Lost Lambs

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

Casting a shadow over their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumours of corruption circulate, but nobody dares dig too deep. Nobody 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 Flynns and the panorama of characters around them, Madeline Cash's debut novel is a work of quick-witted observation and surprising tenderness: a family saga for the twenty-first century, held together with crazy glue.