Published in paperback by Scout Press, Simon & Schuster in the US today Little Cruelties (hardcover) was A New York Times Most Recommended Thriller of 2020

Little Cruelties tells story of three brothers William, Brian, and Luke, born a year apart and trained from birth by their wily mother to compete for her attention.

Initially released in Ireland as the pandemic hit in March 2020 the book went to the top of the bestsellers list in Ireland and remained there for six weeks while most bookshops were closed.  The book was also longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel 2021

Praise for Little Cruelties

"Clever...Little Cruelties shows how thoroughly families can mess one another up, and how sometimes the greatest mysteries are found within the psyche."

The New York Times Book Review

“Artfully constructed… the author’s skillful telling of this multigenerational tragedy has the riveting power of an imminent car crash.”

Publishers Weekly

"Liz Nugent’s books exist at that very particular crossroads of horror and psychological thriller where the horror exists in the cruelty of human relationships themselves. As with all of Liz Nugent’s works, the sociopathy of characters is as much rooted in the repressed culture of 1980s Ireland as in the figures themselves. No one is rotten to begin with, Nugent knows, but she won’t let us look away from how truly rotten some of us become.”

CrimeReads

"Riveting...Little Cruelties melds a hardboiled story with a family drama, leading to a tragedy that will define another generation."

Shelf Awareness

“Brilliantly observed family life and a plot that is part rollercoaster, part maze. Loved it!”

Graham Norton

“Dark, beautiful, devastating - pure genius”

Lucy Foley

“What a terrific storyteller Liz Nugent is! Brilliantly structured, fluently told, rich in unsettling incident and pulsing with dark, tumultuous energy ... her best book yet”

Irish Times

“Creepy, compelling and totally addictive”

Erin Kelly

“Liz Nugent is a force to be reckoned with”

Lisa Jewell

“Liz Nugent has a gift for filling us with a terrible fascination for truly horrible people”

Val McDermid

“Evocative, vivid, brilliant storytelling from a novelist of powerful gifts”

Joseph O’Connor

"Smart, artful and totally gripping…LOVED IT”

Will Dean

“Shot through with black humour, toxic truths and pathos”

Sarah Hilary

“Wonderfully tense and gripping….a total page turner.. loved every word of it”

Dame Fiona Kidman

“Stunning… dark in a subtle way and it really got under my skin like no other book”

Patricia Gibney

“A dark jewel of a novel, fire flickering in its depths and light lining its edges. …no other crime novelist of the past decade has rivalled Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, or Gillian Flynn. [Little Cruelties is] a tragedy of evil power, crisply written and quickly paced; above all, [it”s] a thriller, swift and exciting and built like a carnival house, all false walls and trapdoors.”

A.J. Finn, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

"[A] chilling tale of the sociopathic mind... Readers who love sinister psychological thrillers will tear through these pages."

Library Journal (starred review)

“..The cruelties the three Drumm brothers inflict on one another include lying, bullying, stealing, seducing one another’s girlfriends and, finally, murder…..a fascinating reminder that no story is complete unless you hear it from everyone involved. “Little Cruelties” shows how thoroughly families can mess one another up, and how sometimes the greatest mysteries are found within the psyche

New York Times

“The much-decorated writer again displays a flair for plot and an uncanny ability to get under the skin of characters in the dysfunctional family drama … Nugent builds her narrative skilfully, with the ellipses in each brother’s account gradually filled in by the ensuing tales. All their psychologies are incisively laid out, consistent and layered across all sections … nobody is a mere cliché in Nugent’s clear, propulsive writing, and the author masterfully unveils the damage and hurt behind every motivation, and the petty resentments, delusions and carelessness that lie behind every nick and cut the family members inflict upon one another over the four decades of her tale … Nugent has won four Irish Book Awards for her previous three novels; it would be a cruelty to deny her further honours for her fourth.”

Crimereads.com novels of the month, November 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/25/books/gifts-for-book-lovers.html