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Which debuts novels should you be reading in 2026?

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The rising stars of 2026: discover the must-read debut novels of the year

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 instant Sunday 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 
 
Readers love LOST LAMBS 
‘What a ROMP!’ &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; 
‘The hype is real!’ &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; 
‘Hilarious, weird, original and addictive!’ &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; 
‘If Wes Anderson wrote Little Women.’ &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; 
‘I’m shouting it from every rooftop: THIS IS THE BOOK OF THE YEAR!’ &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; 
‘Perhaps the funniest book I’ve ever read.’ &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088;

I LOVED IT... Masterfully and totally realised

A true tour de force: unexpected, entertaining and genuinely funny

A technicolour reinvention of the classic American family novel

A perky, fiendishly readable debut

A dazzling and singular new voice in literary fiction

Megan Nolan, author of Ordinary Human Failings

Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller

Extremely smart, impossibly funny, and just plain fun to read

A glittering debut... It’s unforgettable

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

Compulsive and original, you'll swallow this up

Laugh-out-loud funny and emotional, too

The year’s brightest literary star

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.

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.

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.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a debut that’s as funny or unexpectedly moving as LOST LAMBS. Madeline Cash’s sentences are so packed with wit, so slyly insightful about the absurdity of how we currently live, that after reading them I often found myself laughing to the point of crying, then staring up at the ceiling for five minutes in deep, existential dread. It’s a novel that smashes apart our notions of family and human connection with a sledge hammer, then rearranges the pieces into something weirdly, beautifully, staggeringly profound.

Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding

Cash’s debut novel has fun with everything it touches, rocketing through the points of view of the family members and other townspeople, delighting in wordplay and absurd details... With comic energy and wild plot twists to spare, a thoroughly charming debut.

When Lena Dunham, Megan Nolan and Leslie Jamison start slinging around superlatives, you take notice... The Bee Sting meets Birnam Wood in this rollicking saga that is at once an offbeat love story, crime caper and ode to family.

Cash has a hit debut on her hands based on the guffaw-inducing, deadpan humour alone... In addition to the generous portions of humour, Cash weaves in a fun romp in which the family members get to exercise their strengths. An entertaining and breezy read reminiscent of the best of Kevin Wilson.

Cash’s confident first novel is a surreal illustration of a small, weird American town and a small, weird nuclear family embroiled in the local goings-on. It’s most noticeably an absurdist comedy built around a twisting, capering narrative, but Lost Lambs is by turns also tender, insightful and even existential.

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash had me entranced, aghast and laughing immediately.

A darkly comic and tender story about love, chaos, and survival within one unforgettable family teetering on the edge. Both funny and fiercely compassionate, this remarkable debut transforms family dysfunction into an art form.

Delightfully cracked... a winning mixture of black comedy and innocent sweetness

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 scepticism of the stories that behemoth institutions tell to justify themselves.

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.

A clever portrait of the modern American family overflowing with charm, wit, and style. . . the big heart of this book is as spirited, and tender as, well, a little lost lamb. I could live in Cash’s mind, but I’ll settle for a few days in her smart new novel.

A refreshingly different taken on the family drama . . .The mix of drama, humour and an undercurrent of mystery make this a compelling read.

Every book content creator I follow is either raving about their advance copy of this book or frothing at the mouth for one; a comedic family epic, Lost Lambs is already one of the most talked about works of literary fiction for us weird girls.

Like a quirked-up Jonathan Franzen or Paul Murray... The plot itself is surprising and wild, but you’ll stay for the extremely specific people that make up this family and town. I was laughing immediately, couldn’t help turning the page over and over again: I didn’t want to be apart from these funny little weirdos even for a minute.

As a reader who describes their favourite genre as “dysfunctional family dramas”, it is a unique experience to encounter one that is utterly original. And yet, Madeline Cash’s debut manages to be just that.

Every page of Cash’s debut novel is utterly absorbing, and her authorial voice is sure to win hearts and laughs. I know I’ll read whatever wry delight she pens next.

This book captures the voice of [Cash's] generation.

Cash is a confident and commanding stylist with an eye for oddball characters and fast-paced, screwball comedy... Lost Lambs is a highly entertaining caper... it takes skill to write with such an easy lightness of touch.

A swirling mix of coming of age, family drama and intriguing thriller. All of the members of the family are personalities worthy of their own book, but Cash deftly weaves their story into one rollicking, clever, and heart-rending read.

This hilarious debut is a refreshingly original take on the family drama… The mix of drama, humour and an undercurrent of mystery make this a compelling read.

A brilliantly chaotic, darkly funny story. With some unpredictable twists, layered perspectives and biting social commentary, it is a wildly original, compulsive read.

Cash defies the diaristic lit-girl trope with her delightfully wacky debut novel... Cash’s observations are sharp, her scenes cinematic… And above all, Lost Lambs is fun and funny. I frequently found myself doing the insufferable: guffawing on the Tube.

Get ready to laugh out loud on the tube/train/bus as you whizz through Madeline Cash’s infinitely readable debut novel.

Although Lost Lambs goes to some wild places, above anything else, it’s a celebration of the unconventional in a world that forever tries to put people in boxes, and an acknowledgement that however old we get, we’ll never stop obsessing over trying to figure out the best way to live. There are probably no answers, but in the company of the Flynns, there’s plenty of joy in the searching.

No exaggeration, this was the best thing I’ve read in a long time. The hype is real. More importantly, the hype is earned. It’s rare that something this talked about actually exceeds expectation, but this did. It was properly hilarious - not quirky or gently amusing. Genuinely funny. And original in the ways that count.

Madeline Cash is already being feted for this darling debut (it’ll be on all the awards lists), which holds up a distorted mirror to our time and proceeds to smash it with glee... At the heart of this thoroughly entertaining-but-relatable chaos is the fundamental truth that we all need meaningful connection, and a reminder that in an era of out-of-control billionaires, AI slop and fake truth, it’s time to put down the phone, talk to the people you love and maybe read a really good book.

The word about town is that Madeline Cash has written the debut of the year... Cash lends Lost Lambs something all her own, a wry wit and propulsive narrative voice that a little mimicry alone can’t explain. She has a knack for dialogue that is sharp in its bluntness.

Lost Lambs is technically ambitious and linguistically playful, but, most strikingly of all, it is a 21st-century novel that is ultimately optimistic.

If Madeline Cash found herself at a cosmic cocktail party with Muriel Spark, the Coen brothers, Loren Bouchard and JD Salinger, nobody would need to be rescued… An instant classic and a comic novel about family you could recommend to just about anyone.

A wildly entertaining, sharply written novel that keeps you hooked throughout

A brilliantly bonkers, gut-busting novel. This talented young author has crafted a farce to be reckoned with.

Sharp, absurd and unexpectedly tender, Lost Lambs marries satirical wit with heartfelt reflection on dysfunction and belonging

Among 2026’s buzziest debuts… Combining a comic and wry tone with quirky characters that would be right at home in a Wes Anderson movie, it lives up to the hype. If you devoured Paul Murray’s family saga, The Bee Sting, you’ll love this similarly wacky and wonderful tale.

Independent, 'Best new books to read in 2026'

A rollicking read with vibrant wordplay, quirky characters and madcap scenarios.

A rich and abundant novel… In Lost Lambs, Cash deals with shocking and intense situations, but they never feel heavy. Anyone who enjoys quirky stories with flawed but lovable characters and a good deal of heart will lap up this debut novel.

This is laugh-out-loud funny and a brilliant debut novel… you can’t help but fall in love with the Flynn family.

This book is hi-larious. Lively, knowing, brutal, sweet. The laughs take you by surprise and they are relentless. I highly, highly recommend this book for a stunning good time.

Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette

There’s a new genius in town and it’s Madeline Cash – her debut novel Lost Lambs is exuberant and brilliant. I fell madly in love with the members of the Flynn family and you will too. The writing is fresh, original and completely captivating. Highly recommended!!!

Elin Hilderbrand, author of A Summer Affair

Laugh-out-loud funny, unexpectedly moving – Lost Lambs is both a blistering satire of our present moment and a compassionate portrait of a family trying to stay human in Musk’s America.

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.

Madeline Cash

Cash’s stories can be funny, inventive, linguistically exciting, and feel genuinely new. The brutality they trade on conjures depressingly convincing portraits of our ongoing modernity, realer than real

Cash’s heroines are all earth angels but none so much as presence in these stories of the author herself, whose style has a devilish (remember Satan was an angel) and celestial powers, quite apart from the characters and scenarios Cash has imagined.

Cash’s stories are a reminder of what fiction can do when it’s allowed to break the rules, express its moment, turn the despairing or the banal into something better.

The stories in [Cash's] book are bizarre in the way that only a writer with her precision can employ.

Madeline’s debut story collection reads like a captivating lucid dream.

Uncanny, poetic, and bleakly funny, Earth Angel reaches for a higher power in a society that has forgotten how to believe.

[Cash] pushes her characters a step further than expected, hooks them up to an IV filled with irony, and watches as they degrade on their own slippery slopes.

To read Madeline Cash is to mainline her apocalyptic vitality, to witness a rare vision realized with an untamed sense of control, to light your cigarette off of the flames from her burning heart.

Justin Taylor, author of Riding with the Ghost

I enjoyed Madeline's stories a lot. They're weird and funny and dead-pan, and they explore interesting, under-examined topics.

Tao Lin, author of Taipei and Leave Society

A brutal, funny and dizzying fever dream of a book. Madeline Cash’s stories read like the musings of a brilliant boarding school girl sucking on a DMT vape pen: an entire universe, vivid and writhing, is revealed beneath her placid stare. This is an electric debut.

Madeline Cash's short stories blaze through the Culture with supreme confidence, agility, and wit... What a bold, promising debut by such a one-of-a-kind young writer.

I don't know what I can tell you about Earth Angel. In one way, it is the story of one million strong, beautiful, upper middle class women in modern America, and in another, truer way, it is an unhinged, joyous nosedive through every wild thought you've ever had played out real tender, like a movie. I love this book, please read it.

Sasha Fletcher, author of Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World

Raucously endearing, worldly but clear-souled, Earth Angel introduces an uncanny and crucial new voice. There isn't anything Madeline Cash doesn't know about the ruckussy graces of our present moment. I was laughing so hard, I didn't realize how fast my heart was breaking.

The stories collected in Earth Angel are like candy-pink nostalgia pills, crushed up and snorted during a weekend slumber party with your inner adolescent in the bedroom of your youth. Hilarious, insightful, and extremely online, this is the best debut I’ve read in years.

Earth Angel is vigorous, hilarious and demented. The nightmare of the now has a radiant and vicious new bard, and her name is Madeline Cash.

The stories in Earth Angel are playful, charming, and a little bit devious -this is a striking debut by a writer to watch.

Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else

If this is downtown Catholicism, this is its darkest, funniest, most nihilistic incarnation yet. The question of who - or what - is being skewered in these stories is an open one, but their sharpness is undeniable.

Lindsy Lerman, author of What Are You and I’m from Nowhere

Madeline Cash is at the vanguard of a new literature, one calibrated to the speed, madness and incomprehensibility of our modern world. The stories in Earth Angel - madcap, irreverent, and weirdly heartbreaking - race by like an Adderall-laced dream. But at the heart of this innovative, hilarious, original book is something as old as consciousness itself: pain.

Madeline Cash twirls through the detritus of our ravaged modern age in her charming debut, Earth Angel. Armed with an electric humour, Cash spins glittering tales of a physical world in decline, a surveillance culture lit by glaring LEDs that is dispossessed and irreverent, having forgotten how heavy with meaning it is.

Jen George, author of The Babysitter at Rest

Earth Angel is wonderfully vibrant and fresh. Madeline's stories are smart, hilarious, heartbreaking, and sharp. A glimmer of hope in the time of modern America.

Madeline Cash

Praise for Earth Angel

An emerging writer to watch

Cash’s stories can be funny, inventive, linguistically exciting, and feel genuinely new. The brutality they trade on conjures depressingly convincing portraits of our ongoing modernity, realer than real

Cash’s heroines are all earth angels but none so much as presence in these stories of the author herself, whose style has a devilish (remember Satan was an angel) and celestial powers, quite apart from the character ...

An emerging writer to watch

Cash’s stories can be funny, inventive, linguistically exciting, and feel genuinely new. The brutality they trade on conjures depressingly convincing portraits of our ongoing modernity, realer than real

Cash’s heroines are all earth angels but none so much as presence in these stories of the author herself, whose style has a devilish (remember Satan was an angel) and celestial powers, quite apart from the character ...

An emerging writer to watch

Cash’s stories can be funny, inventive, linguistically exciting, and feel genuinely new. The brutality they trade on conjures depressingly convincing portraits of our ongoing modernity, realer than real

Cash’s heroines are all earth angels but none so much as presence in these stories of the author herself, whose style has a devilish (remember Satan was an angel) and celestial powers, quite apart from the character ...

Books by Madeline Cash

Articles featuring Madeline Cash

Which debuts novels should you be reading in 2026?

The rising stars of 2026: discover the must-read debut novels of the year

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