thunders is the origin story of how the first hurricanes were created—with the help of one mischievous little boy.