Zathura and okular can do it, as well as Sumatra on windows, but they suffer from ugly defaults. The best reader is koreader (kobo device in my case) as it let you customize the reading experience.
I tried creating a reader (macos) based on mupdf (koreader also used it) and itβs definitely possible to have an epub viewer. I also dislike bookshelf type software if they try to manage the files as well (a simple database can be fine). So far. I just use these to check the epub file and do the reading on the kobo instead (or convert to pdf if I want annotations (ipad)).
Zathura will by default keep a history and your position in each document, which I personally don't like (I want it to start from the beginning each time) but you can change this with 'set database "null"' in the config file. I tried zathura for pdfs a while ago but went back to evince due to the nice feature of showing all search results in a sidebar when you search. Unfortunately evince doesn't support epub. My zathurarc so far is:
set database "null"
set adjust-open "width"
set scroll-wrap false
set font "monospace light 24"
set statusbar-home-tilde true
set window-title-home-tilde true
set window-title-page true
set guioptions "v"
map [fullscreen] <PageDown> scroll full-down
map [fullscreen] <PageUp> scroll full-up
map [normal] <PageDown> scroll full-down
map [normal] <PageUp> scroll full-up
The font option just seems to cover the interface font (which is tiny if you don't set it) and guioptions "v" means no default status bar but always a vertical scroll bar. Page up and down use viewable pages instead of the default document page.
I was also just looking for an epub reader due to this Humble book bundle on game design that mostly only has epub:
It's worth noting that KOReader is available for desktop Linux users, both as a Debian package and AppImage. The interface is better suited to touch screens though. I suspect that is why noone has bothered to port/build it for other desktop operating systems.
I tried creating a reader (macos) based on mupdf (koreader also used it) and itβs definitely possible to have an epub viewer. I also dislike bookshelf type software if they try to manage the files as well (a simple database can be fine). So far. I just use these to check the epub file and do the reading on the kobo instead (or convert to pdf if I want annotations (ipad)).