May Cobb, the bestselling author of THE HUNTING WIVES --- which is now a hit Netflix series --- returns with ALL THE LITTLE HOUSES, a wickedly delicious and devious tale of bored housewives, rebellious teens, and the secrets that populate a small town in the mid-1980s.

Longview, Texas, is a town of division. While half its residents live in mansions and attend soirees at the $500-a-month country club, the other half is dirt-poor, living off the land and struggling to get by. No one knows the difference between these two lifestyles better than Charleigh Anderson. Drop-dead gorgeous with a tight, perfect little figure, Charleigh rose from the ashes of her drunk, neglectful family’s lean-to to marry Alexander Anderson, heir to an oil dynasty, emerging as a phoenix of wealth, privilege and power.

Now the Andersons are the richest family in town, and beautiful to boot, except for their teenage daughter, Nellie, whom Charleigh laments is beautiful “in her own way.” She may not have her parents’ icy blond locks or bright, sparkling eyes. But, unlike Charleigh, Nellie has grown up with access to everything: designer clothes, a nose job at only 13, and her family’s financial hold over their neighbors. Along with her lackluster looks, Nellie is, well, different.

For years, Charleigh has swept Nellie’s antics under the rug: pushing a classmate down the stairs, (allegedly) setting fire to another’s playhouse, and even (potentially) attempting to poison her own cousin. But so what if Nellie is a bit spirited? Charleigh knows how hard she had to shape and contort herself to leave her dirt road behind and enter the world of glitzy mansions and bespoke chandeliers. She’ll die before she lets her daughter catch even so much as a glimpse of the world she once knew.

"May Cobb weaves a wicked, dishy tale of frenemies and gossip, margaritas and murders.... ALL THE LITTLE HOUSES ends on the most anxiety-inducing cliffhanger I have read in a while.... This is the kind of book where you’ll catch something new every time and always be entertained."

So it goes that Nellie misbehaves and Charleigh smooths things over. Charleigh even goes so far as to essentially bribe some friends to make their son date her daughter. After all, there’s nothing worse on the queen bee circuit than attending prom dateless. It’s not as if Nellie has to marry the boy. She just has to keep him around long enough to get to college and land a real moneymaker, an earner like Charleigh’s own husband. And everything is going according to plan.

That is, until the Swift family arrives in town. Unlike their wealthy neighbors, the Swifts are a bit more down to earth. Ethan, who is jaw-droppingly handsome and just as charismatic, is a woodworker who creates dazzlingly pricey pieces for his clients. His wife, Abigail, boasts her own apothecary full of tinctures guaranteed to produce an aphrodisiac effect. Simply put, the Swifts live entirely off the land. And if their businesses weren’t enough proof, there’s also the fact that they’re extremely religious, avoid doctors and prescriptions, and make all their clothes by hand. In a normal, just world, they would never even appear on Charleigh’s radar…except for the existence of their daughter, Jane.

Jane Swift, unlike Nellie, is a natural beauty and has a certain charm that has captivated Longview. Whereas normally, the judgy, critical teens of the local high school would turn their noses up at anyone with even a whiff of poverty about them, they seem glued to this simple girl and the novelty of her arrival. This makes Nellie irate. Sure, Jane may be prettier and may even have a better body, but Nellie is rich. Charleigh has bought Nellie her looks, her clothes, and most of her friends. But how can she compete with the kind of natural essence that can’t be bought?

When Abigail’s tinctures begin to take off among her friends, Charleigh decides that enough is enough. So it is that mother and daughter become engaged in their own separate --- and conjoined --- wars for dominance, for power, for being the queen bee. The jabs are passive aggressive, the smiles barbed, and the jokes cutting. The action is bolstered by supporting characters like Charleigh’s best friend, Jackson, a closeted man whose work as a decorator draws him into both families’ crosshairs.

From infidelity, corruption and even murder, ALL THE LITTLE HOUSES has it all. But when a tragic accident strikes one of the town’s teens, the pressure cooker of rich versus poor, designer versus homespun, and Charleigh and Nellie versus Abigail and Jane, explodes, leaving a dangerous suspicion in its wake and threatening to take down both girls with it. As the careful social hierarchy of Longview begins to collapse, Charleigh finds that this might be the first situation she can’t control.

Alternating between the perspectives of Charleigh, Nellie, Jane and Jackson, May Cobb weaves a wicked, dishy tale of frenemies and gossip, margaritas and murders. Though the format is not unusual for a work of domestic suspense such as this, she teases readers with a murder on the very first page, as an unknown narrator worries that the body they’ve just deposited in the water refuses to sink. Diving into the longstanding rivalries of the town’s elite, Cobb offers up numerous suspects --- for both the killer and the victim --- continuing to return to the book’s opening conflict periodically throughout the main story. Her choice here is brilliant, perfectly ramping up the already-heightened suspense of the novel and leaving readers suspicious of everyone and anyone who enters a scene.

But don’t let the book’s glossy, soapy premise fool you. Cobb is a cunning writer, and her character studies are a work of art. Every character here exists in a morally gray area, each with their own private resentments, ambitions and scars. Charleigh, Nellie and Jane are equally compelling, with their battles for queendom revealing difficult truths about girlhood, womanhood, and the perils of relationships built on rivalry, jealousy and obsession.

I should warn you now: ALL THE LITTLE HOUSES ends on the most anxiety-inducing cliffhanger I have read in a while. Cobb already has promised a sequel, and there will be plenty of time to revisit, reread and re-delight in what she has done here. This is the kind of book where you’ll catch something new every time and always be entertained.