Coyoteland

A real estate feud drives this riveting novel from Hua (Forbidden City). Jin Chang moves his family into an exclusive Bay Area enclave with plans to flip their new house. He immediately butts heads with his busybody neighbor, Blair Belle, a tech worker whose company makes a camera called an Orb, which she uses to monitor her home and surveil the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Blair’s husband has begun to build a nearby complex called Bellavista, to include affordable housing, which would help single mother Minerva Washington keep her teen daughter, Tasha, in the neighborhood’s coveted school district. When Jin’s spirited 15-year-old daughter, Jane, rescues Tasha from a coyote attack, the two become close friends. Unbeknownst to the Belles, Jin is behind an anti-Bellavista campaign, which causes further tensions between Blair and a rival she assumes is orchestrating it. Jane winds up in her own conflict with the Belles’ Princeton-bound daughter, Quinn, after Quinn catches Jane reading her diary, and the plot’s many strands come to a head during a party Quinn throws at the Changs’ house while they’re away. Hua’s spectacular character work offers complex and surprising views into the many players’ motivations. Readers will find much to love in this multilayered page-turner. Agent: Margaret Sutherland Brown, Folio Literary. (May)