Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent; 2020. Hardcover.

All three of the Drumm brothers were at the funeral. But one of them was in the coffin.

William, Brian, and Luke: three boys, born a year apart, 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, and 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, and perfect for fans of 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.

An uneasy but powerful read from bestselling author Liz Nugent that delves into the darkness visited upon a family of three working-class Irish brothers, exploring the ways in which families can wreak emotional damage across generations and doom men to give in to their own worst impulses in service to a culture that has abandoned them.