Wonder City Stories by Jude McLaughlin is a series of novels and short stories set in a world with superheroes, but the stories are not primarily about active superheroes (or supervillains). Most of the main characters are ordinary people with minor superpowers, who work regular jobs (construction work, barista, architect, journalist, therapist, etc.) and don't have codenames or crimefighting identities; some are retired superheroes, others young trainee heroes. Several characters are transgender, gender-fluid, or non-binary.

The stories tend to focus mainly around interpersonal drama, though there are also some superpowered fight scenes, and toward the end of each novel several characters -- both superheroes and ordinary people with and without powers -- come together to solve a crisis.

One of the main characters of the first two novels, and a minor character in the third, is FtM transsexual (and a werewolf). His mother is an inventor-type super; she's offered to invent him a gender-switching ray, but he refuses and goes through transition the hard way. He knows the government would quickly confiscate and suppress the gender-switching ray, and nobody would benefit from it except him.

One of the main characters of the third novel is MtF transsexual, though this isn't made explicit until late in the book.

The world has a deep history going back thousands of years, and several older characters with histories going back to WWII or earlier. The setting as whole reminds me a lot of Kurt Busiek's Astro City, though it's a little darker.

There are three complete novels so far, and nine short stories; the author recently started serializing a fourth novel.

• Table of contents
• My favorite of the short stories, maybe a better place to start for new readers than the first novel