Legal Fiction Thrillers

In Up Jumps the Devil, fast-moving progress is threatening to forever destroy the leisurely, heart-warming pace of Colleton County, North Carolina. District Court Judge Deborah Knott sees trouble brewing when plans for a new interstate highway start pushing up property values. Deborah finds herself calming the combatants with down-home wit, but when the squabbles escalate to murder, Deborah is forced to search for a killer uncomfortably close to home.

Ruthless defense attorney Tatum Graham has been living large in Miami, but when his recently acquitted client claims another victim, Tatum has a crisis of conscience. Disillusioned, he heads to his small Utah hometown for a simpler life...but that’s not what he finds. Soon after he arrives, Tatum’s childhood crush offers him a job at the county attorney’s office and assigns him a murder case.

Winner of the British Book Awards, Lifetime Achievement Award, 2007.
Adam Hill is 26 years old and in his first year at a top Chicago law firm. He volunteers for the toughest assignment any lawyer could ask for. His prospective client doesn't want Adam or his law firm. Why would he take on Adam, a complete novice, to defend him? And why would Adam want his case so desperately?

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.

In Florida, defense attorney Daniel Pike is stunned when his legal files are ransacked and his lover, Maria Morales, disappears. In Oklahoma, semi-retired attorney Ben Kincaid is horrified when his connection to this apparent abduction endangers the people he loves most. Desperate for help, Pike seizes Kincaid and hauls him on a cross-country road trip to discover what happened to Maria…and why a killer is so interested in a California murder case.

Though some think they saw a ghost, it was a real, live woman in the (mostly exposed) flesh flitting through Sierra Vista Park. Eleanor Corbin has a taste for trouble - and a talent for getting out of it using the most outrageous means to cover her tracks. Now her scandalized half-sister, Olga, fears Eleanor may be using lascivious antics to camouflage more larcenous acts.

At the annual Harvest Festival carnival, while everyone else is playing games and having fun, someone commits murder. As Deborah investigates, she must struggle to win a carny's confidence while a dark web of dangerous secrets begins to unravel.

Eric’s wife, Anne, has followed the advice of handsome lawyer Mark Fenham and invested a small fortune in a merchant bank also involved in underwriting marine insurance. Now her company must pay out a vast insurance claim for the Sea Dawn, a ship sunk in Spanish waters. Eric Ward smells fraud. His wife could lose everything. And then, one by one, people connected to the Sea Dawn start to die. The murderous trail takes Ward to sunny Spain—where he comes face-to-face with his arch enemy. Will Ward uncover the truth about the sinking of the Sea Dawn?

A battalion of Serbs has been senselessly murdered in Kosovo, and the Green Berets stand accused. Now, Major Sean Drummond, a top Army lawyer, is assigned to investigate this unspeakable atrocity. But of course, no one saw anything. Drummond gets consistently suspicious depositions from all of the Green Berets: Supposedly pursued by Serb soldiers, they left the engagement with wounded Serbs firing at them, and no one can explain the number of deaths.

In these witty and comic stories, Horace Rumpole takes on a variety of clients and activities. He, of course, brings each case to a successful end, all the while quoting poetry and drinking claret.

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.

Questa non sarà un’autopsia di routine. L’anatomopatologa Maura Isles ne è certa. Ad attenderla, all’ospedale, c’è lei: Madame X, coperta interamente da bende di lino impregnate di resina, che risalgono a duemila anni prima. I suoi organi interni sono stati asportati, solo il cuore è rimasto al suo posto, perché è lì che gli antichi egizi credevano risiedesse l’intelligenza. Madame X infatti è una mummia, ritrovata per caso negli scantinati di un museo. Quando la TAC arriva alle gambe, Maura scorge qualcosa di impossibile.

When it comes to swimming with the sharks, there is no bigger kahuna than Serge Storms. Bingeing on a marathon of legal movies set in Florida, Serge finds his vocation: the law. Never mind law school or that degree; Serge becomes a freelance fixer - wildcat paralegal and pilgrim to the hallowed places where legal classics of the big screen such as Body Heat, Cool Hand Luke, and Absence of Malice were filmed practically in his own backyard.

Three unlikely events explode thrusting young lawyer Jennifer Lane into the abyss of her family's secret history. Family records search, DNA, and more reveal stolen lives and a stolen cure for deadly hepatitis C. A bewildering maze of betrayal, intrigue, and murder, put Jennifer's license to practice law, her heart, and her very life on the line. Judge Willa Carson watches while Jennifer rescues herself from Denton's Raw Justice.

The 24-hour news cycle is abuzz when the police arrest homeless Iraq war veteran Mike Stoller for the murder of a young paralegal on her way home from night-school class. Stoller doesn't deny killing the woman, but his post-traumatic stress disorder is so bad that he has no real memory of that night. Jason Kolarich agrees to take the case only weeks before trial, and realizes that, unlikely as it seems, his client is probably innocent. The murdered paralegal had been tracing a money trail leading to terrorists.

Wherever Sean Drummond goes, it seems that the JAG officer leaves a trail of political fallout in his wake. So when his superiors get an opportunity to loan him to a prestigious law firm, they jump on it, hoping he'll soak up the nuances of civilian lawyering. But almost immediately, dark clouds appear when Sean's predecessor in the loan-out program is murdered. Then Sean begins to sense something amiss with the firm's biggest client, a telecom behemoth with large defense contracts.

A young man, Michael, dies while in custody at the county jail. The authorities claim it was a heart attack. His mom thinks it was murder. Attorney Daniel Raine agrees to take the case, suing the jail for wrongful death. But no one will talk about what happened in Michael's cell on that fateful night. The guards claim they saw nothing, and there's no surveillance video. Raine starts to dig and soon discovers that the dead man wasn't just a petty criminal. He was an informant for a narcotics detective who is trying to take down a drug cartel.

A young woman accuses a prominent local college athlete of rape. Convicted with the help of indisputable DNA evidence, the athlete swears his innocence and threatens both his lawyer and his accuser as he's sent to prison. Not long after, there's another rape, and the DNA test shows that the same person committed both rapes - which is seemingly impossible since the man convicted of the first rape was in prison at the time of the second one. Now, the convicted athlete, joined by a new lawyer, is granted a new trial and bail.

Childbirth is hard enough under even the best circumstances. But when baby Chase suffers a catastrophic brain injury at birth, his parents are drawn into a hellish whirlwind of medical and legal drama. Thaddeus Murfee, a resourceful, young lawyer, files a malpractice lawsuit on their behalf, but there’s one major problem: the hospital has forged medical records to cover up their mistake. When the case takes an unexpected twist, can Thad stay one step ahead?

Kenzi Rivera is furious. Passed over for promotion at her own father’s firm, the talented divorce lawyer is tired of fighting chauvinism every single day. When a desperate scientist begs for help getting her daughter back, Kenzi can’t resist…even though this client is involved in Hexitel, a group she calls her religion but others call a cult. Kenzi uncovers evidence of disturbing practices at Hexitel involving large sums of money, servitude, and sex. She also learns her client’s lab has been plagued by death threats and cutthroat competition.