Little Monsters * Adrienne Brodeur

Set against the backdrop of Cape Cod during a tense election season, two adult siblings must navigate their own hidden rivalries and secrets while their brilliant, bipolar oceanographer father prepares a dangerous legacy project.

The Story: Written by bestselling novelist and memoirist Adrienne Brodeur, this riveting contemporary masterpiece transforms a coastal paradise into a highly volatile psychological workspace. Taking inspiration from the ancient boundaries of the Cain and Abel narrative, the book explores the deep, unvarnished trauma metrics of the Gardner family. Sibling parameters have been fractured ever since Ken and Abby lost their mother as children, leaving them to be raised by their complicated father, Adam.

As the hot summer tracking line of 2016 unrolls, Adam approaches his seventieth birthday, aggressively fighting his fading scientific relevance. Managing his bipolar disorder for years with a strict pharmaceutical shield, he drops his medical routine and secretly stops taking his pills to chase one final breakthrough in deep-sea whale frequencies. Meanwhile, his adult children operate in a complex social sandbox. Ken is a successful, ambitious corporate businessman exploring regional political tracking lines, while Abby is a talented sculptor and painter who relies heavily on her brother's financial parameters to keep her studio afloat. As both siblings construct elaborate, high-stakes birthday gifts to win their father's primacy, a mysterious woman named Steph watches from the periphery, holding a massive secret identity that threatens to smash the family's protective shield forever. Brodeur guides readers step-by-step through a dense ledger of hidden affairs, sibling warfare, and mental illness, instructing the mind on how buried memories can mutate into little monsters if left in the dark.

Perfect For: Fans of intense, character-driven family dramas laced with psychological tension like Succession, The Paper Palace, or Ask Again, Yes; and readers who admire rich, deeply atmospheric coastal settings.