Legal English

Alile Rubidari is denied asylum in Britain. To avoid being deported to Africa, she ventures into the shady world of illegal au pairs. But when she comes to care for little Charlotte Rose, small clues reveal the child may be her own. Without family, money, or legal status, Alile has no means to fight for her daughter.... Desperate to create a family, Fiona Rose goes on a journey to single motherhood. But when she learns her adopted daughter may be stolen, she must learn the true meaning of family before she has to account for her role in international child abduction.

Troy Duncan has just two worries on his mind: how he is going to give his two young children and fiancé a Christmas they deserve and whether his job at a struggling restaurant will last through the winter. As he leaves work early on another slow night, he runs into something that changes his life forever. Cleveland Police Officer Marc Baldwin has been on the job for more than two decades, risking his life every day to keep the city streets safe for others. One cold night in December, he gets a routine call to break up drug activity, but what happens there is anything but routine.

After her sister was murdered, Ella Broden meted out her own punishment, then abandoned her career to pursue her passion as a singer. But another murder that hits close to home draws her back to seek justice.

A woman Marc Kadella has known since junior high school has returned to the Twin Cities after a 20-year absence. Unknown to Marc, she has left a trail of dead husbands and destroyed families in her wake. Wealthy, successful families that she has left almost impoverished while using her charms on the older husbands to inherit everything upon their deaths. Her most recent conquest was the founder of a well-known, successful, St. Paul based grocery store chain, Sutherland's.

The Court appoints attorney Peter Sharp to defend a man accused of capital murder, but there are just a few things that might make this defense a little more difficult than others, because the client's crime was captured on security cameras, he freely confessed to the crime, he wants to plead guilty at his arraignment, and he refuses to talk to Peter Sharp, the attorney whose appointment he agreed to...but aside from those minor problems, it's just another criminal defense case where Sharp must avoid being humiliated in court by his ex-wife....

"I was sitting at the end of the bar sipping single-malt Scotch when I spotted the tall blond woman with the large green eyes and the small gray gun."

The next thing Jake Lassiter knows, the woman pumps three bullets into the man on the next barstool. Lassiter, the linebacker-turned-lawyer, has a new client. She's a stunning South Beach model; the dead man is her wealthy father; and the murder case is a slam dunk for the prosecution. Or is it?

"Lassiter is smart, tough, funny, and very human...one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction." - Booklist

An Internet stalker turned serial killer. Jake Lassiter follows clues from Miami to London...and gets framed for murder himself.

Someone rips off Jake Lassiter's favorite client, then kills an old pal... Lassiter tracks the killer from Miami to Bimini to Maui... And faces off with a famous female surfer and her lethal boyfriend.

Linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter heads to Havana and untangles a deadly plot involving the CIA, Fidel Castro, and the Russian government.

It's a routine fraud trial in Miami, until... A witness is murdered... And Jake Lassiter is the prime suspect. The mystery leads Lassiter and his wisecracking delinquent nephew to an abandoned silver mine deep beneath the Aspen ski slopes. The evidence that can clear the lawyer--or bury him--is revealed in an explosive finale.

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.

On a dark January morning, Wydell James was arrested for killing several people attending a party in Germantown: a section of North Philadelphia. Now he's in a jail cell with no one to turn too, but his childhood friend, Ravonne Lemmelle. One thing makes Ravonne feel powerful; forcing prosecutors to dig deep into their legal coffers to sit across the courtroom from him.

It's tough enough defending innocent people, but attorney Peter Sharp's new client has a reputation for disliking any person of color, and is then arrested with a smoking gun, standing over the body of a dead black man he had recently been seen arguing with.

Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter has a dangerous conflict of interest. He's sleeping with Gina Florio...and defending her mobster husband in court for the wrongful death of an environmental activist. The homicidal Nick Florio has hatched a scheme deep in the Florida Everglades that oozes corruption, blood, and money. One false move, and Jake will be gator bait.

When the 10th richest man in the world is brutally murdered along with his prized Borzoi dogs in a luxurious East Hampton beach house, only one man is suspected of committing the crime: Juan Suarez, a handsome, charismatic - and illegal - Mexican immigrant who worked for the victim. Now, renowned trail lawyer Raquel Rematti must take on the defense of the man the media has dubbed, "The Blade of the Hamptons".

It is five years before the millennium and Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Jordan La Fontaine is in line to be the next Chief of the Homicide Division Bureau. But Jordan's world turns upside down when her teenage son is accused of a double homicide and her competition for the post, Jerrod Wresler, is assigned to prosecute the case. She enlists the services of Simon McNeil, her late husband's law partner, to defend him.

Assistant District Attorney Beverly Mendoza appears to have an open and shut case when she prosecutes Rafael Santiago for the murder of a judge and the sexual assault of his wife in Eagles Landing, a town in Northern California. Santiago was recently released from prison and had a grudge against the judge. But her case against the suspect is put in jeopardy when career criminal Manuel Gonzalez, arrested for the murder of a young woman, also confesses to killing the judge.

Kip has been working with millionaire Max Ringle in a shady scheme to help rich, spoiled kids gain admission to elite universities. Ringle, the mastermind of the fraud, cops a plea and shifts the blame to Kip. Dr. Melissa Gold, Lassiter's fiancée, tries to keep the ailing lawyer strong enough for a grueling trial, even as his symptoms of brain damage grow worse. As a fiery showdown with Ringle brings the courtroom to a fever pitch, Lassiter risks everything - including his own life - to fight for his nephew's freedom.

The venerable law firm of Prescott & Talbott is reeling from the murder of partner Ellen Mortenson - purportedly at the hands of her estranged husband - when a photograph of the dead woman arrives, her face x-ed out and "One down" scrawled across the bottom. Within days, a second partner is murdered, her husband also accused. Sasha doesn't practice criminal defense, so she's suspicious when her former firm asks her to represent Ellen's husband.

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.