Little Neck by Darcie Dennigan; 2025. Hardcover.

Little Neck is a feverish and hypnotic excavation of grief and inheritance, told from the naïve perspective of a girl abandoned in a cemetery as she unearths her sinister family history. Haunting and cinematic, Dennigan's second novel is set in a small New England town steeped in secrets. It follows the life of a girl who grows up tending graves under the guidance of a beloved groundskeeper. Her world unravels when he catches her exhuming a body, and she is sent to apprentice with the town's tombstone carvers. As the girl learns fragments of her hidden past, a dark family history begins to consume her. Little Neck explores themes of inheritance, desire, and grief, probing the question: Can we escape the mistakes of our parents, even when their identities are a mystery? With echoes of Ágota Kristóf, Marguerite Duras, and Marie Redonnet, Dennigan crafts a tragic, darkly humorous meditation on family and the secrets that shape us.