Legal English

What do you get when you mix beautiful people, family secrets, and a yacht washed up on Sunset Key with a hundred grand in cash and a dying man? Steve Solomon sees a case that can get Solomon & Lord off the ground. But Victoria Lord spies a golden opportunity to go out on her own.

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his Black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier. The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly?

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers - they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence; it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.

It seems straightforward to Attorney Nate Shepherd: a middle-aged billionaire dies while celebrating at a wedding reception. The grief-stricken family lashes out, though, blaming the billionaire’s date for his death. When the family brings all of its power to bear, the wheels of local justice threaten to overwhelm the woman. As Nate Shepherd steps in to defend her, he tries to deflect the misplaced anger that’s directed at the woman for the tragedy. But as the investigation progresses, a tangled history unravels, including unexpected ties to Nate’s own life.

On takeoff from Denver during a winter blizzard, an airliner piloted by veteran Captain Marty Mitchell overruns a commuter plane from behind. Bizarrely, the fuselage of the smaller aircraft is tenuously wedged onto the wing of his Boeing 757, leading Mitchell to an impossible life-or-death choice. Mitchell’s decision will land the former military pilot in the crosshairs of a viciously ambitious district attorney determined to send him to prison for doing his job.

There are two kinds of knowledge law school teaches: legal rules on the one hand, and tools for thinking about legal problems on the other. Although the tools are far more interesting and useful than the rules, they tend to be neglected in favor of other aspects of the curriculum. In The Legal Analyst, Ward Farnsworth brings together in one place all of the most powerful of those tools for thinking about law.

In the dead of night, Josie Bates is ripped from sleep by the sounds of an epic storm raging over Hermosa Beach and a man beating on her door begging her to help Billy Zuni who is drowning in the raging sea. She arrives at the shore just in time to see the teenager pulled from the water, battered and near death. Ready to kill Billy's selfish, neglectful mother, Josie rushes to the Zuni house only to find someone has beaten her to it. Two men lie dead downstairs and Billy's mother clings to life on the floor above.

Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder.

The life of a 10-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime, until her father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own outraged hands.

Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, to defend clients at the bottom of the legal food chain. It's no wonder that he is despised by cops, prosecutors, and even some of his own clients. But an investigator is murdered for getting too close to the truth and Haller quickly discovers that his search for innocence has taken him face to face with a kind of evil as pure as a flame.

After more than twenty years away from the law, Joe Hennessy is forced back into the courtroom. Trying to save his vineyard after years of drought, Hennessy returns to practice in Charleston, South Carolina–the city he walked away from after the murder of his ten-year-old son. When one of South Carolina’s most powerful men is charged with possessing stolen artwork, Hennessy steps forward to defend him. But as Hennessy digs into the evidence, as he navigates the truth, he finds that the criminal charges are only the start of their problems.

Harper's uncle, Jack Calhoun, has been charged with murdering a priest. Jack has no idea if he killed the priest or not. All that he knows is that he woke up in the rectory, holding a knife, with a priest covered in blood at his feet. It soon becomes apparent that Jack is not who he seems. He's not the man who Harper grew up with. He's become something else. Somebody else.

Because he is poised to desecrate the dreams of so many, it's no surprise that somebody dares to stop him in cold blood. When David McIvey is murdered outside the clinic's doors, lawyer Barbara Holloway must use her razor-sharp instincts and take-no-prisoners attitude to create a defense for the two members of the clinic accused of his murder.

Barbara Holloway is a trial lawyer who tends to take on difficult cases, but this time it seems there's no defense at all. It appears that Vinny Jessup died when his car rolled over on a bad curve on Lookout Mountain. Then the sheriff finds the gunshot wound. With a large insurance policy as her motive, could his much younger wife have staged the death?

Growing up on the mean streets of New York City, Johnny and Mikey always had each other's back. Mikey was a loyal friend, but even he knew that Johnny was headed for bigger things. That's why he dubbed him the "Mayor of Lexington Avenue".

Eric Ward agrees to represent the interests of a local environmental campaign. Then an explosion at the industrial-waste plant leaves his client dead. Joe Paulson wasn’t exactly a criminal. But his after-hours activities—gathering the secrets of everyone from politicians to high-flying businessmen—created a long list of enemies. But who feared the nightwalker enough to kill him? And could Ward be next? When an old favor is called in, Ward may have no choice but to put his own life in danger.

We expect our judges to be honest and wise. Their integrity and impartiality are the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the orderly and efficient flow of justice. But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe? It’s rare, but it happens. Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition". Now, eating human meat - "special meat" - is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Last seen in 1997's Flesh & Bones, Jake Lassiter is a hero unlike any other in the courtroom. Booklist called him "one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction." The former Miami Dolphin is still swimming with sharks in his latest, boldest novel of suspense yet. Amy Larkin is in town, looking for her sister Krista, who vanished without a trace almost two decades earlier. She seeks out Lassiter because he's the last person to have seen her alive.

When a massacre at an elite private high school leaves 17 dead and a city reeling with horror, Philadelphia assistant district attorney Jessica Black will stop at nothing to find justice for the victims. But doing so will require facing an adversary even more terrifying than the teenage shooter.