Author Stories Podcast Episode 1106 | May Cobb Interview


Today’s author interview guest is May Cobb, author of The Hunting Wives.

“[A] sharply observed thriller.”—Pop Sugar

“Sultry, salacious and utterly unpredictable….You’ll devour it.”–Riley Sager, New York Times bestselling author of Home Before Dark

The Hunting Wives share more than target practice, martinis, and bad behavior in this novel of obsession, seduction, and murder.

Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realizes that life is now too quiet, and she’s feeling bored and restless.

Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. As Sophie’s curiosity gives way to full-blown obsession, she slips farther away from the safety of her family and deeper into this nest of vipers.

When the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation and her life spiraling out of control.

About May Cobb:

My upcoming thriller, THE HUNTING WIVES, will be released from Berkley/Penguin Random House in May 2021.

My debut thriller, BIG WOODS, won multiple awards and was released summer 2018.

I’m currently finishing a book about the late, jazz great, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a project which has been in the works for twenty years. Kirk was a human phenomenon—a multi-instrumentalist who was best known for his miraculous ability to play three saxophones simultaneously. During his brief life, he defied staggering odds—from blindness, to prejudice, to a paralyzing stroke—in order to play the music that came to him through dreams. His story is what made me want to become a writer.

I grew up in the piney woods of East Texas where both THE HUNTING WIVES and BIG WOODS are set. After college, I moved to San Francisco where I studied Victorian Literature for my Master’s, and gravitated towards that era’s detective novels, known as “sensation novels”, such as Wilke Collins’ THE WOMAN IN WHITE.

I then lived in Los Angeles for a few years where I worked for filmmaker/writer Ron Shelton and his wife, the actress Lolita Davidovich

I currently live in Austin, Texas, with my husband and son where we enjoy traipsing around the area’s many beautiful parks. I also enjoy napping, staring into space, making to-do lists for my to-do lists, shoveling cookies down my throat when I’m writing a particularly difficult scene (and even when I’m not), wearing my PJ’s as often as I can get away with and collapsing into bed at the end of a day with a great book.

My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, Austin Monthly, and Edible Austin.

My proudest achievement remains clinching 1st place in the UIL competition for Personal Writing when I was in the 4th grade.

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