Legal Fiction Thrillers

Wealthy businessman Hartley Bassett has killed himself. There's a typewritten suicide note and three guns lying near his body. But for Perry Mason, that's evidence overkill. He knows there has been trouble in Bassett's life. His wife wants out, his stepson hates him, an embezzler can't pay him back - and there's the man with a glass eye who hired Perry Mason even before his glass eye went missing and was found in the hands of the deceased.

High summer in Acker's Gap, West Virginia - but no one's enjoying the rugged natural landscape. Not while a killer stalks the small town and its hard-luck inhabitants. County prosecutor Bell Elkins and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong are stymied by a murderer who seems to come and go like smoke on the mountain. At the same time, Bell must deal with the return from prison of her sister, Shirley - who, like Bell, carries the indelible scars of a savage past.

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.

Alison has it all. A doting husband, adorable daughter, and a career on the rise - she's just been given her first murder case to defend. But all is never as it seems...Just one more night. Then I'll end it. Alison drinks too much. She's neglecting her family. And she's having an affair with a colleague whose taste for pushing boundaries may be more than she can handle. I did it. I killed him. I should be locked up. Alison's client doesn't deny that she stabbed her husband - she wants to plead guilty. And yet something about her story is deeply amiss.

Jim Walker is a lawyer – one of the best – and he's the type who doesn’t need to practice much law to make a client’s problems disappear. He's a fixer who enjoys the finer things in life, until someone fixes him for good at a posh party in one of Atlanta’s swankiest mansions.

Accepting her new case assignment may have been the worst decision she had ever made. FBI Agent Kari Wheeler's new case has her gathering the evidence to prove that a corrupt city official is accepting bribes and breaking the same adult entertainment laws he's supposed to be enforcing. But when Kari enters the seductive world of high-end clubs and sleazy strip joints she finds herself facing temptations too difficult to resist. Could the investigation end up destroying her career...and her marriage?

Then: Sergeant Vince Paulo held his best friend's daughter, McKenna, bleeding in his arms as she uttered the name of her murderer and ex-boyfriend, Jamal. That was minutes before a blast made everything go black for Vince - forever. Now: Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck has been called in to save Jamal from the death penalty for terrorist activity. Despite urgent warnings from his fiancee, undercover FBI agent Andie Henning, to stay away from the case, Jack finds himself inextricably drawn to Jamal's past - even believing his alibi that he was abducted....

England, 1176. Aelred Barling, esteemed clerk to the justices of King Henry II, is dispatched from the royal court with his young assistant, Hugo Stanton, to investigate a brutal murder in a village outside York. The case appears straightforward. A suspect is under lock and key in the local prison, and the angry villagers are demanding swift justice. But when more bodies are discovered, certainty turns to doubt - and amid the chaos it becomes clear that nobody is above suspicion.

In the fourth installment of the best-selling Joe Dillard series, Dillard has become the district attorney in Northeast Tennessee. He becomes heavily involved in the investigation with Sheriff Leon Bates and soon realizes that he is up against an enemy that he has never before encountered—someone so rich and so powerful that the course of justice could be altered by money and political influence. But when bodies start showing up in his driveway and his family is threatened with termination, Dillard must ask himself a previously unthinkable question.

Ed Eagle, the six-feet-six, take-no-prisoners Santa Fe attorney, has recovered from his encounters with Mexican organized crime and - more treacherously - his ex-wife, Barbara. Now a mysterious new client has come his way, one who may shed light into some dark corners of Ed's past...and put him in danger once more.

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.

After a fallout with his business partner and a breakup with his girlfriend, lawyer Sam Johnstone thinks a long vacation might be just what the doctor ordered. Before he can quit town, Sam gets a call from Lucy Beretta, the wife of the missing local college president. With a shocking accusation against an acquaintance and a plea for protection, Lucy derails Sam's plans for a quiet escape. But when her alleged attacker turns up dead, Lucy is charged with his murder - and Sam is appointed to represent her.

Eric Ward is still uneasy on the board of merchant bankers Martin & Channing. Their defense against a hostile takeover is pushing the limits of the law. But Eric soon has problems nearer home: his wife’s colleague is charged with the murder of his fiancée in his London flat. He asks Eric to represent him. Eric discovers some very interesting facts about the dead woman. Then Eric is called back to London to deal with the takeover gone wrong.

Has Rumpole hung up his wig for good? Can it be? Yes, the beloved barrister is now retired (though far from retiring) and gently ripening to a rosy hue in the Florida sunshine. But a colleague's casual request for advice on a difficult case sends him winging back across the Atlantic, and before he's through, our hero will come up against a fanatical religious cult and a mysterious letter written in blood.

Criminal defense attorney Mitch Turner loves a challenge and is always determined to see that justice is done. He also has more cases than he can handle, but when the mysterious and grief-stricken Penny Moyer enters his office one afternoon, right as he is in the middle of working on a tight deadline, the story she tells intrigues him. With her husband murdered just the night before and his business associate Mason Harwood now charged for the crime, Penny is convinced Mason was set up for the job by the manipulative Vivian Fuger, another business partner.

Cass is stunned when a man she hasn’t seen or spoken to in twenty years wills his law practice to her. His client list contains a single name. Farrah Sibley. Accused of murdering her boss, Farrah has femme fatale written all over her. Beautiful. Smart. Cunning. But is she capable of such a cold-blooded killing? Shot once through the heart, the victim, prominent lawyer Terrence Dowd only had one enemy.

Anne Murphy is smart, gorgeous, and young, the red-headed rookie at the Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates. She leaves town for Fourth of July weekend to prepare for a high-profile trial, but when she buys her morning newspaper, her own photo is plastered all over the front page. And the headline, "Lawyer Murdered", supposedly refers to her. Anne sets out to find her killer, playing dead in order to stay alive.

Who killed Philip Rease? Peter Kent was known to be a sleepwalker and a bloodstained knife was found under his pillow. There were people who would like to see Peter Kent out of the way, but would they frame him for murder? And would that explain the reason for Rease's death? It was another case full of traps for Perry Mason.

Years ago Alden Leeds found a rich vein of gold in the Klondike. Now his greedy relatives fear he's planning to throw his fortune away on a gold-digging spouse, Emily Milicant. So to prevent the two from joining in holy matrimony, they commit their affluent kin to a sanitarium on a trumped-up charge. Then Leeds escapes, only to end up in the company of Emily's blackmailing brother, John, a manufacturer of fixed dice, rolling bones that always come up seven.

Trust no one. Sam Callahan learned this lesson from a childhood spent in abusive foster care, on the streets, and locked in juvie. With the past behind him and his future staked on law school, he is moonlighting as a political tracker, paid to hide in crowds and shadow candidates, recording their missteps for use by their opponents. One night, after an anonymous text tip, Sam witnesses a congressional candidate and a mysterious blonde in a motel indiscretion that ends in murder, recording it all on his phone. Now Sam is a target.