Legal English

A wealthy couple is brutally murdered in their kitchen. The only witness, their six-year-old daughter, goes missing. The child’s birth mother is charged with the crime. Small town lawyer Cass Leary takes the case that could rip her family apart. Her sister Vangie stands accused in the double homicide of an affluent Ann Arbor couple. All the physical evidence points to Vangie’s guilt, and Cass knows she’s been keeping secrets. But, is she truly capable of murder?

For more than fifty years, a power plant in the small town of Kingston, Tennessee,  burned fourteen thousand tons of coal a day, gradually creating a mountain of ashen waste sixty feet high and covering eighty-four acres, contained only by an earthen embankment. In 2008, just before Christmas, that embankment broke, unleashing a lethal wave of coal sludge that covered three hundred acres, damaged nearly thirty homes, and precipitating a cleanup effort that would cost more than a billion dollars—and the lives of more than fifty cleanup workers who inhaled the toxins it released.

Senior FBI agent Nick Pellisante is closing in on the notorious mob boss "The Electrician", when the scheduled sting goes spectacularly awry. Two FBI agents are dead, the boss is wounded, and Pellisante vows the Electrician's next move will be from a jail cell.

A Washington, DC, defense attorney, Stanton Shaw keeps his head cool, his questions sharp, and his arguments irrefutable. They don't call him the Jury Charmer for nothing - with his Southern drawl, disarming smile, and captivating green eyes, he's a hard man to say no to. Men want to be him, and women want to be thoroughly cross-examined by him.

Rafael Zhettah relishes the simplicity and freedom of his life. He is the owner and head chef of a promising Houston restaurant, a pilot with open access to the boundless Texas horizon, and a bachelor, content with having few personal or material attachments that ground him. Then, lightning strikes. When he finds Tieresse - billionaire, philanthropist, sophisticate, bombshell - sitting at one of his tables, he also finds his soul mate, and his life starts again.

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey state senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a 19-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict. Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet as a trans woman, she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise.

When defence barrister Geoffrey Mason hears the judge’s verdict, he quietly hopes that a long and arduous custodial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason expect that he’ll be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than he’d ever imagined.

A mix of slick and seamy, South Lake Tahoe, California, is the perfect setting for adventurers, criminals—and lawyers. In addition to coping with her demanding, sometimes creepy, clients, Nina Reilly is dealing with prickly personal issues involving her sixteen-year-old son Bob, his estranged father, and her investigator, confidante, and sometimes lover Paul van Wagoner. Then, in walks disaster.....

A dense, bitterly cold fog has settled over the Wye Valley when Bristol coroner Jenny Cooper is called to the scene of a dreadful tragedy: in the village of Blackstone Ley, a house has burned to the ground, with three members of a family inside. Though evidence of foul play is quickly uncovered, it isn't long before the police investigation is drawn to a close. It seems certain that the fire was started by one of the victims, Ed Morgan, in a fit of jealous rage. But their infant son is still missing, and Ed had left a message for his surviving wife....

Veteran reporter Jack McEvoy has taken down killers before, but when a woman he had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, McEvoy realizes he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he's ever encountered. Jack investigates—against the warnings of the police and his own editor—and makes a shocking discovery that connects the crime to other mysterious deaths across the country. Undetected by law enforcement, a vicious killer has been hunting women, using genetic data to select and stalk his targets.

Mary DiNunzio is a trademark Lisa Scottoline heroine - she's strong, she's smart, and she's got plenty of attitude. In recent years, she's become a big-time business-getter at Rosato & Associates, but the last person she expects to walk into her office one morning - in mile-high stilettos - is super sexy Trish Gambone, her high school rival.

Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates…. An unlikely suicide or a deadly conspiracy? When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from a motorway bridge, she little suspects that it has any connection with the sudden death of a friend’s thirteen year old daughter from a deadly strain of meningitis. But as Jenny pieces together the dead man’s last days, she’s drawn into a mystery whose dark ripples stretch across continents and back through decades.

Bennie Rosato, Mary DiNunzio, Judy Carrier, and Anne Murphy are back with all cylinders firing in Accused. Mary Dinuzio has just been promoted to partner and is about to take on her most unusual case yet, brought to the firm by a thirteen-year-old genius with a penchant for beekeeping. Allegra Gardner's sister Fiona was murdered six years ago, and it seemed like an open-and-shut case: the accused, Lonnie Stall, was seen fleeing the scene; his blood was on Fiona and her blood was on him; most damningly, Lonnie Stall pleaded guilty.

Criminal defense attorney Tex Hunter has a target on his back. Defending an accused killer is never easy, but when a homeless teenager is charged with the murder of a retired Chicago Police Detective, the pressure builds to breaking point. Sidney McCann was no ordinary cop. He wasn't a captain, he wasn't a beat cop, and he wasn't an average desk jockey—he was one of the most corrupt, twisted, and ruthless cops the Chicago Police Department had ever produced. But that history, that long line of accusations, didn't matter to the current crop of police officers.

Widower Jack Harris has resisted the dating scene ever since the shooting of his wife Molly by a fifteen-year-old boy three years ago. An early morning run along the Hudson River changes that when he spots a woman in last night’s party dress, barefoot, enjoying a champagne picnic alone, reading his favorite novel. Everything about her reminds him of what he used to have with Molly. Eager to help Jack find love again, his best friend posts a message on a popular website after he mentions the encounter.

Dawn. The English Channel. A small boat arrives crammed with exhausted migrants, not all of whom will make land. Some of the shattered occupants have already paid for their journeys. Others have arrived with a debt still to be paid. One of the migrants isn't fleeing anything. He's not from Europe, or Africa, or the East. He's from Texas, and he's wearing a robe. When the traffickers take some of their passengers to pay for their journey, they also take the man in the robe. That was their first mistake.

Defense attorney Mitch Turner’s newest client, Gilbert Claybourne, is the nicest guy, at least according to everybody Gilbert works with. They all assure Mitch that Gilbert is innocent and that there is no way Gilbert could’ve murdered his fellow employee, Sheena Tillman. But Mitch has his reservations, and his concerns only grow the further he gets into his investigation. The more Mitch learns about Gilbert Claybourne, Sheena Tillman, and everybody working with the two of them, the more convinced Mitch becomes that everyone is harboring a secret.

Detective Tracy Crosswhite has a skill, and a soft spot, for tackling unsolved crimes. Having lost her own sister to murder at a young age, Tracy has dedicated her career to bringing justice and closure to the families and friends of victims of crime. So when Jenny, a former police academy classmate and protégé, asks Tracy to help solve a cold case that involves the suspicious suicide of a Native American high school girl forty years earlier, Tracy agrees.

A young exotic dancer claims she was sexually assaulted at a party thrown by a university football team. Three players are accused. In the ninth installment of the best-selling Joe Dillard series, Dillard finds himself defending one of the players accused of assaulting the young woman. The case receives national attention, quickly escalating into a platform for deep-seeded division and hatred. It also ensnares Dillard, along with his son, Jack, and Charleston Story into a web of lies and deceit spun by a mysterious figure with a hidden agenda.

Small-town lawyer Bocephus Haynes comes home late one night to find District Attorney General Helen Lewis waiting for him. Her ex-husband has just been killed. She’s about to be arrested for his murder. And she wants Bo to represent her. There’s a lot working against them. Just before his death, Helen’s ex-husband threatened to reveal a dark secret from her past. Bo has been in a tailspin since his wife’s death.