10 Summer Beach Reads With a Social Justice Twist

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• Catherine Poland - [email protected]

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Summer is here and whether you're in San Diego in person or in spirit - hello ocean! - it's time to come up with some fun books to read during your down time. What's your guilty pleasure? Are you looking for Romance? Reflection? Queer joy? Or maybe even horror? We've got you covered.

We checked in with Izzy Narvaez, the Assistant Director of Education and Training at the UC San Diego Cross-Cultural Center and leader of their Beyond the Pages Staff Book Club, who offered her recommendations for a summer 2026 sand-and-sunscreen-ready list.

For Romance and Heartfelt Connection

In "Because Fat Girl: A Novel" (Entangled Publishing, 2024), Lauren Marie Fleming offers a novel that is for everyone who's ever felt too big, too weird, too queer - or just too much. In the story, Diana Smith is determined to make award-winning movies that showcase the diversity of her community. She is so close to her goal, when grief comes and shatters her directorial dreams and she ends up moving to the suburbs with her sister. And then a pity invite to a gala full of Hollywood's most elite changes her trajectory.

In "Cat's People: A Novel" (Dell, 2026), Tanya Guerrero offers a story about the "Meow-Yorkers," a group of people in Brooklyn who take care of their neighborhood's stray cats. When Núria, a single-by-choice barista begins to find Post-it notes left by a secret admirer in an area where she feeds her favorite stray, a black cat known as Cat, the plot thickens: Who's leaving them? Only Cat knows, but then he falls sick, bringing five strangers together.

For Queer Joy, Identity and Community

In "Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert: A Novel" (Gallery Books, 2026), Bob the Drag Queen shares a novel where our historical hero, Harriet Tubman, is magically and inexplicably back and ready to shake us out of our confusion and hate by creating a hip-hop album and show about her life. But first, she needs to find a songwriter to help her.

In "Messy Perfect" (Quill Tree Books, 2025), Tanya Boteju highlights the story of the overzealous, perfectionist Cassie Perera, who decides to team up with a neighboring public school to found an underground Gender and Sexuality Alliance chapter at her Catholic High School. Harboring guilt from her inaction a few years before in a homophobic bullying incident that involved her former best friend, Cassie finds herself outside her comfort zone and struggling to balance her experiences and the various ways she defines herself.

For Suspense and Horror

In "The Johnson Four: An American Ghost Story: A Novel" (Ballantine Books, 2026), Christina Hammonds Reed creates a novel that centers on three boys - Roman (a rebel), Rocco (the talent), and River (the dutiful son) - who encounter the ghost of Christmas Jones the Third, an effervescent boy who carries the scars of his horrific past as an orphan and minstrel sensation. With Christmas stowing away to join the family, they move out west to try and fulfill their dreams of musical stardom.

In "Slasher Summer" (Crown, 2026), E. L. Chen creates a novel centered on the sleepy town of Cedar Lake, infamous as the shooting location of a campy '80s horror flick called "Slasher." The friends who starred in the movie all those years ago reunite at the remote cabin where the movie was filmed. Night falls…and the purportedly fictional masked killer makes an unexpected, and deadly appearance.

In "Treat Them As Buffalo: A Novel" (Algonquin Books, 2026), Blair Palmer Yoxall focuses on Niko Eriksen who, in 1885, spends his days playing buffalo hunter even though his tribe hasn't seen one for years. When teenage boys begin to disappear, the community members rally together around Kate McCannon, a sawn-off shotgun-slinging rancher who leads a coalition of freedom fighters looking for answers.

For Reflection and Healing

In "The Emperor of Gladness" (Penguin Books, Upcoming July 2026) by Ocean Vuong shares a story of nineteen-year-old Hai, who is ready to jump from the edge of a bridge in the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, when he is interrupted by an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. He becomes her caretaker, and the pair develop a life-altering bond built on empathy, spiritual reckoning and heartbreak.

In "Martyr! A Novel" (Vintage, 2024), Kaveh Akbar offers a story centered on Cyrus Shams, a drunk, addicted poet grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss. His obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past and towards an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death and his mother, who might not have been who or what she seemed.

In "Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways" (Broadleaf Books, 2023), Dorcas Cheng-Tozun expands the possibilities of how to be a peacemaker and create positive social impact for those who aren't comfortable battling in the trenches. Celebrating real-life examples and the contributions of people who might feel highly emotional, empathic or introverted, Cheng-Tozun affirms the gifts and talents that sensitive souls can offer.