12 new SFF books to put on your summer reading list this July

Wanderers – Chuck Wendig

This new novel from comic book writer and Star Wars author Chuck Wendig is creepy precisely because it feels so plausible, and it’s the kind of story that will probably keep you up at night. In Wanderers, a strange plague sweeps over the world, which basically turns everyone into sleepwalkers. Its victims cannot be woken up and, as one, they all begin walking. Where? Why? We don’t know.

Wanderers follows the perspective of four characters – a rock star, a religious talk radio host, a scientist, and a teenage girl – as the world turns to chaos. One girl follows her sister as she sleepwalks across America, contending with many dangers and surprising new horrors along the way, including dangerous militia and the “shepherds” who follow along behind other sleepwalking victims.

"Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead. For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world."

Wanderers is available on July 2.