Law Biography

When Scott Payne was growing up, he never envisioned a future that included what happened on Halloween night 2019. Out in the woods of Georgia, he tried desperately to save a goat from being sacrificed in a ritual by a group of neo-Nazis without revealing that he was actually an undercover agent. Now, this retired FBI agent reveals how and why he infiltrated the rapidly growing American Nazi group, The Base. Known as the “Hillbilly Donnie Brasco,” Payne was guided through some of the most terrifying assignments in the FBI’s history by his devotion to his family and his Christian faith.

New York Times best-selling authors Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris take a new look at Arizona's most notorious crimes, including a man suspected of marrying vulnerable women, then killing them; two infamous Arizona killers freed after decades in prison; television's "it girl" Jodi Arias; a woman who was her mother-in-law's worst nightmare; and a football mom who got a little too cozy with members of her son's high school team.

A soul-stirring biography of John Marshall, the young Republic's great chief justice who led the Supreme Court to power and brought law and order to the nation. In the political turmoil that convulsed America after George Washington's death, the surviving Founding Fathers went mad - literally pummeling each other in Congress and challenging one another to deadly duels in their quest for power. Out of the political intrigue, one man emerged to restore calm and dignity to the government: John Marshall.

A CIA station chief, later Jordan's lawyer in Washington, reveals the secret history of a lost peace.

Jack O'Connell possessed an uncanny ability to be at the center of things. On his arrival in Jordan in 1958, he unraveled a coup aimed at the young King Hussein, who would become America's most reliable Middle East ally. Over time, their bond of trust and friendship deepened. His narrative contains secrets that will revise our understanding of the Middle East.

In 1958, 19-year-old Charlie Starkweather went on a murder spree that paralyzed Nebraska, shocked the nation, and left 11 people dead. With him when he was captured was his 14-year-old ex-girlfriend Caril Fugate. The question soon arose: Was Caril a kidnapped victim or a heartless accomplice? Up against incredible odds, and with a strong conviction of her innocence, John McArthur remained with Caril and fought for her freedom for 18 years. For this service, he took no pay, accepting the case pro bono.

Born into dire poverty in the segregated South and abandoned by his father as a child, Justice Clarence Thomas triumphed over seemingly insurmountable odds to become one of the most influential justices on the Supreme Court. Yet after three decades of honorable service, few know him beyond his contentious confirmation and the surrounding media firestorm. Who is Justice Clarence Thomas, in his own words? Created Equal builds on dozens of hours of groundbreaking one-on-one interviews with Thomas to share a new, expanded account of his powerful story for the first time.

In Taking the Stand, Dershowitz describes his evolution as a lawyer—from a C-minus student in Yeshiva High School to the youngest full professor in the history of Harvard Law School. In his #1 New York Times bestselling book Chutzpah, Alan described his Jewish life.

In this hard-hitting account of her work representing parents in care proceedings in the Family Court, child protection lawyer Teresa Thornhill conveys the dilemmas inherent in the job and shows how our under-resourced system of child protection – in both its social work and legal aspects – often fails to provide support that could enable the most vulnerable parents to continue to care for their children.

After the Force is a unique and intriguing book where stories are told from the perspective of first contact at crime scenes as observed by police officers who have served in municipal, provincial, and federal police services.

In 2009, Jared Fishman was a young prosecutor working on low-level civil rights cases in the justice department when a file landed on his desk. That folder contained two items: a story from The Nation magazine looking into mysterious deaths in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and an autopsy report for a man named Henry Glover, whose charred remains were found in a burned-out car two weeks after the storm. The autopsy report, bafflingly, listed no cause of death.

In Being Oscar,one of America’s most celebrated criminal defense attorneys recounts the stories and cases of his epic life. The Mafia’s go-to defender, he has tried an estimated 300 criminal cases, and won most of them. His roster of clients reads like a history of organized crime: Meyer Lansky, Nicky Scarfo, and "Lefty" Rosenthal, as well as Mike Tyson and boxing promoter Don King, along with a midget, a dentist, and a federal judge. After 35 years as a defender, he ran for mayor of Las Vegas, and America’s greatest Mob lawyer became the mayor of its sexiest city.

As one of just a few judges licensed to try murder cases at the Old Bailey, the author has presided over many of the high-profile cases that all too often grab our attention in dramatic media headlines—for every unlawful death tells a story. But, unlike most of us, a judge doesn't get to turn the page and move on. Nor does the defendant, or the family of the victim, nor the many other people who populate the court room. Peeling apart six dramatic murder and manslaughter cases, Unlawful Killings removes this distinction between 'them' and 'us'.

Full of lighthearted humor, sumptuous food, the wisdom of an Italian mother-in-law, and all the atmosphere of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, this warm and witty memoir follows American-born Katherine Wilson on her adventures abroad. Thanks to a surprising romance—and a spirited woman who teaches her to laugh, to seize joy, and to love—a three-month rite of passage in Naples turns into a permanent embrace of this boisterous city on the Mediterranean.

Fearless lawyer, feminist, activist, television and radio commentator, warrior, advocate, and winner, Gloria Allred is all of these things and more. Voted by her peers as one of the best lawyers in America, and described by Time as "one of the nation's most effective advocates of family rights and feminist causes", Allred has devoted her career to fighting for civil rights across boundaries of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and social class.

Straight from the bowels of back street police stations, locked psychiatric wards and the criminal courts, these are the brazen tales of a bare-knuckle barrister.

Body cams and dashcams have fundamentally transformed law enforcement in recent years. These innovations can help prove someone committed a crime, or didn't. Real-life footage has cleared people initially accused of wrongdoing, and in certain instances even implicated officers. But that same type of footage can also be used to clear police falsely accused of misdeeds. From allegations of harassment or bias to false arrests or even criminal conduct, these videos can prove officers did not cross a line as, sometimes, they are alleged to have done.

Indu Bhan’s Legal Eagles: Stories of Top Seven Indian Lawyers’ traces the story of the top seven lawyers in India. Lawyers, as we commonly perceive, are not just shrewd intellectuals but much more. It takes more than just intelligence to become a successful lawyer. It takes years of practice, extensive studies and professionalism which set the absolutely outstanding lawyers from the general ones. Their life and career graph is full of crusts and troughs and this book gives an insight into it.

Combining wisdom drawn from over a dozen years as a public defender and cutting-edge research in the fields of organizational and cultural psychology, Jonathan Rapping proposes a radical cultural shift to a “fiercely client-based ethos” driven by values-based recruitment training, awakening defenders to their role in upholding an unjust status quo, and a renewed pride in the essential role of moral lawyering in a democratic society.

Tonya Craft, a Georgia kindergarten teacher and loving mother of two, never expected a knock on her door to change her life forever. But in May 2008, false accusations of child molestation turned her world upside down. The trial that followed dragged her reputation through the mud and lent nationwide notoriety to her name. Tonya's life spiraled into a witch-trial nightmare in which she was deemed guilty before her innocence could be determined by a jury.

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop and watching action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. When US marines landed in Mogadishu to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered the arrival of these Americans, who seemed as heroic as those of the movies. Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it became dangerous to celebrate Western culture.