All three of the Drumm brothers were at the funeral.
Only one of us was in the coffin.

William, Brian, and Luke: three boys bound by blood but split by fate, trained from birth by their wily mother to compete for her attention. They play games, as brothers do…yet even after the Drumms escape into the world beyond their windows, those games—those little cruelties—grow more sinister, more merciless, more dangerous. And with their lives entwined like the strands of a noose, only two of the brothers will survive.

Crisply written and quickly paced, perfect for readers of both sophisticated literary fiction and breathtaking suspense, Little Cruelties gazes unflinchingly into the darkness: the darkness collecting in the corners of childhood homes, hiding beneath marriage beds, clasped in the palms of two brothers shaking hands. And it confirms Liz Nugent, whose novels have been celebrated as “captivating” (People) and “highly entertaining” (The Washington Post), as one of the most exciting, perceptive voices in contemporary fiction.

Review:

Tragic, intricate, and twisty!

Little Cruelties is a dark, compelling, character-driven, domestic thriller that takes you into the lives of three brothers, Wiliam, an arrogant film producer, Brian, an unmotivated leach, and Luke, an emotionally fragile pop star as they each grapple with sibling rivalry, enduring jealousy, devastating secrets, and exceptionally cruel decisions that will change their lives forever.

The prose is tight and intense. The characters are selfish, deceptive, and troubled. And the plot told from multiple perspectives unfolds gradually into a murky tale full of twists, turns, surprises, familial drama, lies, greed, resentments, scandal, wickedness, deception, tragedy, and murder.

Overall, Little Cruelties is another sophisticated, creepy, gloomy tale by Nugent that does a fantastic job of delving into all the complex, dysfunctional dynamics that can occur between family members and reminds us just how evil and toxic some of these relationships can truly be.

This novel is available now.

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