Bird Box: The Inspiration for the Film, a Gripping Post-Apocalyptic Thriller with a Heart-Pounding Twist

“[A] chilling debut . . . Malerman . . keeps us tinglingly on edge with his cool, merciless storytelling. . . . This earns comparisons to Hitchcock’s The Birds, as well as the finer efforts of Stephen King and cult sci-fi fantasist Jonathan Carroll.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Written with the narrative tension of The Road and the exquisite terror of classic Stephen King, Bird Box is a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat psychological horror thriller, set in an apocalyptic near-future where an unimaginable, incomprehensible, and invisible foe lurks in the shadows—now available as a Harper Perennial Olive Edition

Something is out there. Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from. Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them. But is it man, animal, or monster?

Engulfed in darkness, surrounded by sounds both familiar and frightening, Malorie embarks on a harrowing odyssey of survival—a trip that takes her into an unseen world and back into the past, to the companions who once saved her. Malerman’s breathtaking debut novel is a horrific and gripping snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.

Josh Malerman is the acclaimed author of Bird Box and more than three dozen books, as well as the lead singer and songwriter for the rock band the High Strung. He has been nominated for multiple Bram Stoker Awards and lives in Michigan.