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Lost Lambs

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The funny and compassionate new literary novel that turns family dysfunction into an art form.

For the three Flynn daughters, it’s been disastrous since their parents opened up their marriage. Abigail, the eldest, is dating an ex-soldier several years her senior nicknamed ‘War Crimes Wes’. Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist. And the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to a wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone – or something – is monitoring the town’s citizens.

Casting a shadow across their lives is Paul Alabaster, a nefarious local billionaire. Rumours of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with Alabaster’s machinations sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy – one that may just, finally, bring them closer together.

Rippling with humour, warmth and style, Lost Lambs turns family dysfunction into an art form.

‘A voice like no other’ Lena Dunham, award-winning writer, director and creator of comedy-drama Girls

'Loud, hilarious, shocking and sensitive' Megan Nolan, prize-listed author of Acts of Desperation

© Madeline Cash 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

From magical realism to magical nihilism, Madeline Cash is a voice like no other. Her novel of normal people breaking down under the most abnormal circumstances will shift the way you see the family and community into something operatic, strange and profound.
Lena Dunham
Lost Lambs is meticulously crafted by a writer who is clearly a dazzling and singular new voice in literary fiction, as bold and assured a debut as Zadie Smith’s White Teeth or Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. Loud, hilarious, shocking, and sensitive, we will all remember Lost Lambs as the beginning of a long and thrilling career.
Megan Nolan, author of Ordinary Human Failings
A wonderful new comic voice. I’ve read entire books that contain less wit and inventiveness than a single one of Cash’s sentences, which make “lifelike” and “absurd” seem like synonyms. Her ear for dialogue is inspired. Lost Lambs had me laughing throughout—even when I was horrified — and rooting for the Flynn sisters to save us all.
Eric Puchner, New York Times bestselling author of Dream State
Lost Lambs goes off like a firework. Intrigue and mystery burst outward while the family at the centre of the story implodes. What I loved most were the big, seeking hearts of Madeline Cash's characters as they reach awkwardly toward love and connection – this novel is as sincere as it is funny (and it’s very funny).
Ramona Ausubel, author of The Last Animal
Lost Lambs is wild. It struts. Madeline Cash calls us into a vividly imagined world, a Pynchon-paradise absurd enough to actually create a great, great American novel.
Samantha Hunt, Women’s Prize longlisted author of The Seas
With a big surge of energy, Lost Lambs splits the nucleus of the American family – look into the flash and you'll see teen terrorists, smoking hot handywomen, and the most suicidal suburban dad this side of John Cheever. Madeline Cash likes to get dark, but fortunately the dark is where her writing glows.
Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection – National Book Award Finalist
The nightmare of the now has a radiant and vicious new bard, and her name is Madeline Cash.
Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You
Like an epic road trip or a perfect dinner party, Lost Lambs is immersive and propulsive and I never wanted it to end. I can’t remember the last time a novel made me laugh so hard or feel so much tenderness for its characters, this feral chorus of voices and desires, unhinged and witty and full of longing; I wanted to take care of them, hear their whispered confessions, stay up all night talking with them in the treehouse. Madeline Cash’s prose is tuned to a singular radio channel no one else has ever found, where the music is part torch song, part power ballad, part heartbeat heard from the womb – strange and sweet and utterly surprising. I loved it. I devoured it. I can’t wait for everyone else to hear it, too.
Leslie Jamison
I don’t think I’ve ever read a debut that’s as funny or unexpectedly moving as LOST LAMBS. Madeline Cash’s sentences are so packed with wit, so slyly insightful about the absurdity of how we currently live, that after reading them I often found myself laughing to the point of crying, then staring up at the ceiling for five minutes in deep, existential dread. It’s a novel that smashes apart our notions of family and human connection with a sledge hammer, then rearranges the pieces into something weirdly, beautifully, staggeringly profound.
Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding
Cash’s debut novel has fun with everything it touches, rocketing through the points of view of the family members and other townspeople, delighting in wordplay and absurd details... With comic energy and wild plot twists to spare, a thoroughly charming debut.
Kirkus Reviews
[A] glittering debut... Cash has a finely tuned ear for the silliness of modern language... The novel is anchored in its affection for the hapless but well-meaning Flynns, whose banter is endlessly irresistible... It’s unforgettable.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
When Lena Dunham, Megan Nolan and Leslie Jamison start slinging around superlatives, you take notice... The Bee Sting meets Birnam Wood in this rollicking saga that is at once an offbeat love story, crime caper and ode to family.
The Bookseller
Cash has a hit debut on her hands based on the guffaw-inducing, deadpan humour alone... In addition to the generous portions of humour, Cash weaves in a fun romp in which the family members get to exercise their strengths. An entertaining and breezy read reminiscent of the best of Kevin Wilson.
Booklist (starred review)
The book every insider is reading before its release... Read it and let your mind go on an adventure.
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