Best Seller
The Last Diva
Hardcover
$32.00
Available on Jun 08, 2027 | 400 Pages
The new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half
You might think that feuds are about hatred, but really they are love stories.
When Roz Randall and Cleo Wright form a singing group as teenagers in 1963, they are instantly bound by talent and ambition. Like their friendship, their fame appears fated—until rivalry seeps in. As their trajectories splinter and their lives churn through towering success and bottomless regret, Roz and Cleo remain consumed by each other to the end. Sometimes envy burns even hotter than talent.
When Cleo dies, the world mourns the legendary diva and hungers for her story. Roz Randall, her greatest rival, might be the one person who can tell it. Roz, facing her legacy, now has the chance to re-shape the portrait of their decades-long friendship and feud. What does she owe to Cleo and their past? Who owns a star’s secrets when the performance finally ends?
Spanning the 1960s to the present and pulsing with the sounds of R&B, soul, gospel, and disco, The Last Diva richly illustrates the price of fame, the bonds that define us, and a culture that leaches from its legends. Intimate and epic, it confirms Brit Bennett as one of the most extraordinary writers of her generation.
You might think that feuds are about hatred, but really they are love stories.
When Roz Randall and Cleo Wright form a singing group as teenagers in 1963, they are instantly bound by talent and ambition. Like their friendship, their fame appears fated—until rivalry seeps in. As their trajectories splinter and their lives churn through towering success and bottomless regret, Roz and Cleo remain consumed by each other to the end. Sometimes envy burns even hotter than talent.
When Cleo dies, the world mourns the legendary diva and hungers for her story. Roz Randall, her greatest rival, might be the one person who can tell it. Roz, facing her legacy, now has the chance to re-shape the portrait of their decades-long friendship and feud. What does she owe to Cleo and their past? Who owns a star’s secrets when the performance finally ends?
Spanning the 1960s to the present and pulsing with the sounds of R&B, soul, gospel, and disco, The Last Diva richly illustrates the price of fame, the bonds that define us, and a culture that leaches from its legends. Intimate and epic, it confirms Brit Bennett as one of the most extraordinary writers of her generation.
Author
Brit Bennett
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, The Mothers, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for both the NBCC John Leonard First Novel Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Vanishing Half, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, longlisted for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Women’s Prize, and named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times. Bennet has been named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, a NAACP Image Award Finalist, and one of Time’s Next 100 Influential People. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.
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