Laura Van Den Berg Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Laura van den Berg is an American author of fiction. She was born and raised in Orlando, Florida and currently resides in the Boston area. She has not only published two collections of stories but full-length fictional novels. She has also been featured in a number of anthologies and collections and has collaborated with other authors on novels too.

Van den Berg has been a finalist for a short story award, received an award for her second collection of stories, won the Bard Fiction Prize and the Rosenthal Award for Fiction, and received a number of accolades, positive reviews, and fans in the process.

Find Me was her first full=length fiction novel. It was published in 2015. In 2016, it made the long list for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. The creative story is an imaginative and gripping tale of a brave young lady that is trying to find her place and make her way in the world when everything unexpectedly goes awry.

After a series of interesting short works and anthologies, van den Berg brings readers a debut story that you can really sink your teeth into. It is here that the reader first meets the main character of Joy for the first time and is taken on an epic ride like none other.

She is a young lady that spends most of her days working at a grocery store. The store is just outside Boston and Joy works the graveyard shift. Her personal life is even more empty than the shifts that she works under fluorescent lighting ringing people out. She truly has no one and no purpose in life.

In addition to working a job just to pay the bills, Joy has another problem going on in her life. She has developed an active addiction to drinking cough syrup. The habit is just another way to try and escape from the memories of her past. She knows that she can’t keep going like this forever, but at the same time, she really has no plans to stop.

Things start to change quickly and little does Joy know that things will never be the same. Her humdrum life is totally transformed when a pandemic begins sweeping across the nation. It is a sickness; an illness that starts off with the signs of memory loss and progressing until it ends in the death of the person afflicted.

Joy has always been ordinary, even less than special. But when the illness begins affecting everyone in the country, Joy is surprised to find that she is apparently immune to it. As others fall ill, she is not afflicted. Her immunity means that she gets to go into a rural Kansas hospital– and Joy sees it as an opportunity to do something new and get away from her humdrum life.

At the hospital, she has to follow a set of rules and goes through a series of treatments and procedures. There are other patients there too, and she has a roommate. She gradually forms relationships and secret bonds with the others there. Her roommate is her best friend of sorts, and they talk together at night. She’s also close to a set of twin boys who have the secret mission of digging a tunnel to get out just in case.

The hospital seems to be maintaining order, but as they go into winter, everything changes. Order completely breaks down and Joy decides to leave. She flees from the hospital and goes to Florida in the hopes that she will be able to find her mother there. When she was a child, Joy was abandoned by her birth mother. She hopes that she can find her in the sunshine state and reconnect at last. But will her mother even be alive?

Joy hits the road in a country that looks nothing like its former self. The nation is in tatters, and she meets strange people on her way to Florida. Cities have totally changed and the moods of the urban centers have definitely shifted. As she gets closer to Florida, can she find her birth mother?

Can Joy confront the memories and secrets that she never wanted to face? Will she be able to track down her birth mother? You have got to read this post-apocalyptic thriller from Laura van den Berg in order to find out!

The Third Hotel is the second fictional novel from celebrated author Laura van den Berg. When a widow in Havana is trying to adjust to her husband’s passing, she finds it difficult. Fans of her first novel will certainly enjoy this surreal tale of reflection and mystery. Although unrelated to the first story, this book is just as intriguing and will have you turning the pages to find out what happens next.

Clare comes to Havana to attend a yearly festival that features Latin American cinema. It is there that she sees a man standing in a white linen suit outside of a museum. The only problem is that it is her husband, and Clare knows for a fact that Richard is dead.

It seems strange for her to follow the ghost of her husband around town. Still, that is just what Clare does. Richard was the fan of horror films, not she. But it seems appropriate that she should adapt his interest in the supernatural for a time. It’s not every day you get to see your dead spouse again.

Filled with feeling and confusion, she follows him through the Havana streets. Questions fill her mind about whether this is real or whether it is a delusion; a fantasy that she has manifested in her desire to see Richard once more. As she tries to follow him through the city, she remembers memories that she had forgotten of both her childhood and her marriage.

In the end, can she come to terms with the death of her husband? Will she find that the image that she has been seeing is real, or simply an illusion? To find out, you must pick up this thrilling and incredible second novel from this creative author for yourself!