Cat fight / by Kit Conway.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Big Little Lies meets Tiger King in this fun and propulsive debut novel about three suburban women who, over the course of one summer, each use the growing hysteria around a big cat sighting to achieve their own agendas--some more sinister than others.

Former zoologist Coralie King now reigns over a different sort of animal kingdom as Queen Bee of Sevenoaks, a wealthy suburb of London. When her husband Adam spots a panther on the hood of his car at one of her exclusive dinner parties, Coralie is quick to reassure her guests that they're in no real danger. She sees the sighting as the perfect opportunity to revive her career and promote her own ecological endeavors.

New neighbor Emma Brooks doesn't believe for a second that there's a big cat in their midst but is all too willing to use the concern as a distraction from her home remodel application that's been facing scrutiny. Meanwhile, former punk musician Twig Dorsett doesn't know what to believe. She never thought she'd return to Sevenoaks and be living in her childhood home, but after her daughter became sick, she and her wife traded their Bohemian life in Bali for the security of London suburbia.

As the summer heats up, the frenzy around the big cat sighting reaches a fever pitch when gnawed bones, pawprints, and scratches are discovered. But is the real predator a big cat on the prowl or is the true threat more of the domestic variety? Filled with gasp-worthy twists and turns, Cat Fight is a wickedly entertaining novel of suspense that examines the lengths to which some women will go when they feel caged.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Chapter 1: Emma 1 Emma The air crackled as the first hot day of the year began to fold in on itself, cobalt eclipsing pale blue sky. The wasp juddered at right angles over the table, like a hitchhiker unable to reach their desired destination. "Bit early for wasps," Matt muttered, spearing an olive with a flourish. Beside him, Emma, his wife, resisted rolling her eyes. A small bead of oil had slicked over the olive's smooth surface and landed on Matt's "wacky floral shirt," as he liked to call it. "Bit early for that shirt," Adam quipped, raising his head and meeting Emma's eyes playfully. She couldn't help but notice that Adam's formfitting, relaxed gray tee was much easier on the eyes than Matt's shirt. She bit back a smile as Matt brandished his napkin, thrust it into the water jug and daubed ineffectively at the oil stain, somehow making it worse. "Says the man wearing the eye-watering aftershave," Matt retorted, abandoning the napkin. He rolled the olive pip into the side of his mouth as he spoke. Emma shouldn't observe him at such close range. It made her queasy. Her husband had been handsome when they met, but age was rendering him piggish; his skin pink and tough-looking, his remaining tufts of tawny hair flecked with white. Adam, on the other hand... he was looking better every day. "Hey," Coralie gently admonished him, "I bought him that aftershave." She put her hands on Adam's shoulders and leaned in, kissing him on the cheek. "Don't listen to him, darling, you smell divine." A burgundy flush rose from Adam's neck to his cheeks. Emma noted the way he gently tilted his phone away from Coralie's eyeline. Interesting. "Coralie's supper party always opens the summer season, so I had to wear this shirt," Matt continued, all bonhomie, tipping his head toward their hostess deferentially: his "benevolent leader head tilt," which he frequently employed on his Cub Scouts troop. Emma found it soothing to label his mannerisms; it created a distance between her and them, as though she were reading about his irritating quirks in a book rather than witnessing them firsthand. "It's hardly a party." Coralie smiled, modest as ever. "It's a light supper between friends." Coralie was right, a get-together between a few neighbors wasn't really a party. There was Coralie and Adam; Twig and Blake with their kids, Elwood and Skylar; and her and Matt with Henry and Daisy. But Coralie had that effortless way about her where everything she did felt elevated somehow: festive, ambient, fun. As though with every wave of her arms candlelight would appear, or a fizzing tray of gin and tonics, the ice cracking in the glass. Partly it was money and her posh upbringing; it was unclear where the Kings' wealth came from-- Her family? Her divorce? --but it certainly wasn't possible to live the way the Kings did, in a house as magnificent as theirs (the crown jewel of Briar Close), on Adam's treesurgeon wages. There was little evidence Adam himself did much work, his output seeming to wane the more comfortable his life with Coralie became. On the one hand, Emma found that unattractive, but on the other, it was refreshing. He was unthreatened by society's perception of him as a wastrel and carried with him a sense that he had nothing to prove. Which, obviously, made all the other Sevenoaks husbands hate him. He was younger, better-looking, agile enough to shimmy up a tree and married to the gorgeous Coralie King. "It's global warming," Elwood inserted keenly, his fair eyebrows raised, his blue eyes bright and wide above his slim nose. The wasp dived at his sister Skylar's plate, and she shot back in her seat. "Everything's global warming with you," Twig said fondly, pulling Skylar's chair further away from the table. "He's quite right," Coralie said with a small, worried frown, as though the future of the planet rested on her shoulders. Elwood looked up at her adoringly, as he so often did, and Emma wondered, not for the first time, if it bothered his mothers--particularly Twig, since she stayed at home while Blake frequently traveled for her work as a music producer--that Elwood looked at Coralie that way. Mind you, most people did. She was a modern angel, gliding around the suburbs with her halo of wavy blond hair and her devoted husband, collecting for the local food bank, one of the governors at Puddleford School, an unpaid volunteer committed to overseeing the school's strategic direction (particularly worthy since her daughters didn't attend Puddleford) and organizing community litter-picking weekends. People would literally gather trash off the street for her. Emma had always had the sense that, underneath it all, Coralie needed to keep busy. Everyone felt so sorry that her daughters were still living in London with their dad, a brutish-sounding man who had bought them off with screens and excessive pocket money, eschewing the kind of fairy-tale countryside childhood the girls could have had with Coralie here in Kent. Coralie said she was determined not to unsettle them with a protracted court process, though Emma expected she would certainly win her case. No one, not even a judge, would deny Coralie King. Maybe Elwood's closeness to Coralie didn't bother Twig and Blake, Emma mused. Maybe they were grateful to have him occupied while they tried to raise the money for Skylar's cancer vaccine. They were desperate for her to have it, she knew; you'd have to be, to move back in with your father and into your childhood bedroom. "Where did you two meet again?" Blake asked Coralie, her American accent heightened and a lopsided smile on her face, alcohol invoking more interest in her neighbors than usual. "On Battersea Bridge." Coralie swooned wistfully. "I asked Adam for directions and he insisted on taking me right to the door." Emma was familiar with the Kings' meet-cute and hoped Blake didn't turn her attention to theirs. How could she follow that with, "Well, we admired each other's mugs--hers Disney, his Star Wars --in the kitchen at work?" "It was love at first sight." Coralie's eyes dropped before lifting in Adam's direction, but Adam didn't seem to register that, preoccupied as he was with his phone. Emma felt a stab of curiosity. What secret world was enticing Adam away as he sat surrounded by his wife and friends on a beautiful early summer evening? "Mummy... Mummy..." Skylar was as agitated as the wasp ambushing the strawberries and raspberries liberally scattered over her meringue. Emma's lips twitched as she watched the battle being wrought on her husband's face. Matt couldn't stand people getting het up over wasps. He became furious with Henry and Daisy if they so much as moved a muscle in consternation at a bug: Just sit still , he would intone. If you don't bother it, it will fly away . Henry and Daisy had abandoned their plates and left the table, standing back and staring as the wasp's siren grew louder, its dive-bombing more intent, each time Twig--and now Blake--tried to swat it away from Skylar's plate. Poor little Skylar , as she was commonly known, was wedged so far back in her seat, angled toward Twig's side, it was hard to see where the chair ended and the child--thin and pale with only a smattering of downy fair hair--began. "It's getting angry!" Daisy shrieked, and Matt snapped his head in her direction, shooting her a look, as if to say: You should know better, girl. "That's not why wasps buzz," Elwood was saying, the only child still sitting calmly at the table, opposite an equally serene Coralie. "Yes." She nodded at him encouragingly, master to apprentice, an open palm extended to indicate he should continue. "Social wasps do it when they're building their nest!" Elwood responded. "Or! Or!" He wiggled his fingers as though summoning his thoughts. "Some wasps fan their nest to keep it cool!" Coralie clapped her hands together delightedly, as though they were in a private conversation. "Gah!" Skylar yelped as the wasp rebounded off her plate and flew directly toward the shiny Wakanda Forever motif in the center of her shirt. The force of her convulsion sent her chair rocking onto its back legs. "For goodness' sake," Matt muttered as Blake and Twig each reflexively reached out and gripped either side of the chair to stop it from falling. Matt leaned his bulk over the table and with calm precision squashed the wasp with a click of his fingers. At the abrupt extinguishing of the wasp's buzzing the whole table fell silent, catching even Adam's attention. "Whoa! What the-- You coulda got stung, mate!" he exclaimed, hand to his stubbled jaw. Matt shrugged, his broad chest puffed with bravado. "It's hardly going to hurt, is it? Look at the size of me compared to the wasp." Elwood was regarding Matt in horror as the rest of the table contemplated him with looks of shock or withering stares. "What?" Matt was unrepentant. "Now we can get along with our evening. Can't believe this is vegan!" he exclaimed overzealously, spearing more meringue on his plate. "Tastes just like the real stuff!" And Emma knew then he was really grafting because chickpea water was a poor replacement for an egg. All the Dorsetts had become vegan after Skylar's diagnosis, and Emma could imagine Coralie having spent the whole day trying to come up with a suitable pudding to satisfy all her guests. "Murderer!" Elwood shouted, and Matt straightened, ready to chastise one of his troops. Sometimes he forgot he was a Cub Scout leader for ninety minutes a week, and not every second of every day. "That was unnecessary," Twig said, reprimanding Matt as though he were her husband, rather than Emma's, causing Emma to raise an eyebrow in her direction. Twig didn't notice, continuing to rub Skylar's arms, checking she was okay. "It was just a wasp!" Matt retorted, shrugging and rolling his eyes. "Nothing even eats wasps." "Everything eats something," Coralie said mildly, lifting her gaze to stare at Matt directly. "Wasps are pollinators!" Elwood supplied. "And they do cool things like capture their prey, chop them up, and feed them to their babies! They're apex predators. " "Yes, thank you, Elwood, that's quite enough," Matt interrupted. "That means they're top of the food chain," Elwood persisted. Coralie smiled at her protégé indulgently and ruffled his hair as the other children squealed and pulled faces. The vegan meringue wasn't enough to entice the kids back to the table. Henry tapped his sister on the arm, shouting, "It!" Soon they were both running and jerking around the end of the garden, toward the dark recesses of the Parkland beyond. The Parkland was partly what made the Briar Heart Estate so exclusive. It was the outer eastern section of the larger Jutland Estate, more than 2,500 acres of Kent countryside, with the Briar Heart Estate nestled just within its boundaries. The residential roads formed a loose heart shape, Briar Close cutting through the middle like an artery, its end--where all the supper-party guests lived--puncturing the perimeter. It lent the estate, and especially their part of Briar Close, a secluded, countryside feel, even though they were a ten-minute walk from the train station in one direction, and ten to Puddleford School in the other. Puddleford School was the highest-rated state primary school in the area. It was universally agreed (by the local middle-class parents) that it was the next best thing to paying private-school fees. And in some ways, thanks to its sense of community, it was better. Emma longed to be at the center of it, like Coralie. Hosting garden parties, and mulled wine and mince pie soirées, the best-dressed house at Halloween. It was impossible to compete until her crumbling eyesore of a house was renovated. She couldn't wait; she already had builders lined up to begin as soon as their plans were approved. Elwood jumped up to join the others, quickly being tagged by Henry as Daisy tore off ahead. He never had been very strong at sports, Elwood. With his wiry frame and choppy fair hair, he reminded Emma of a gangly magician. "Can I go too?" Skylar asked, looking up at Twig and Blake. Twig frowned and before Blake could finish saying "Sure," Twig was shaking her head. "It's getting too dark out there, little one." Matt shot Emma a look as if to say, See . Blind to her annoyance he frequently told Emma, She wasn't like that when we were younger . When Twig and Blake had moved in with Twig's father, Bob, Emma had been excited--there weren't many former famous musicians in Sevenoaks--but Matt hadn't mentioned his history with Twig. When she'd learned-- via Bob, of all people --that Twig had grown up with Matt, had been each other's first proper boyfriend and girlfriend, in fact, she'd been wary. She didn't enjoy the pally way they'd chat at school events or Coralie's parties. But things had soured between them since Elwood had joined Cubs. Twig found Matt overbearing and muttered about "toxic masculinity" whenever he was within earshot. Emma found the hostility between them a much more welcome atmosphere, like an ambient temperature. Like underfloor heating. "But Elwood's playing," Skylar said plaintively. "And Daisy!" Skylar was a year older than Daisy, but they were in the same class as her illness meant she was repeating a year. The closeness in the children's ages and their homes had forged the three women's friendship. Their lives had become so entwined that Emma could no longer tell whether they would have been friends if they'd met elsewhere. She found Twig too nervy, and Coralie too do-goody, although she had grown fond of them both, and she sometimes wondered, was this always the way when women spent time together at close range? A societal impulse to pit themselves against each other? Was she destined to view herself by comparison, good or bad, to others? "Look, you've not finished the meringue Coralie made for you," Twig coaxed. And for which we are all suffering , thought Emma. Emma's heart tugged at Skylar's downcast expression, but she also felt for Twig. She couldn't reconcile the Twig Matt described from their teenage years with the one she knew, but she guessed that was what happened when your kid got sick and you needed to raise zillions of pounds for the best treatment in America: you lost your edge. Later she would find herself wondering if the opposite was, in fact, true: that Twig would do whatever it took to keep Skylar safe. Her edge never faltering, sharp as a blade. Excerpted from Cat Fight: A Novel by Kit Conway All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Conway debuts with a witty social thriller set in the wealthy English town of Sevenoaks. At a backyard dinner party, zoologist Coralie King and her husband, Adam, host their friends Twig and Blake Dorsett, founders of the once popular band Pineapple Punk, and Emma and Matt Brooks, who've become notorious among Sevenoaks' residents for their extravagant home renovations. Adam briefly steps away from the festivities, then returns claiming he saw a panther on the hood of his car. His declaration sounds insane to most of his friends, who assume his vision is tied to the joint he was smoking. The group half-heartedly agrees to keep the situation quiet so as not to cause panic, but word spreads quickly. In the coming days, online posts from concerned mothers about dangerous beasts roaming the English countryside get picked up by the national press, and journalists descend on Sevenoaks. Meanwhile, each member of the main cast--Coralie, Twig, and Emma share narration duties--exploits the situation to their own ends, hoping all the while that their individual secrets stay buried. More crime-tinted suburban satire than straightforward mystery, Conway's twisty narrative is populated by three-dimensional characters and dagger-sharp renderings of middle-aged malaise. This is an auspicious first effort. Agent: Katie Greenstreet, Paper Literary. (June)