Böcker av Laura van den Berg

An NPR Best Book of 2013Laura van den Berg's gorgeous new book, The Isle of Youth, explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. From a newlywed caught in an inscrutable marriage, to private eyes working a baffling case in South Florida, to a teenager who assists her magician mother and steals from the audience, the characters in these bewitching stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless, and they will do what it takes to survive. Each tale is spun with elegant urgency, and the reader grows attached to the marginalized young women in these stories-women grappling with the choices they've made and searching for the clues to unlock their inner worlds. This is the work of a fearless writer whose stories feel both magical and mystical, earning her the title of "sorceress" from her readers. Be prepared to fall under her spell.

"A heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida's underbelly, from a reality-warping storyteller"--

Things I will never forget: my name, my made-up birthday The dark of the Hospital at night. My mother s face, when she was young.Things other people will forget: where they come from, how old they are, the faces of the people they love. The right words for bowl and sunshine What is a beginning and whatis an end.Joy spends her days working the graveyard shift at a store outside Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past. But when a sickness that begins with silver blisters and memory loss and ends with death sweeps the country, Joy, for the first time in her life, seems to have an advantage: she is immune. At once a hauntingly beautiful portrayal of a dystopian future and a powerful exploration of loneliness.