Lisa Owens: Natural Disaster [2026]

'Hilarious, brilliant, utterly exhilarating' MONICA ALI
'Funny, sharp unputdownable' NINA STIBBE
'Fantastic' JESSIE BURTON
'Very funny and very, very relatable' STYLIST, 2026 BEST FICTION PICKS
'I absolutely loved it' LUCY DIAMOND
'Compulsive, agonising, and hilarious' CHRIS POWER
'Brilliant, hilarious, gut-punchingly truth-telling' EMILY ITAMI
'The funniest novel I've read in years' CLAIRE POWELL
'Thunderously good' NATHAN FILER

One perfect day. A million catastrophes.

For weeks, she has been saying it will be their special day. One last, perfect day with her children before she returns to work after maternity leave.

What's the worst that can happen?

Unfolding across 24 hours, Natural Disaster is a propulsive, darkly funny and sharply observed novel about the absurd, frustrating, hilarious, precarious, bittersweet, sometimes astonishing challenge - literal, existential - of being a woman, a mother, a wife, a person for one single, entire day.

'I did not give Lisa Owens permission to look inside my very soul but she seems to have done it anyway. Smart, wise and real' CLAIRE LYNCH
'A genuinely dazzling novel' DAVID WHITEHOUSE
'This is the book I've been waiting for ever since I had children. So propulsive I read it in a single sitting' MARIANNE LEVY
'Destined to become a classic' JESSICA STANLEY
'What a perfect depiction of early motherhood, womanhood, and love' OLIVIA POTTS
'I absolutely adored it.' EMMA HUGHES
'Generous, funny, heartbreaking and clever' LIZZY STEWART