Did You Get the Package? - by John Harrison (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Fans of Kliewer's We Used to Live Here and Steadman's Something in the Water will lose their minds over John Harrison's latest psychological thriller!

Mira and Kieran Carpenter are moving into their first home together, a run-down fixer-upper in a historic Pittsburgh neighborhood. To parents and friends, the building is a horror. To Mira, an architect, and Kieran, an accomplished musician, it represents the opportunity to forget the betrayals of the past and restore their marriage along with this new home. Until . . .

A strange delivery is left by the front door. Neither Mira nor Kieran remember ordering it. There is no gift card. No sender. No acknowledgment of its origin. Inside the package is an old wooden box. Just a simple, scarred wooden case with nothing to suggest any real value. An old jewelry case, or a memento chest? A family heirloom, perhaps?

No one they know admits sending it, and soon the two of them are too preoccupied with their careers and house renovations to care where it came from. But then, the messages start arriving.

Anonymous texts, late-night phone calls, and distorted voicemails:

"Did you get the package?"

Things start to go wrong. Around their new house. At work. In their personal relationships. Colleagues become difficult. Friends fall away. Even their own relationship starts to fray. Is it the box? Has it brought a curse into their home?

And the messages keep coming . . .

"Did you get the package?"

Are they victims of some kind of horrific prank? Are they being tormented because of something they've done? Or, are they gaslighting themselves into some kind of psychosis?

Whatever it is, it won't end well.

Review Quotes

"John Harrison has orchestrated such a diabolical encanto with Did You Get The Package?, which will be gasped at alongside such cerebral creepfests as Marcus Kliewer's The Caretaker and Adam Nevill's Last Days."--Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Devil Inside

"Did You Get the Package?" is a current, compulsive psychological horror about the sometimes dangerously transformative power of art. Fans of Mark Z. Danielewski and Catriona Ward will feast on this one."--Meredith Borders, senior editor of FANGORIA magazine & author of First in Fright: The FANGORIA Compendium

"Anyone who knows horror will already know that John Harrison spins cinema-cally vivid scary tales like no one else. But did you know that he can make the psychological landscape of a young couple's tormented relationship as riveting and frightening as the sinister house that surrounds them? Well, once you get this package, you will never forget it."--Adam Lowenstein, director at The Horror Studies Center of the University of Pittsburgh

"Harrison's fiction lingers long after you turn the final page. He's a born storyteller."--Clive Barker, New York Times best-selling author

"In Did You Get the Package?, " Harrison's deliberate prose is a textbook in slowly unraveling the psyche of the characters; purposeful, frustrating, while leaving the reader feeling like they only have one foot on the ground, and grappling with the architectural possibilities of a simple box . . . us."--Del Howison, two-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and author of The Survival of Margaret Thomas and What Fresh Hell Is This?

"Some packages are better left unopened . . . but you'll be glad you opened this one. A master storyteller in every medium, John Harrison delivers vivid prose, richly human characters, and a slow-burning sense of dread that gets under your skin while asking unsettling questions about art, love, addiction, and the wounds we never truly leave behind."--Tina Romero, writer/director of Queens of the Dead

About the Author

Writer, director, and composer John Harrison began his career collaborating with famed horror director, George Romero. He has since written and directed multiple TV episodes for a variety of networks as well as world premiere TV movies and miniseries. He is an executive producer of the current big screen adaptation of DUNE for Legendary Pictures. His first feature length film, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, THE MOVIE for Paramount Pictures won Harrison the Grand Prix du Festival at Avoriaz, France. He co-wrote the Disney animated feature, DINOSAUR, and wrote and directed the theatrical adaptation of Clive Barker's BOOK OF BLOOD. His previous two novels were published by WordFire Press: PASSING THROUGH VEILS in 2023 and RESIDUE in 2025.