A darkly funny, psychologically sharp literary thriller about a grieving daughter, a legendary lake monster, and the dangerous stories we tell ourselves about the people we love.

Nineteen-year-old Kaila Santos has always believed there is something living beneath Lake Milagro. Her late father, a celebrated biologist whose obsession with the legendary Creature destroyed his reputation, devoted years to proving it existed. Since his death, Kaila has clung fiercely to his theories and to the hope that one day he will be proven right.

Then a woman disappears along the lakeshore. Then another.

As fear spreads through the picture-perfect towns surrounding Lake Milagro, some suspect a human predator. Kaila sees another possibility: the Creature has finally surfaced. And if she can prove it, she can vindicate her father once and for all.

Drawn into the search, Kaila follows the mystery deeper into the lake’s mythology and her father’s increasingly troubling research. But the closer she gets to the truth, the harder it becomes to separate evidence from obsession, and the more she is forced to reconsider the father she worshipped, the mother she has spent years dismissing, and the stories she has built her life around.

Wry, unsettling, and unexpectedly tender, Little Creature is a novel about grief, self-deception, and what happens when the monsters we need to believe in begin to look very different up close.