Lost Lambs

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2026

‘EXTREMELY SMART, IMPOSSIBLY FUNNY, AND JUST PLAIN FUN TO READ’ CARO CLAIRE BURKE, AUTHOR OF YESTERYEAR

‘A VOICE LIKE NO OTHER’ LENA DUNHAM


Think your family is dysfunctional? Meet the Flynns.


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.

The instantSunday Times bestseller

‘THE MOST WILDLY ORIGINAL BOOK OF THE YEAR’ HARPER’S BAZAAR

‘THE DEBUT NOVEL FOR 2026 THAT HAS UNDOUBTEDLY BEEN THE MOST SHOUTED ABOUT’ THE SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

‘A DARKLY FUNNY FAMILY SAGA’ BUSTLE

‘AN INSTANT CLASSIC’ SHORTLIST

Madeline Cash is the founder of Forever Magazine and the author of the story collection Earth Angel. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, The Baffler, The Sewanee Review, The Drift, and Bomb, among other publications. Lost Lambs is her debut novel.

I LOVED IT... Masterfully and totally realised ― Pandora Sykes

A true tour de force: unexpected, entertaining and genuinely funny ― Harper's Bazaar

The book every insider is reading ― Stylist

A technicolour reinventionof the classic American family novel ― Daily Mail

Cash is a happy and energising new voice ― Guardian

A perky, fiendishly readable debut ― Financial Times

A dazzling and singular new voice in literary fiction ― Megan Nolan, author of Ordinary Human Failings

What an absolute scream ― Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller

Extremely smart, impossibly funny, and just plain fun to read ― Caro Claire Burke, author of Yesteryear

A glittering debut... It’s unforgettable ― Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Energetic, hilarious, and spirited...Lost Lambs takes a thrillingly big swing and delivers a page-turner ― Vulture

Compulsive and original, you'll swallow this up ― Red

Totally mad and brilliantly funny ― Heat

Laugh-out-loud funny and emotional, too ― Fabulous

The year’s brightest literary star ― Independent

This type of slapstick satire is what makes Cash’s novel so enjoyable... What is so appealing about this debut is that within her intelligent, funny writing, Cash manages to capture something we can all universally relate to: how normal it is to have a dysfunctional family. ― Sunday Times

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

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 s