Lost Lambs

By Madeline Cash

Book Overview

National bestseller. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Vulture, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, Playboy, The Times (UK), Our Culture, Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Harper's Bazaar. A Book Club Pick from Belletrist, Bustle, and Good Housekeeping.

"If the Royal Tenenbaums were middle-class and likable, they'd be this madcap family." --The New York Times Book Review

"With her energetic prose and restless imagination, Cash does one better than survey the world; she reinvents it." ―Hannah Gold, The New Yorker

"Madeline Cash is a voice like no other." --Lena Dunham

Rippling with humor, warmth, and style, Lost Lambs is a new vision of the charms and pitfalls of family dysfunction.

The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone--or something--is monitoring the town's citizens.

Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy--one that may just bring them closer together.

Irreverent and addictive, pinging between the voices of the Flynn family and those of the panorama of characters around them, Madeline Cash's Lost Lambs is a debut novel of quick-witted observation and surprising tenderness. With it, Cash has crafted a family saga for the twenty-first century, all held together with crazy glue.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374619239
• ISBN13: 9780374619237
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.4" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Quirky, suspensful and humourous. I highly recommend this for your 2026 reading list.

What a debut!!! I wasn't going to read Lost Lambs because I didn't think it would be my type of read. I can't believe I almost skipped it and am so glad I gave it a chance! "Lost Lambs" was a quirky, suspenseful, and humorous slice-of-life story. There are little details scattered throughout the book (like the intentional, repetitive misspelling of words or the way a character circles back to a random thought or observation) that tickled my brain in a unique way. I love how my perception of the characters changed so drastically throughout the book. I also loved how the book was written from so many characters' points of view, yet it didn't feel confusing or forced. It's absolutely brilliant. I loved it from beginning to end. I would highly recommend this one to any adult reader.