Sadeqa Johnson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Blaze Collection Books

Sadeqa Johnson is a former public relations manager and author. She spent years working with some big names in the publishing industry before she decided to become an author.

Over the years, she has won several awards including the USA best book award, and the OOSA award. She published her debut novel in 2013 and has never stopped since with “Yellow Wife,” her 2021 novel becoming one of her most popular.

Johnson is very active in the writing community and is a member of the Tall Poppy Writers, James River Writers board member and a Kimbilo Fellow.
When she is not writing her novels, she is a professor at Drexel University, where she teaches creative writing to the MFA program. A native of Philadelphia, she currently lives with her husband and children in Richmond, Virginia.

When Sadeqa Johnson was growing up, she used to visit the library every day on her way to school. She used to be very close with the local librarian who would pick out the best books for her. When she was in seventh grade she used to stick her novels behind her math textbook that she would then read in math class.
When she went to high school, she wanted to be an actress and started attending Broad Street’s Freedom Theater for acting classes. When she moved to New York for college, she believed she was there for three weeks or at most two before she got her big break.

She was so sure that she would be the next thing on “The Cosby Show” but that was not to be. She would finally graduate from Marymount Manhattan College but it was not before she started fooling around with writing.

She got into poetry and also wrote short stories and plays before she graduated to long form novel writing right out of college.

When Sadeqa Johnson got her job at Scholastic, she started writing a manuscript that would become “Love in a Carry On Bag.” She had gotten the job in publishing since she loved to read even if she ended up working in publicity.

She would then work for a few years at G.P. Putnam, and has asserted that she enjoyed working with the likes of JK Rowling, Virginia Hamilton, Walter Dean Meyers, and Ruby Bridges. She still has three of the first Harry Potter novels autographed by Rowling.

Even though she worked in publishing and had all manner of connections, once she got an agent, she realized how hard it could be. Things were made worse by the fact that Borders had just crashed and editors were heading for the editors.

In the end, she decided to self publish and it turned out to be the best decision she ever made. Ultimately, she got signed on to a traditional publishing house in St Martin’s Press, where she published several titles.

Sadeqa Johnson’s novel “Yellow Wife” is a thrilling novel written in the style of “Twelve Years a Slave” and “Wench.” It is a harrowing tale following an enslaved woman forced to barter her freedom and love, as she lives in Virginia’s most infamous slave jail.

Pheby Brown was born in Charles City on a plantation where she had been promised freedom when she turned eighteen. But on her eighteenth birthday, instead of freedom she is banished to the “Devil’s Half-Acre,” an infamous jail the masters use to break torture and porepare slaves for sale.

In no time at all, the brutal man that owns the jail forces her to become his mistress. She now finds herself having to make the ultimate sacrifice as she fights for her freedom and protects her heart in this thrilling and powerful story.

The thing with “Yellow Wife” is that it has often been places alongside other slave stories even though it has a uniqueness that makes it stand on its own. It tells of how life was for slaves that were biracial since these had to navigate the slavery experience very differently.

“Second House from the Corner” by Sadeqa Johnson is an interesting novel about a stressed out stay at home mother. Felicia Lyons is struggling to get ahead of the demands placed on her by being a mother, while her husband earns money at the office.

Lyons breathes, utters mantra and taps her way through most situations that arise. But there are some days when her children just will not stop arguing over pretzel sticks and toy trucks or screaming her name. During such a time, she often wonders what she would feel if she could just get into the car and drive off.

Things turn hairy when she gets a phone call one evening and what had been an innocent fantasy becomes a living hellish reality. She finds herself living a life she would rather forget as her deception comes back to haunt her.

She is forced to head back to Philadelphia where she was brought up to confront what she believed were long buried secrets and family demons. It is a compelling tale of the growing pains of marriage, love, rediscovery and loss that follows what happens when a dream long hoped for starts coming apart.

Sadeqa Johnson’s third novel is the story of Awilda and Bea who have been friends for a very long time. Awilda is an adventurous and bubbly girl who taught her shy and sheltered friend how to make her hair, how to dress and interact with the boys.

She had been responsible for introducing her to Lonnie, her husband while they were college students. He had promised to love and cherish her forever, only to constantly break that promise with his philandering. This resulted in Bea wrestling with self esteem issues and a secret addiction.

Lonnie recently moved the family to a classy suburb in Jersey. While it is a comfortable and even luxurious existence Bea misses the diversity she one had even if it has the zip code and school district envy her husband craves. Besides, she still has to deal with her husband cheating while carrying her third pregnancy.

She believed she had hit rock bottom, only to be hit with the worst deception and everything came crashing down.