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. "Delightfully cracked . . . a winning mixture of black comedy and innocent sweetness." ―Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "Cash paints the alternate world of Lost Lambs in vivid, breezy prose alight with casual wit . . . a gutsy, big-hearted romp that’s unusual even for a first-time novelist . . . With her energetic prose and restless imagination, Cash does one better than survey the world; she reinvents it." ―Hannah Gold, The New Yorker "The comic novel we need right now . . . Cash's tone . . . hums a melody of deep-seated compassion and straight-faced absurdity . . . It’s a tableau of family affection that cedes none of her characters’ adorable freakishness and reminds us how good it feels to be found." ―Ron Charles, The Washington Post "Madcap . . . a story that is part quirky crime caper, part manic cultural satire and part affectionate dramedy of family both biological and found." ―John Maher, The New York Times "Riotously assured . . . [Cash] brings to mind writers as disparate as Lydia Millet, Thomas Pynchon, and Jonathan Franzen . . . With her debut novel, Cash has announced herself as a writer with a distinctive voice, an eye for the grotesque within the mundane, and a deep skepticism of the stories that behemoth institutions tell to justify themselves." ―Rhoda Feng, The Boston Globe " Lost Lambs is an incredibly tender ― yet also hilarious ― debut. Madeline Cash explores adolescence, faith, family, and power through the lens of a tightly controlled religious community, where devotion and vulnerability exist side by side. With wildly inventive writing, Lost Lambs captures moral uncertainty and emotional awakening with remarkable precision. This novel marks the emergence of an incredible new talent in Madeline Cash." ―Isaac Fitzgerald, Today Show "Cash’s virtuosic wit allows her to warm hearts at the same time as satirizing the world . . . in an age when the conspiracy theorists do indeed turn out to be disturbingly right as well as disturbingly wrong, and when old-fashioned tenderness and laughter are ever more required, Cash is a happy and energizing new voice." ―Lara Feigel, The Guardian "Energetic, hilarious, and spirited, this debut novel from the co-founder of Forever Magazine was already the talk of the town last summer and fall. Like Franzen before her, Cash illuminates the inner workings of a modern family . . . Lost Lambs takes a thrillingly big swing and delivers a page-turner as full of snark as it is anchored in affection." ―Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture "A beautifully calibrated high-wire act, a big-hearted family drama with a mystery plot nestled within . . . enchanting, poignant, and often very funny, the product of a strikingly original new voice in American fiction." ―Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times "A swirling mix of coming of age, family drama, and intriguing thriller, Lost Lambs tells the story of the Flynn family and the universe of relationships that orbits it. All of the members of the family―Bud, Catherine, and their three daughters―are personali