One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Named a Best Book of 2024 by Vanity Fair , NPR, ELLE, and Kirkus . Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. "A brilliant ghost story and a profoundly moving and atmospheric meditation on place, memory, and the very nature of reality, where everything is truly not as it seems." ―Mona Awad, author of Rouge "At once an adventure and a treat, a deep study of Florida's psychogeography and a creepy story about ghosts, missing people, cults, and technology. Don't miss it." ―Gabino Iglesias, NPR A heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida’s underbelly from the celebrated Laura van den Berg It’s another summer in a small Florida town. After an illness that vanishes as mysteriously as it arrived, everything appears to be getting back to normal: soul-crushing heat, torrential downpours, sinkholes swallowing the earth, ominous cats, a world-bending virtual reality device being handed out by a company called ELECTRA, and an increasing number of posters dotting the streets with the faces of missing citizens. Living in her mother’s home, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author tracks the eerie changes. On top of everything else, she’s contending with family secrets, spotty memories of her troubled youth, a burgeoning cult in the living room, and the alarming expansion of her own belly button. Then, during a violent rainstorm, her sister goes missing. She returns a few days later, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension. Now the ghostwriter must investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author she works for, and reality itself. A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of selfhood and storytelling, Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise is an intricate and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, van den Berg reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction. "The novel form may be a 'pretty outdated technology,' as the narrator laments. But once a writer like van den Berg gets its creaky gears turning, it can still do what it’s always done best: reflect our selves back at us and into the world, in all their wildness and weirdness." ―Ruth Franklin, The New York Times "With exquisite prose, smart lines on every page, a building sense of growing strangeness tinged with dread, and surprises all the way to the end, State of Paradise might be van den Berg's best novel so far -- and that's saying a lot. A narrative that constantly feels like its dancing on the border between fiction and nonfiction despite all the weirdness it contains, this book is at once an adventure and a treat, a deep study of Florida's psychogeography and a creepy story about ghosts, missing people, cults, and technology. Don't miss it." ―Gabino Iglesias, NPR " van den Berg has presented Florida not as a freak-show meme generator but as a serious place, populated by authentic figures with recognizably human concerns. . . a macabre tale in which the living interact with the dead and yet the eeriest souls are those with a pulse." ―Jake Cline, The Washington Post "A page-turning story about the challenges of learning to let go. . . Wonderfully weird." ―Shannon Carlin, TIME "The summer’s sweatiest novel . . . The author’s inimitable talents shine in this spiky and sinister Floridian fever dream." ― Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire “[A] strange, enthralling novel.” ― Lauren Puckett-Pope, ELLE "Let State of Paradise into your life and its sticky, humid setting and twisty mystery will consume you even more than the dew point outside. The page-turner follows a thriller ghostwriter living out of her mother's Florida home in a town where an odd company called ELECTRA seems to have moved in, taken over, and infiltrated its residences by passing out strange VR devices. When her sister disappears, the writer goes in search of her, and finds more than one conspiracy to dig into." ―Sadie Bell, Marie Claire "Van den Berg holds a funhouse mirror up to a reality that many of us will recognize, one where multiple layers of mounting disaster―personal, political, climactic, and technological―whirl together into a perfect, uncanny storm." ―Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily "Not that State of Paradise is only about Florida. It’s also a sharply observed look at life after the COVID pandemic, a profound study of loss and grief, a ghost story, a reflection on the relationship between narrative and reality ― and, often, it’s mordantly funny." ―Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times " Every page is insightful, stunning . . . it’s an astonishing page-turner. Van den Berg is pushing at the boundaries of the form and imploding questions of realism, but, however you classify this book, it’s a brilliant read. " ―Jak