This is not a drill. Viola Davis, the EGOT-winning Oprah’s Book Club author, has just announced that she will be publishing a second full-length book—and that it will be cowritten by the legendary James Patterson. This is the stuff book lovers’ dreams are made of.
Oprah selected Davis’s Finding Me for her Book Club back in 2022, calling it “one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read.”
This forthcoming collaboration will be Davis’s first work of adult fiction.
Patterson has had a bit more experience with the genre. He is the author of more than 200 books, 100 of which have become New York Times bestsellers. His best-known works include the Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett, and, of course, the Alex Cross series, which was adapted into three feature films starring Morgan Freeman and, later, Tyler Perry as the titular detective. Aldis Hodge is set to take on the iconic character in an upcoming Amazon Prime Video series.
“James’s ability to weave compelling narratives with depth and suspense is unparalleled,” says Davis. This skill will undoubtedly come in handy with this latest work, which tells the story of a female judge by the name of Mary Stone, on the precipice of making a decision that will inevitably shake her small Southern county—and perhaps the whole country.
“There has rarely been a more important time to spotlight the subjects raised in this novel,” says Patterson. “I could not have asked for a better partner than Viola.” Like Oprah, Patterson was floored by Finding Me and says that Davis’s “gift of storytelling in film and beyond, as well as her generous spirit, is without peer.”
Davis trusts that readers will be “deeply moved” by Judge Mary Stone’s story. “This collaboration is a dream come true, and I can’t wait to share the fruits of our creative synergy with the world,” she says.
While the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, has yet to announce the official publication date, we can expect the hardcover to hit shelves sometime in 2025 or 2026 along with a simultaneous e-book and audiobook release. Davis won a Grammy for her audiobook narration of Finding Me; is it too much to hope that she might step into the recording booth again for this new novel?
Charley Burlock is the Associate Books Editor at Oprah Daily where she writes, edits, and assigns stories on all things literary. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from NYU, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. Her work has been featured in the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review, Agni, the Apple News Today podcast, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a book about collective grief (but she promises she’s really fun at parties).
