Josh Malerman
Author of Bird Box
About the Author
Josh Malerman is an author from Britain who was short listed for the James Herbert Award for Horror writing for his title Bird Box. This title has also made the bestseller list in 2019. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Photo of author and musician Josh Malerman.
Series
Works by Josh Malerman
Super Spy 2 copies
Unnerving Magazine Issue #6 1 copy
Carpenter’s Farm 1 copy
The Art of Horrible People 1 copy
Decorum at the Deathbed 1 copy
صندوق طير 1 copy
Associated Works
Shadows Over Main Street: An Anthology of Small-Town Lovecraftian Terror (2015) — Contributor — 47 copies
Chiral Mad 5 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1975-07-24
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Michigan, USA
- Occupations
- Musician
- Agent
- Kristin Nelson (Nelson Literary)
- Short biography
- Josh Malerman is an American author and also one of two singer/songwriters for the rock band The High Strung, whose song "The Luck You Got" can be heard as the theme song to the Showtime show "Shameless." His book Bird Box is also currently being filmed as a feature film starring Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, and Sarah Paulson. Bird Box was also nominated for the Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the James Herbert Award. His books Black Mad Wheel and Goblin have also been nominated for Stoker Awards.
Members
Reviews
Carol Evers suffers from a strange condition: at times of stress, she lapses into a coma that closely resembles death, only she can hear what's going on around her. Now she's in one of her comas and her husband, Dwight, is planning on burying alive so he can get his greedy hands on her fortune. The only man that can save her is a notorious outlaw that ran from her and her condition years ago, James Moxie. The question is, will he reach her in time? Because there are other people who have an interest in seeing Carol buried alive and they will do whatever it takes to keep Moxie from ruining their plans.
What I like most about Unbury Carol is not the central story itself (which is indeed a great premise) but the world it takes place in. Malerman demonstrates that he great at crafting a world and atmosphere with Unbury Carol. I love the Trail, and the little towns it travels through, and the colorful characters that live and die along its dark and dangerous path. Additionally, the way Malerman describes Carol's condition as being caught in a place called "Howltown" is brilliant.
The horror of the novel is mainly the horror of being stuck in Carol's coma condition and the possibility that she'll be buried alive. There are supernatural elements throughout Unbury Carol, but the most frightening moments of the novel come from Carol's condition as well as the interactions between the human characters and the evil they are capable of. There are many bandits and outlaws on the Trail who wish to stop Moxie in his tracks and some are pure evil. Beside Dwight, the bandit Smoke, embodies this idea of pure evil perfectly (think Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men) . I won't give much away but Smoke is a killer who kills without remorse, so he's pretty much the Michael Myers of the Wild West.
Unbury Carol is a fairly breathtaking story, a weird-west fairy tale of a woman struggling to remain alive and the man who truly loves her returning to save her from ending up six feet under. This being said, the novel is not perfect. The build to the climax is amazing, but the payoff was…not disappointing, but not quite enough. I wish there was a little bit more history shown between Carol and Moxie and I wish the ended would have been a bit more explosive.
Still, this bleakly lyrical story of survival, outlaws, is a real-page turner. Check it out.… (more)
What I like most about Unbury Carol is not the central story itself (which is indeed a great premise) but the world it takes place in. Malerman demonstrates that he great at crafting a world and atmosphere with Unbury Carol. I love the Trail, and the little towns it travels through, and the colorful characters that live and die along its dark and dangerous path. Additionally, the way Malerman describes Carol's condition as being caught in a place called "Howltown" is brilliant.
The horror of the novel is mainly the horror of being stuck in Carol's coma condition and the possibility that she'll be buried alive. There are supernatural elements throughout Unbury Carol, but the most frightening moments of the novel come from Carol's condition as well as the interactions between the human characters and the evil they are capable of. There are many bandits and outlaws on the Trail who wish to stop Moxie in his tracks and some are pure evil. Beside Dwight, the bandit Smoke, embodies this idea of pure evil perfectly (think Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men) . I won't give much away but Smoke is a killer who kills without remorse, so he's pretty much the Michael Myers of the Wild West.
Unbury Carol is a fairly breathtaking story, a weird-west fairy tale of a woman struggling to remain alive and the man who truly loves her returning to save her from ending up six feet under. This being said, the novel is not perfect. The build to the climax is amazing, but the payoff was…not disappointing, but not quite enough. I wish there was a little bit more history shown between Carol and Moxie and I wish the ended would have been a bit more explosive.
Still, this bleakly lyrical story of survival, outlaws, is a real-page turner. Check it out.… (more)
In Malerman's chilling debut, Bird Box, an apocalyptic reality befalls a Michigan river community—and who knows how much of the rest of civilization—in the form of creatures that cause people who merely look at them to go mad and kill themselves.
Having lost her sister to this horrific fate, a young pregnant woman, Malorie, finds sanctuary with a group of strangers in a small house with covered windows. Malorie and her roommates lives in fear and when they go outside they wear blindfolds to protect themselves. But, what will Malorie do when this sanctuary is no more? How will her and her child survive?
Bird Box is slow build but the climax of the novel is absolutely gloomy, sorta gothic, and horrific in a manner that both reminded me of Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock.
It's worth reading considering all the buzz about it's adaptation on Netflix. Don't waste your time with that film. It's disappointing. Read this instead and you'll be presently surprised.
I look forward to reading Malerman's follow up, Malorie, later this year.
… (more)
Having lost her sister to this horrific fate, a young pregnant woman, Malorie, finds sanctuary with a group of strangers in a small house with covered windows. Malorie and her roommates lives in fear and when they go outside they wear blindfolds to protect themselves. But, what will Malorie do when this sanctuary is no more? How will her and her child survive?
Bird Box is slow build but the climax of the novel is absolutely gloomy, sorta gothic, and horrific in a manner that both reminded me of Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock.
It's worth reading considering all the buzz about it's adaptation on Netflix. Don't waste your time with that film. It's disappointing. Read this instead and you'll be presently surprised.
I look forward to reading Malerman's follow up, Malorie, later this year.
… (more)
3.5 ⭐ rounded up to 4.
I know I finished this read a while back, but with the end of the school year approaching I didn't have time to review this. But where to begin? There was so much I didn't like about this sequel and very little that I did like. I think the only that I could appreciate about this read was the fact the intensity that Malerman brought in Bird Box was present in Malorie as well.
However, after having time to think about this read, I honestly wasn't left with anything worth remembering. In the first book, there was such intensity and such uncertainty that the idea that this could really happen was ever present.
Overall, Malorie isn't such a bad read, but there so much lost potential. I think that Malerman could have made some risky moves and made a truly unforgettable book, but instead decided to make this fit into a cookie-cutter ending type book.… (more)
I know I finished this read a while back, but with the end of the school year approaching I didn't have time to review this. But where to begin? There was so much I didn't like about this sequel and very little that I did like. I think the only that I could appreciate about this read was the fact the intensity that Malerman brought in Bird Box was present in Malorie as well.
However, after having time to think about this read, I honestly wasn't left with anything worth remembering. In the first book, there was such intensity and such uncertainty that the idea that this could really happen was ever present.
Overall, Malorie isn't such a bad read, but there so much lost potential. I think that Malerman could have made some risky moves and made a truly unforgettable book, but instead decided to make this fit into a cookie-cutter ending type book.… (more)
Lists
ScaredyKIT 2018 (1)
Strange Towns (1)
Strange Westerns (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 25
- Also by
- 28
- Members
- 5,341
- Popularity
- #4,662
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 394
- ISBNs
- 165
- Languages
- 13
- Favorited
- 5
Book Description: It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: The last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins.
But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself. They also say that Daphne is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. And when she strikes the smell of smoke and whiskey fills the room.
After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and Kit begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real . . . and to fear that her own mind is conjuring the killer. Now it’s a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears—before the summer of her life becomes the last summer of her life.
Mixing a nostalgic coming-of-age story and an instantly iconic female villain with an innovative new vision of classic horror, Daphne is an unforgettable thriller as only Josh Malerman could imagine it.
I devoured this book. It's a coming of age story, a love letter to basketball, and one of the most effective horror stories I have ever read when it comes to tackling the issue of anxiety (which I've suffered from). Josh Malerman's Daphne is a fierce novel about repression, anxiety, and fear. It's a brilliant slasher that reads as a very personal work for Malerman as Malerman so effectively describes suffering from anxiety and accurately describes the game of basketball. You can tell Malerman is a baller.
In Daphne, we mostly focus on star player Kit, a girl who loves her teammates and the game, but is also plagued by her own struggles with severe anxiety, even before she starts obsessively thinking about Daphne and those around her start dying. Malerman does a fantastic job of slowly pacing the tension in this story so that the reader goes through similar beats as the characters. General unease slowly morphs to gear morphs to genuine dread. The characters find themselves thinking of Daphne, and then she comes for them in truly grotesque, slasher-y ways, and let's just say it freaked the bejesus out of me.
The local legend and how it’s spread, saying her name, thinking about her, is a trope horror fans have seen again and again. However, Malerman take on this trope is unique. The coming-of-age themes, like Kit learning about her anxiety and the pressure she feels toward the notion that she can do anything, are very fitting of YA novels. It will be interested to see if this novel gets nominated for the Alex Awards next year.
When things get revealed that Daphne has inspired a cult following, things get a little murky, and the ending is a bit convoluted. And things are resolved rather quickly. That being said I enjoyed the heck out of this book, even if the ending is a bit abrupt. Still, this book so fittingly addresses anxiety that I had to round up to five stars.
And now I smell smoke and whiskey.....
… (more)