Adrienne Brodeur

Gorgeous, gripping, I couldn't put it down. Adrienne Brodeur does family intrigue and dysfunction like no one else I know. In Little Monsters, she once again draws back the curtain on a world of seaside wealth and casual privilege, to reveal a family unravelled by the lies, rivalries, secrets, and silences that have bound it together

Brodeur creates an evocative sense of place in a Cape Cod-set novel that's affecting and powerful

An utterly gripping, immersive story of one family's unravelling traumas and hopes. It will capture and hold you in its depths. Brodeur creates characters who are so real, so complex, I could almost touch them, feel them sitting beside me

Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo

A page-turner about the conspiracy of silence and corrosive nature of skeletons in the closet

Beautiful, lyrical and unvarnished, Adrienne Brodeur's Little Monsters delivers its powerful emotional punches so subtly that they sneak up on you and leave you floored

Miranda Cowley Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace

[An] engaging and neatly plotted novel. . . Little Monsters is so alluring, with its sense of looming familial implosion within a cultural implosion. . . Brodeur is very deliberately examining a small family horror story within a larger political context.

Gorgeously told, with psychological nuance to spare, Adrienne Brodeur's latest fiction returns us to a world she knows by heart, wind-blown, wave-swept Cape Cod and the fraught, labyrinthine territory beneath the surface of family. This is the work of a seasoned and wonderfully wise storyteller. Brodeur is as masterfully attuned to the complex DNA of kindred secrets and high-risk loyalties as she is empathetic to the specifically tangled lives of the Gardner clan. We ultimately want for them what we want for ourselves, the freedom that comes with hard-won healing and truth telling, and the intimacy that waits if we're brave enough to look back down the loaded barrel of love

Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark

Smart, funny and beautifully written. Brodeur is a brilliant dissector of family relationships, a lyricist of the natural world, and an astute observer of our inner turmoils

Who understands complicated family dynamics better than Adrienne Brodeur? Little Monsters is a gripping portrait of how we carry the past into the present, and how the boundaries of kinship blur and change over time

Mary Beth Keane, author of ASK AGAIN, YES

Wrenching, psychologically complex, and emotionally satisfying, Little Monsters is an immersive pleasure. This sprawling, big-hearted family saga is about the lies we tell each other and ourselves that enable us to maintain alliances-and what happens when we start telling the truth

Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Train

In Little Monsters, Adrienne Brodeur plunges into a multi-charactered family novel that is richly satisfying, like the best of meals, taking the reader into the heart of what Freud called 'the family romance,' with all its complexities, evasions, buried guilts, forbidden passions and sibling rivalry. As sharply observant about her characters as she is of the landscape and seascape of Cape Cod, where they live, her novel is that rarest of things: a truly great read

A compelling family drama set on the beautiful Cape Cod

A juicy portrait of a wealthy family on the brink of disaster. . . Little Monsters simmers with tension as secrets explode out into the open. . . Tensely constructed and absorbing. . . A consummate summer read, which somehow evokes smooth beach glass and hot pink sunsets with nary a mention of either

Adrienne Brodeur knows her way around a family drama. . . Brodeur weaves a story dense with stinging secrets and simmering resentments, rooted in another context that she knows well: the manicured towns and wild fringes of Cape Cod. . . Set against the island&rsquo;s rippling dune grasses and scrub pines, [the] narrative is as elegantly rendered as it is compulsively readable

PERFECT FOR FANS OF FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE AND THE PAPER PALACE

'Beautiful, lyrical and unvarnished' MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER, author of THE PAPER PALACE 
'Affecting and powerful' OBSERVER 
'A page-turner' FINANCIAL TIMES 
 
A riveting novel about Cape Cod, complicated families and long-buried secrets 
 
Summer, Cape Cod. Every member of the Gardner family is hiding a secret. Ken, a businessman with political ambitions, is caught in an internet chatroom and forced into couples therapy. Abby is ashamed to still depend on her brother’s goodwill to sustain her life as an artist. Adam, their father and brilliant oceanographer, decides to come off his bipolar disorder medication to make one last scientific breakthrough. And then there’s Steph: a new person living on the periphery, who harbours a secret that will change everything . . . 
 
'Smart, funny and beautifully written. Brodeur is a brilliant dissector of family relationships, a lyricist of the natural world, and an astute observer of our inner turmoils' MONICA ALI 
 
'Gorgeous, gripping, I couldn't put it down' RUTH OZEKI

Adrienne Brodeur

Praise for Little Monsters

Gorgeous, gripping, I couldn't put it down. Adrienne Brodeur does family intrigue and dysfunction like no one else I know. In Little Monsters, she once again draws back the curtain on a world of seasid ...

Brodeur creates an evocative sense of place in a Cape Cod-set novel that's affecting and powerful

An utterly gripping, immersive story of one family's unravelling traumas and hopes. It will capture and hold you in its depths. Brodeur creates characters who are so real, so complex, I could almost touch the ...

Gorgeous, gripping, I couldn't put it down. Adrienne Brodeur does family intrigue and dysfunction like no one else I know. In Little Monsters, she once again draws back the curtain on a world of seasid ...

Brodeur creates an evocative sense of place in a Cape Cod-set novel that's affecting and powerful

An utterly gripping, immersive story of one family's unravelling traumas and hopes. It will capture and hold you in its depths. Brodeur creates characters who are so real, so complex, I could almost touch the ...

Gorgeous, gripping, I couldn't put it down. Adrienne Brodeur does family intrigue and dysfunction like no one else I know. In Little Monsters, she once again draws back the curtain on a world of seasid ...

Brodeur creates an evocative sense of place in a Cape Cod-set novel that's affecting and powerful

An utterly gripping, immersive story of one family's unravelling traumas and hopes. It will capture and hold you in its depths. Brodeur creates characters who are so real, so complex, I could almost touch the ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter