Legal Fiction Thrillers

Legendary criminal defense attorney Sarah Knight has spent all of her 46 years hiding the unspeakable secrets of her past. Now, newly arrived in San Diego from New York, she is appointed to represent Alexa Reed, a former US Supreme Court clerk and the daughter-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Coleman Reed. Alexa is arrested for the murders of her ex-husband, attorney Michael Reed, and La Jolla psychologist Ronald Brigman. All the evidence points to Alexa. Coleman Reed wants Alexa sentenced to death without delay.

Robin Lockwood is now a prominent defense attorney in Portland, Oregon but a decade ago, she was a ranked and rising MMA fighter. Her career came to a quick end when she was knocked out and concussed in the first round by Mandy Kerrigan, a much more talented fighter. Now the situation couldn't be more different, with Kerrigan on her last legs, her career nearly over, arrested for the quadruple murder of the entire Finch family...and Kerrigan's only possible friend is the attorney she beat so many years ago.

Cass Leary thought she was done defending shady mobsters. But when the boss calls in a favor, she realizes her debt has yet to be paid. And if she wants to keep her family safe, she must find a way to let a known hit man walk free.... As the ones she loves question her decision, Cass must mount an incredible defense to acquit her ruthless client. With the pressure on, the ace attorney discovers that while Ghost Man is a cold-blooded killer, he's got an even bigger secret to protect. Can Cass secure the right verdict without becoming the next victim?

When Dismas Hardy agrees to clean up the caseload of recently disappeared attorney Charlie Bowen, he thinks it will be easy. But one of the cases is far from small-time - the appeal to overturn the murder conviction of National Guard reservist Evan Scholler, who has been sentenced to life without parole for the murder of an ex-Navy SEAL and private contractor named Ron Nolan. Two rapid-fire events in Iraq conspired to bring the men into fatal conflict.

Peter Hale is a young attorney with a lot to prove. Crossing his father, one of Portland's most powerful lawyers, was a costly mistake. Now, cut loose from his job and his inheritance, Peter's has landed in the public defender's office of a small Oregon town - and in the middle of a high-profile case that could make or break his career. His mentally handicapped client, accused of the savage murder of a college coed, faces the death penalty.

“You learn early that you don’t get to prove your case with Boy Scouts and nuns. Yes, convicted felons will say anything to get out of jail, but they also know a lot.” Plea bargains may grease the rails of justice, but for Jamie Brock, prosecuting criminals is not about cutting deals.

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.

When he goes undercover to bust mobsters who have infiltrated the sports world, Butch Karp glides effortlessly from the criminal courts he dominates as a prosecutor to the basketball court. Police have found the body of a pro basketball star in a car on the edge of the city, the glove compartment stuffed with cocaine. The investigation leads to a sophisticated ring of sports fixing and drug trafficking, and Karp's own background as a college basketball standout helps him close in on the crooks.

Uncommon Clay delves into the intriguing world of the Nordans, a deep-rooted family of talented yet cursed North Carolina potters. Judge Knott is filling in for another judge who suffered a mild stroke. When she decrees that the divorcing Nordan couple split their valuable earthenware collection, the husband winds up dead, in his own kiln! Many people have motives and the clay wheel swirls with suspects.

A Turkish diplomat in New York City is gunned down in broad daylight, and all signs point to an ancient blood feud. The suspected gunman is Armenian. His alleged motive is to avenge the slaughter of Armenians by Turks generations before. But prosecutor Butch Karp has never accepted the easy answer, and he soon realizes the facts of this murder are more complicated than they seem. To close the case, Karp and his investigator wife, Marlene, must infiltrate a cross-section of New York society, while fending off crooks and madmen from every corner of the Big Apple and the world beyond.

When three men announce that they are suing the Rosato & DiNunzio law firm for reverse sex discrimination—claiming that they were not hired because they were men—Mary DiNunzio and Bennie Rosato are outraged. To make matters worse, their one male employee, John Foxman, intends to resign, claiming that there is some truth to this case. The plaintiffs’ lawyer is Nick Machiavelli, who has already lost to Mary once and is now back with a vengeance —determined not to not only win, but destroy the firm. It soon becomes clear that Machiavelli will do anything in his power to achieve his end…even after the case turns deadly. The stakes have never been higher for Mary and her associates as they try to keep Machiavelli at bay, solve a murder, and save the law firm they love…or they could lose everything they’ve worked for.

Lawyer Arthur Beauchamp is facing the most explosive trial of his career: the defence of seven boisterous environmentalists accused of sabotaging an Ontario plant that pumps out a pesticide that has led to the mass death of honeybees. The story zigzags between Toronto, where the trial takes place, and Arthur’s West Coast island home, where he finds himself arrested for fighting his own environmental cause: the threatened destruction of a popular park. The Toronto trial concludes with a tense, hang-by-the-fingernails jury verdict.

In Wolf's Revenge, the fifth novel in Lachlan Smith's Shamus Award-winning series, attorney-detective Leo Maxwell seeks an exit strategy from his family's deepening entanglement with a ruthless prison-based gang. Caught between the criminals and the FBI, Leo charts his own path in defending a young woman who was manipulated into brazenly murdering a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood.

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.

After the New York grand jury indicts the national presidential campaign chairman and the NSA spymaster for the murder of the CIA chief, Karp engages in an unforgettable courtroom confrontation with the defendants who have the full weight of the US administration, a hostile judge, and a compliant media supporting them. These sinister forces will stop at nothing to prevent Karp from bringing out the truth, even if they have to resort to murder.

The dead body found in Flagstaff is not hard to identify - the District Attorney had been a well known figure. His wife admits that she pulled the trigger, but her attorney Thaddeus Murfee finds a confusing mess of evidence that tells a different story. When a beautiful teen girl arrives, Thad has to make a decision with terrifying consequences. The riveting story of one lawyer’s attempt to redeem himself, one wife’s attempt to free herself, and one young girl’s hope of a new life after years of unspeakable abuse.

At the rooftop bar of the famed Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC, a former vice president is assassinated. Across the Potomac River, a mysterious sniper leaves a .50 caliber rifle on the bed of his hotel room, then disappears. Crime reporter Jane Cole and NYPD cop Robert Warren have clues no one else has. But as they arrive in DC to investigate, they're hit with a series of cover-ups and misdirections. And as they close in on the killer, they realize that they, too, are being tracked.

When his uncle dies, Liam Taggart reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Northern Ireland for the funeral—a home he left years ago after a bitter confrontation with his family, never to look back. But when he arrives, Liam learns that not only was his uncle shot to death, but that he’d anticipated his own murder: In an astonishing last will and testament, Uncle Fergus has left his entire estate to a secret trust, directing that no distributions be made to any person until the killer is found.

Having spent her life watching her father run his East London firm, Zara Ezra has learnt a thing or two about being a gangster, and she’s ready to take over when the time comes. Mike Regan, a blast from Zara’s past, is the head of his own firm, but when his son is kidnapped in the middle of a gangland feud, Mike has no choice but to accept help from the Ezras to get his little boy back alive. With a rival firm playing increasingly dirty, murder moves to the top of the agenda and Zara has some big choices to make.

Ace Criminal Attorney Cash McCahill makes two potentially fatal mistakes. First, he agrees to represent a cartel kingpin, who lays down an ultimatum of win or else. Not even an acquittal will save Cash if his second mistake surfaces. His affair with the client's wife turns him into the perfect pawn to take a fall for the cartel. Falsely convicted of jury tampering, he must survive a prison teeming with enemies and navigate the more dangerous world on the outside in order to clear his name, regain his law license, and return to his only real home - the courtroom.