[]
A Little Bit Bad
  • Published: 5 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241792902
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $34.99

A Little Bit Bad

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
5 May 2026
Hardback
5 June 2026
EBook
5 May 2026
Audiobook
5 May 2026
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

Big Swiss meets All Fours in this dazzlingly wild, darkly funny debut about desire and obsession, motherhood and marriage and the irresistible intoxication of blowing up your life

Perdita Jungfrau thought she knew what she wanted her life to be: marriage, children, stability, the hard-won (if slightly stultifying) shape of adulthood. Then she meets Nando, her much younger handyman - charismatic, complicated, and entirely wrong for her - and everything she thought was settled begins to shift.

Three years later, Nando is dead. As searing memories of their relationship resurface, the fever of obsession and the ache of its aftermath, Perdita finds her life turned upside-down once more. Then there’s the appearance of a mysterious woman parked outside her house, her younger brother’s increasingly erratic behaviour, and the knowledge that Nando’s killer is still at large. Not that she can tell her husband any of this, of course…

Dazzlingly wild and darkly funny, this is a story about the impossible mess of being alive and the irresistible intoxication of being just a little bit bad.
  • Published: 5 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241792902
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $34.99
Categories:

About the author

Cassandra Neyenesch

Cassandra Neyenesch is a Brooklyn-based writer and curator whose reviews and cultural pieces have appeared in The Guardian, Brooklyn Rail, Huffington Post, Public Books, The International Herald Tribune, and Art in America.
CN

Praise for A Little Bit Bad

Wholly original and compulsively readable ... fresh, dark, subversive and wildly compelling. I can’t stop thinking about it. Neyenesch turns the suspense genre on its head in the best way; I couldn’t get enough

Sophie Stava, author of Count My Lies

Enthralling: a feisty true-crime obsessive's erotic awakening in the canyons of California embroils her in her very own murder mystery. Pretty much the platonic-ideal beach read

Ada Calhoun, author of Crush

A Little Bit Bad is a wild ride. Neyenesch has a totally original voice and a fresh perspective on life

Esther Walker

Sexy, dangerous, shocking, funny - A Little Bit Bad Is to die for. The most fun you can have with a novel. Perdita is the best bitch in modern fiction yet the anti-heroine we all want and need in our lives

Rachel Johnson

So charismatic and confiding; I felt as if I'd found my new (and very bad) best friend

Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood

The ripple effects of Miranda July's hugely successful All Fours can be seen in several debuts this year that address sex, desire and monogamy. A Little Bit Bad by Cassandra Neyenesch concerns a woman who has an affair with her neighbour's roofer

BBC – The 40 most exciting books to look forward to in 2026

Structurally thrilling, viciously funny and subversive. Neyenesch’s magnetic narrator says the unsayable and thinks the unforgivable – and I would follow her anywhere. I adored every wicked page

Catherine Chidgey, author of The Book of Guilt

Mordantly funny and perfectly pitched….Original and hilarious

Kirkus Reviews

This darkly funny, slippery novel is a hoot to read and will please fans of Miranda July’s All Fours

The i Paper

The narrative zips along and is full of wisdom on addiction, obsession, motherhood and marriage. Different and compelling

Daily Mail

A sparkling, subversive debut ... this tragicomic tale of an American woman’s illicit romance is also a gripping murder mystery

Guardian

Compulsive reading ... [A Little Bit Bad] poses questions about the structural violence of a culture that privileges the normative nuclear family

Guardian

Delighfully plotted ... has all the hallmarks of a witty thriller, but the split narrative allows for more than mere mystery

Times Literary Supplement