Coyoteland, Vanessa Hua
Coyoteland, Vanessa Hua
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Coyoteland
A Novel

Author: Vanessa Hua

Narrator: Ina Barrón

Unabridged: 11 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/12/2026


Synopsis

"Coyoteland promises to be as dynamic and explosive a suburban drama as LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE." —LitHub (MOST ANTICIPATED)

"Written with WITH, EMPATHY, and HEART." —Electric Lit (MOST ANTICIPATED)

"Totally PROPULSIVE." —Ingrid Rojas Contreras • "A TOUR DE FORCE." —Kirstin Chen • "A tremendous, MESMERIZING gift." —R. O. Kwon • "UNFORGETTABLE." —Jean Kwok • "RIVETING."—Angie Kim

From the BESTSELLING author of A River of Stars comes a FUNNY, HEARTFELT novel set in an affluent Bay Area suburb where a Chinese American family moves in and sets off a series of scandals

Living in El Nido, a privileged community in the hills east of Berkeley, is supposed to mean you’ve made it. So when Jin Chang moves there with his wife and daughters after years of scraping by, he hopes it will finally be the end of his bad luck. What his family doesn’t know is that he’s bending the rules for one final scheme: to make it big in real estate. Next door, Blair Belle prides herself on her progressive politics. After all, she treats their new nanny, Ana Rodriguez, and her daughter like family—even if she doesn’t know them all that well. But she can’t help but feel skeptical of the new neighbors, especially when she begins to suspect that Jin’s plans might interfere with the Belle’s own luxury development.

Jin’s teenage daughter Jane can tell her dad is keeping a secret, but she’s also struggling to navigate El Nido’s cliques. Tasha Washington has always felt isolated, too, as one of the only Black girls at the school. In the wake of a coyote attack, Jane and Tasha bond. Together, they hatch a plot to expose the town’s hypocrisies. The shockwaves will rock their own families. As fire season escalates, and the roaming coyote continues to unleash chaos, the characters become embroiled in a series of scandals that will change El Nido—and their own fates—forever.

Urgent, riveting, and deeply heartfelt, full of sharp wit and keen empathy, Coyoteland is at once a delicious suburban drama and an unflinching exploration of our current moment.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

About Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the de Groot Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. She was a finalist for the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the New American Voices Award. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Ecuador, and Panama, and her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by alyssa on February 18, 2026

Coyoteland is a slow burn part coming-of-age, part domestic thriller, exploring race, class, and familial bonds in the prosperous Bay Area. I had to know what was going to happen and Hua very deftly sets up several narratives that slowly grow more and more tense until they implode in one dazzling fi......more

Goodreads review by Andie on March 17, 2026

ARC for Review: “Coyoteland” by Vanessa Hua is a novel about family struggles, racism: passive racism and active racism, society during a pandemic, and a coyote’s will to survive. The people are also a reflection of the coyote in ways where their behavior can be coyote-like. Trying to survive in a w......more

Goodreads review by Angie on March 24, 2026

This is one of those books that made me wish I had a character chart… and a highlighter. 📚👀 I’m grateful to have received a complimentary ALC of Coyote Land by Vanessa Hua—thank you to Macmillan Audio! This is a work of deep literary fiction centered around an up-and-coming, affluent neighborhood—wher......more

Goodreads review by Sharlene on March 27, 2026

Coyoteland is a suburban drama, set in El Nido, a privileged community in the hills east of Berkeley.  The book explores the microcosm of this neighborhood of families, particularly focusing on issues of race, class, coming of age, and familial bonds.  Each family is struggling with their own issue......more

Goodreads review by Jill on January 26, 2026

An interesting read about the pandemic, racism, culture, secrets, scandals, and coyotes. Set in an affluent suburb where teens excel in sports, and their helicopter mothers ensure that their children always come out on top. Predominantly white, the citizens of El Nido form cliques, living by their o......more


Quotes

"Who among us doesn’t enjoy a messy, layered family drama? Coyoteland promises to be as dynamic and explosive a suburban drama as Little Fires Everywhere."
—LitHub (Most Anticipated)

"Written with wit, empathy, and heart, Vanessa Hua gives us a rich suburban drama that forces us to untangle the details of our current world."
Electric Lit (Most Anticipated)

“Hua's latest novel explores community, resilience, and the power of the natural world...In Coyoteland, Hua deftly explores questions of race and class”
—Sona Charaipotra, Publishers Weekly

"A standout in the wave of “dark suburbia” novels coming out of the dystopian realities of the embattled West Coast"
Kirkus


"Swift, surprising, and wholly captivating, Coyoteland asks vital questions about race, class, and what it takes to truly belong. In training a discerning eye on one small, close-knit community, Vanessa Hua opens up an entire world. A tour de force from one of my all-time favorite writers, working at the very peak of her talents."
—Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit

“Vanessa Hua has crafted a riveting, multi-layered novel that brims with humor and insight. With remarkable specificity and striking timeliness, Coyoteland forces us to reckon with the most urgent questions of our moment while illuminating our shared longing for connection within families and communities.”
—Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls

"With a storyteller’s keen eye and deep empathy, Vanessa Hua turns fire season, real estate gambits, and a prowling coyote into an unforgettable reckoning with power, belonging, and the uneasy compromises behind every claim to home."
—Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of The Leftover Woman

"Coyoteland is the novel to make us remember that we’re all foragers in the wild: humans wanting success and power and love and always wanting home; animals searching for food and survival. This convergence of many souls trying to make their way is a classic novel, in a California that Vanessa Hua limns with delicacy, precision, and the deep knowledge of an iconic place."
—Susan Straight, National Book Award finalist and author of Mecca

"No one writes like Vanessa Hua. With power, grace, and profound insight, Hua brings to life a community that—like the rest of today’s fraught world, and whether all of its inhabitants acknowledge it or not—is in a state of ongoing crisis. A tremendous, mesmerizing gift from this one-of-a-kind storyteller."
—R. O. Kwon, nationally bestselling author of Exhibit

"Coyoteland
pulses with the urgency of this moment yet guides with an ageless understanding of the human heart. With characters so tenderly drawn they’ll feel like family and struggles so credible you’ll mistake them for your own, this is one you’ll want to devour but which deserves to be savored. Propulsive, engrossing, and wise, it is a perfect homage to the pandemic era."
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of On the Rooftop, a Reese’s Book Club Pick

"Vanessa Hua’s writing is clear, forward, totally propulsive, and in Coyoteland she attunes her colossal talent to unveiling the deep frailties and intricacies of an affluent community in the Bay Area beset with coyote attacks. Coyoteland was wise and wholly addicting to read, the largest pleasure."
—Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds