Excerpt from Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Take a seat, Harper."

Father Andrew gestured toward the vacant chair before him. While biblically there were no coincidences, the family's long absence had been broken by their father, Bud Flynn, who'd knocked and taken that same chair only a few days prior.

"Take a seat, Bud," Father Andrew had said.

"Father, say hypothetically a friend of mine wanted to, say, terminate their time on earth. How would that play out, spiritually speaking?" Bud had said.

"Play out?"

"Like, would they go to hell—definitively?"

"Well, suicide is a deadly sin. God decides when it is our time. To deny Him of that is heresy—"

"And you're confident that nothing slides through the cracks? It's tight?"

"Like airport security."

"Heresy, huh?"

Father Andrew gave a stoic nod.

"That sounds serious."

"Perhaps your friend would like to explore this impulse further?"

"Yeah, perhaps."

There came a sharp squawking from a couple of feral parrots. The birds had escaped a rich collector of exotic pets some years ago and nested in the church rafters. Father Andrew had hoped the parrots might take to eating the gnats, a gnatural solution to his problem, but they seemed content with foraging for nuts, the shells of which they dropped on the altar like mock offerings.

"Thank you, Father."

As Bud Flynn fled the office, he deposited a five-dollar bill and a Mango Rooney's punch card into the collection basket. It was one stamp away from earning a free smoothie. Now Harper assumed his seat, folding her hands in her lap. Her wrinkled button-down fell flat upon her chest, a body that had not yet begun its journey from girl to woman. Of course, Father Andrew was not thinking about Harper's body's journey from girl to woman as that would be wrong and no doubt prompt further visits to the parish shrink.

"BlessmeFatherforIhavesinned, " said Harper Flynn.

"You wish to confess something, Harper?"

"Yeah. I've broken the ninth commandment."

"You bore false witness?"

"Yeah," she said. "I lie all the time, actually. Every day, multiple times a day. Whenever I can and about things that don't matter, like, if my dad asks what we had for lunch at school I'll say pasta salad and fruit when we had chicken nuggets and celery sticks."

"Perhaps we should examine the impetus behind your compulsive storytelling."

"I'm a creative."

"Let's dive a little deeper. How are things at home?"

"I think my dad's trying to kill himself."

"What makes you say that?"

"He was looking up least painful ways to kill yourself on the family computer."

"I wish that you and your sisters would come back to mass. We are more susceptible to darkness during times of hardship."

"We're reformed."

"I think you'd find the general sentiment resonant."

Harper liked being spoken to like an adult. Father Andrew could see the cogs turning behind her eyes. He felt tenderly for the little lapsed Catholic.

"Wait, I'm not finished confessing."

Harper pulled a pink electronic cigarette from her jumper and took a long pull. It gave a gratifying crackle. "I've been stealing Mr. Friedman's Trizoletin from the pharmacy and selling it at school. Sometimes I light small fires behind the laundromat. I started Father Hayworth's nickname—Father Gayworth—and it's really caught on. I sent a video of Nordic pornography to everyone in my dad's work email—it's a really specific genre, lots of pelts involved. I stabbed a pocketknife into the tire of the church van in the parking lot on the way in here. I have been teaching myself Latin to mess with my school's Pentecostal group, burning my hands with a magnifying glass and claiming stigmata. I've racked up significant debt shopping Korean wholesale websites on my mother's credit card. I stole some mousetraps from the Squeaky Mart. I don't know what I am going to do with them yet. Last week I freed a lobster from the lobster tank at the Golden Dragon and left it in my sisters' bathtub. And I cut off Missy's braid in the locker room after tennis and put it in her mother's mailbox."

Excerpted from Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. Copyright © 2026 by Madeline Cash. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.