Legal English

It’s the most sensational case of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar real estate fortune, vanishes on her way home from school, and her teacher, Bobby Nock, a 25-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect. The subsequent trial taps straight into America’s most pressing preoccupations: race, class, sex, law enforcement, and the lurid sins of the rich and famous.

Sara Tate, a Manhattan assistant DA, is on the brink of losing her job. But then she takes a case that may be able to secure her future. Trouble is, it’s much more complicated—and deadly—than it initially appears. While forces within her own office plot against her, an outside threat takes things to another level: Win the case or her attorney husband, Jared, will die. But Jared has received threats, too. Forced to defend the opposition, he learns that, if loses the case, Sara will be killed. Caught in a struggle of emotions and shocking betrayals, both must face the unthinkable.

A murder committed in front of a million online viewers. Everyone clicked. Watched. Commented. Shared. No one intervened. Desperate for fame and fortune, there’s never been a get-rich-quick scheme housewife Juliet Clay hasn’t chased. When she finally goes viral selling diet shakes, she figures all her dreams have come true. But when her husband ends up dead from poison, Juliet’s dreams become a nightmare and she’s the prime murder suspect. A sucker for lost causes, Defense Attorney Cass Leary takes the case to pay forward a favor she owes.

Ten-year-old Patrick O'Brien is a natural target at school. Shy, dyslexic, and small for his age, he tries to hide his first-grade reading level from everyone: from his classmates, from the grandfather who cares for him, and from the teachers who are supposed to help him. But the real trouble begins when Patrick is accused of attacking a school aide. The aide promptly quits and sues the boy, his family, and the school district. Patrick's grandfather turns to the law firm of Rosato & DiNunzio for help, and Mary DiNunzio is on the case.

Judy has always championed the underdog, so when Iris, the housekeeper and best friend of Judy's beloved Aunt Barb, is found dead of an apparent heart attack, Judy begins to suspect foul play. The circumstances of the death leave Judy with more questions than answers, and never before has murder struck so close to home. In the meantime, Judy's own life roils with emotional and professional upheaval. She doesn't play well with her boss, Bennie Rosato, which jeopardizes her making partner at the firm.

When the head of San Francisco's largest HMO dies in his own hospital, no one doubts that it is anything but the result of massive injuries inflicted by a random hit-and-run accident. But the autopsy soon tells a different story - an overdose of potassium killed him, and the attending physician, Eric Kensing, becomes the prime suspect in a high-profile homicide.

Attorney Laurel Chandler did not come back to Bayou Breaux to seek justice. That once-burning obsession had destroyed her credibility, her career, her marriage - and nearly her sanity. But when a ruthless predator strikes too close to home, she's lured into a perverse game from which there may be no escape. Once before, Laurel's cries against a monstrous evil went unanswered. Who will listen now?

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe is in court, fighting eviction from his beloved and isolated croft, when he is summoned to a backstreet brothel in Carlisle where a man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat. Poe is confused—he hunts serial killers and this appears to be a straightforward murder-by-pimp—but his attendance was requested personally, by the kind of people who prefer to remain in the shadows. As Poe and the socially awkward programmer Tilly Bradshaw delve deeper into the case, they are faced with seemingly unanswerable questions.

A dark and daring debut novel exploring power, control and resilience against all odds, The Tribes tells the story of a cult member accused of a shocking crime and the lawyer who chooses to defend her.

Defense attorney Henry Garrison expected his newest case to be an easy paycheck. But his client Gillian Murphy is nothing like he expected. There's much more to the beautiful woman than he imagined. Gillian knows that she's innocent and that Henry is the best lawyer to represent her. But he doesn't know why she's so fascinated with him. He wonders if any woman can break through his well-placed walls. As the case takes a wild turn and Gillian's entire life is upended, her very identity in question, she must look to the people she's closest to in order to find a killer....

New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history - and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul's client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the lightbulb and holds the right to power the country?

Newly minted trial lawyer Abraham Lincoln is riding the circuit, traveling by carriage with other lawyers and a judge to bring justice to the remote parts of Illinois. Meanwhile, Lincoln's close friend, Joshua Speed, is steaming up the Mississippi River, aboard a steamboat owned by Speed's father, when suddenly his journey is interrupted when a rigged card game aboard the ship turns to violence - and then murder.

Barbara Holloway is a low-key attorney in Eugene, Oregon, who left her father’s high-powered firm to handle small legal problems for local residents and ponder her next move. But while trying to sort out her own future, two people, desperate for help, show up on her doorstep: former pro football player Martin Owens and his wife, Binnie. Binnie, who is mute, met her husband when she sneaked aboard his boat while it was docked in Haiti and smuggled herself into the US.

In the eighth story of the popular Butch Karp legal thriller series, Karp and his crime-fighting wife, Marlene, struggle to protect the abused and wrongly accused from powerful enemies. This time, famed prosecutor Butch Karp is on the side of an unjustly accused plaintiff, the chief medical examiner of New York City, who was fired and accused of gross incompetence. Karp may be in private practice now, but he still knows the ins and outs of the New York City brass, and his investigation into the wrongful termination soon reveals rot that goes all the way to city hall.

Morgan Cooper has always found it difficult to balance her home life - mother of two young children and wife of a workaholic civil rights lawyer - with her work life as an undercover CIA officer. When Morgan gets stressed, anxious, or scared, whether at home or in the field, she tends to talk to herself until she can clear her head. This habit, though, puts her life in danger during an assignment in the strife-torn Gaza Strip.

Mackenzie Corbett always dreamed of living in New York City. Now, almost two years into her job as an associate at a premier Manhattan law firm, she's living her fantasy - big salary, high-profile deals, cute boyfriend, designer bag on her arm. The giant bags under her eyes from lack of sleep don't fit into the fantasy, though.

When Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency in 1968, he promised to change the Supreme Court. With four appointments to the court, including Warren E. Burger as the chief justice, he did just that. In 1969 the Burger Court succeeded the famously liberal Warren Court, which had significantly expanded civil liberties and was despised by conservatives across the country.

The governor of North Carolina has appointed Deborah to a judicial seat in the District Court Division. On her weekends, the fledgling judge has been helping an all-woman building crew complete a home for a needy single mother. Her attempts to gain positive P.R. go awry when her niece is found battered and half-naked in the partially completed home, with Deborah's own bloody hammer lying nearby.

Lawyer Rachael Flynn receives an unsigned, heart-stopping letter: They're going to find a body at the Prairie Bluff construction site. He deserved what he got, but it wasn't supposed to happen. It was an accident. When the body is uncovered, Rachael and Detective Will Pendleton discover that the 15-year-old victim, Randall Buckett, had been buried 25 years before. Is the letter writer and the killer the same person? Why would someone speak up now? And why are they telling Rachael?

Populated with colorful, richly drawn characters, Margaret Maron's latest novel captures the flavor of life in rural North Carolina. Arriving in Carteret County, Judge Deborah Knott finds herself in the thick of battles between sport and commercial fishermen and between old and new money. She discovers the body of Andy Bynum, a retired waterman respected by all. With no obvious suspects in the murder, Deborah must find the killer in a place where people shoot at loons, sea turtles, and their neighbors.