-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A Novel
by Madeline Cash
Book Reviewed by: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.
Excerpt
Lost Lambs
The gnat situation in the church was getting out of hand. It was Miss Winkle's fault, she had brought the gnats and this was unforgivable, not in the eyes of God but those of Father Andrew, who was unable to extermignate the gnats, not for lack of trying—he'd employed every trap, spray, and swatter on the modern market—and yet his efforts had little effect on the greater gnat population. If anything, it was growing. Father Andrew imagined that soon the gnats might attract a larger pest—gnat-eating spiders, perhaps—which might attract, say, frogs, which might attract rats, which might attract cats, which might attract coyotes, which might attract a larger coyote-eating mammal, and so on and so forth. It was Miss Winkle's fault because Miss Winkle had brought the plant into the church, "like God did on the third day!" Miss Winkle attended every church function with her brain-damaged child, who wore gun range earmuffs to mass—the organs ...
Madeline Cash's debut novel, Lost Lambs, takes place in an unnamed coastal town in an unspecified year, an ambiguous setting that gives the story the twinge of an alternate reality. Against this backdrop, the five members of the Flynn family are navigating distinct but overlapping plotlines. The setup is funny; the characters feel real and well-developed; the jokes land. It's a fun ride—and refreshing to read a domestic dramady that expands into new settings and genres—but the world feels a bit cartoonish. Indeed, Lost Lambs reminded me of nothing so much as an extended episode of The Simpsons (complimentary)—the everywhere-and-nowhere setting; the creepy billionaire whose business employs the town; the exaggerated, comic plotlines that, for all their absurdity, feel like genuine, natural extensions of each character...continued
Full Review
(728 words)
(Reviewed by Chloe Pfeiffer).
Eric Puchner, New York Times-bestselling author of Dream State
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. Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters
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.
Madeline Cash's debut novel Lost Lambs features a sinister billionaire who has younger people's blood transfused into his body in order to slow or prevent the aging process, a practice known as parabiosis (also a general term for the physiological joining of two organisms) or "young blood transfusion."
Young blood transfusion is practiced in real life by some uber-wealthy, often tech-obsessed individuals who are looking for ways to extend their lifespans or even escape death, though it is far from mainstream, evidence for its effectiveness is scant, and the FDA cautions against it. A 2016 Inc. article about Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor (and mega-donor to the Republican Party), discussed his obsession with finding a cure...
If you liked Lost Lambs, try these:
by Kayla Rae Whitaker
Published 2026
A sweeping novel of one Kentucky family's rise and fall throughout the 1980s—a tragicomic tour de force about love and marriage, parents and children, and the perils of mixing family with business, from the acclaimed author of The Animators.
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Published 2025
An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, and the wild legacy of trauma and inheritance, from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble.
by Paul Murray
Published 2024
From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.
A library is thought in cold storage
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!