A Little Bit Bad

A Novel

LIST PRICE $26.99

About The Book

“A feisty true-crime obsessive’s erotic awakening.” —Ada Calhoun, author of Crush

A “compulsively readable” (Sophie Stava, author of Count My Lies) novel about a San Diego housewife whose love affair with her neighbor’s roofer is interrupted by a murder.

Perdita Jungfrau thought she was going to be married to her husband forever, so falling in love with Nando, her neighbor’s anarcho-Marxist roofer, is a crisis. Life seems to put every possible obstacle in their way: she’s pregnant, he has a girlfriend, he’s fifteen years younger, she’s terrified of messing up her children and equally drawn towards this magnetic man who entrusts her with his deepest secret.

Now it’s three years later and Nando has been murdered.

As her bewildered husband tries to make sense of the wildly unpredictable person his wife has become, Perdita has other things on her mind. For starters, who is the mysterious woman sitting outside her house in a parked car all day? How can she stop her adored baby brother from being pulled under by his opioid addiction? Can someone with a childhood like hers ever be the mother her children deserve?

And most of all, what should she do with the searing memories of the affair which turned her life upside down?

About The Author

Io Dersin

Cassandra Neyenesch is a Brooklyn-based writer, activist, and curator. Neyenesch’s reviews and cultural pieces have appeared in The GuardianBrooklyn RailHuffPostPublic BooksThe International Herald Tribune, and Art in America.

About The Reader

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (May 5, 2026)
  • Runtime: 10 hours and 19 minutes
  • ISBN13: 9781668149980

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Raves and Reviews

"An excellent listen for romance-loving cynics, tired true crime fanatics, and those who love life's complexities."

– —Winner of an Earphones Award, Kirkus

"Suehyla El-Attar Young becomes worn-out mother and wife Perdita Jungfrau in this evocative performance. Listeners meet Perdita in the midst of her crumbling marriage, struggling to find stability following the murder of her secret lover, Nando. Perdita's story flips between present and past, and as her banal existence becomes more and more complicated, Young makes Perdita’s spiraling palpable. Her voice drips with exhaustion, sadness, and self-pity. She laughs, grunts with heartbroken pain, and moans in ecstasy. El-Attar even brings Perdita's brother, Spencer, with his California surfer accent, to life."

– —Winner of an Earphones Award, Kirkus

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