Kin

Vernice "Niecy" Davis and Annie Johnson are "cradle friends" — next-door neighbors in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, both motherless from the start: Niecy's mother was murdered by her father, and she is raised by her aunt Irene; Annie was abandoned as a baby and raised by her grandmother, growing up fixed on finding the mother who left. At eighteen their roads divide — Niecy to Spelman College and the Black professional class beyond it, Annie onto the road in search of her mother — and class, men, and distance test what cradle friendship can survive, until a tragedy calls both women home. Jones's fifth novel was an Oprah's Book Club selection and won the 2026 Kirkus Prize for Fiction.

Author: Tayari Jones · Original publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (New York), 2026