As a follow-up to his bestselling Little Black Girl Lost, Keith Lee Johnson takes us back into the life of Johnnie Wise, a stunning 15-year-old whose beauty is so seductive it sparked a race riot in New Orleans. Now, the riot is over, the National Guard has left, and life can begin to return to normal in the black-owned Sable Parish. For Johnnie, though, there is still some unfinished business. She has made it her mission to get to know the white side of her family, the Beauregards, and takes a job as a maid in their home, watching quietly to learn what really goes on behind the walls of their stately home. What she sees is more than she ever expected. Outside of work, Johnnie is determined to win back the love of her life, Lucas Matthews, but first she must convince him that the night she spent with ruthless crime boss Napoleon Bentley meant nothing to her. To Bentley, however, the night was unforgettable, and he will stop at nothing to have Johnnie to himself. He has set the wheels in motion to take over the New Orleans Mob, with Johnnie by his side as his willing concubine. Keith Lee Johnson weaves an intriguing tale of love, lust, deception, and power, all against the backdrop of a racially troubled 1950’s New Orleans. Johnnie Wise is a young woman readers won’t soon forget.

Courtesan Johnnie Wise must pay for her past indiscretions when the police believe that she is involved in several murders and the theft of two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

Includes special preview of Kenyatta's escape.

Revealing the roots of Johnnie Wise's family tree, the author takes readers to Nigeria where a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, preparing to marry a much older man, escapes with her young lover on the night before the arranged marriage is to take place on a Dutch slave ship bound for America where she becomes Josephine Baptiste.

Johnnie Wise is acquitted of murding Sharon Trudeau, but her problems with her boyfriend Lucas Matthews continue. Will Johnnie be able to escape her life as a kept woman and rebuild her fortune the honest way?

Natural-born hustler Porsche Santiaga refuses to accept her new life in juvenile detention after her family is torn apart and fights to regain what she has lost.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.