I’ve called authors rockstars before but Josh Malerman is an actual rockstar. He is one of the singer/songwriters for The High Strung, who did the opening song for the Showtime program Shameless. While on tour with his band, Malerman would write horror novels for fun to pass the time. He had finished 14 books before he tried to have any of them published. When his first book, Bird Box, was published it became so popular that Netflix made it into a movie starring Sandra Bullock, which was a pretty decent adaptation.
Bird Box is the story of a young mother and her two children living in a world where everyone is trapped inside their homes due to mysterious creatures that drive anyone who sees them insane. When a person views one of these creatures, they go berserk, attacking anyone around them before killing themselves. The only way to survive is to barricade yourself indoors and cover all the windows. Going outside is possible but you have to cover your eyes, as the creatures aren’t known to physically harm people. With supplies dwindling, the mother must make hard decisions weighing the need for food and the risk of leaving safety.
As I mentioned before, this was made into a Netflix movie that was pretty good. Like all film adaptations, a lot of content was cut from the book so even if you’ve seen the movie you still have a good reason to read it. If you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend the book for fans of horror and post-apocalypse stories. On a side note, I also recommend the show Shameless on Showtime. Hilarious and dirty comedy series about a poor family struggling to get by in the south side of Chicago.