Several July releases this summer are gaining a great deal of attention and praise and are by debut novelists or lesser known writers.  These are the sort of books that readers love to discover and promise great things in the future.

           

“The Wolf Road” by Beth Lewis is her debut novel.  According to Amazon which named it as one of the Best Books for July, it “is a brilliant amalgam of literary thriller and gritty western.”  Set in a bleak future where survivors live off the land, a young teenager is saved from death by a tattooed backwoodsman who teaches her all the tricks needed to survive in the wilderness.  Elka thinks of him as her father until a trip into town reveals terrifying secrets about him that catapults her into a frantic attempt to escape.

           

“Inner fire, honest vulnerability, and an endearing sense of humor, make Elka a remarkable character, and since I finished “The Wolf Road” I have missed her,” says Seira Wilson of “The Amazon Book Review.”  It is a rare character whose voice lingers in your mind, and “The Wolf Road” deserves a reader’s attention.

           

“Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch is due out this week.  Another of Amazon’s Best Books of July, they state that it is a “science-fiction thriller that is fantastically terrifying.”  Jason Dessen was an up-and-coming quantum physicist whose personal life held him back until he is abducted into an alternate dimension where he didn’t marry his girlfriend and have a son.  

           

“Dark Matter” uses science fiction to discuss decision-making that changed your life and what if you hadn’t made that decision, but another.  Reviewers use terms like “mind-blowing, speeds along like a train looking to wreck” and “hard to put down.”

           

“All Is Not Forgotten” by Wendy Walker poses the question: if something terrible happened to you and you could be given a pill to make you forget, should you?  Jenny Kramer is attacked at a party in small town, Fairview.  Told by the psychiatrist who administered a controversial drug that makes her forget the attack, the results are unexpected, as is the reality between the veneers of small town life in Fairview.

           

Another of Amazon’s Best Books of July, it is described as “deeply intriguing and provocative,” “brutal,” and “thought-provoking.” 

           

None of these books are by name writers, but all three are unusual, and brilliantly written; they are just the sort of books for which readers search.