Legal Fiction

When Josh’s longtime partner, Grace, dies in a tragic accident, he is left with a mess of grief - and full custody of her seven-year-old son, Logan. Wanting to do right by Logan, Josh begins the process of becoming his legal guardian - something that seems suddenly urgent, though Grace always brushed it off as an unnecessary formality. But now, as Josh struggles to find the paperwork associated with Logan’s birth, he begins to wonder whether there were more troubling reasons for Grace’s reluctance to make their family official.

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.

Daniel Miller murdered fourteen people before he vanished. His wife, Carrie, now faces trial as his accomplice. The FBI, the District Attorney, the media and everyone in America believe she knew and helped cover up her husband's crimes. Eddie Flynn won't take a case unless his client is innocent. Now, he has to prove to a jury, and the entire world, that Carrie Miller didn't know her husband's dark side. But so far, Eddie and his team are the only ones who believe that she had no part in the murders.

Lawyer Andy Carpenter and his wife, Laurie, enjoy walking their dogs, Tara and Sebastian. By this point in their marriage, it’s routine. When out for one of their strolls, their simple ritual isn’t so simple anymore. Across the street, a man is mistreating his dog. Three things happen at once: Andy yells, Laurie runs to stop the abuse, and so does a closer passerby, who so thoroughly beats the owner that both are arrested when the cops arrive.

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 Washington, DC, defense attorney, Stanton Shaw keeps his head cool, his questions sharp, and his arguments irrefutable. They don't call him the Jury Charmer for nothing - with his Southern drawl, disarming smile, and captivating green eyes, he's a hard man to say no to. Men want to be him, and women want to be thoroughly cross-examined by him.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After many years working on some of the toughest felony cases in New York, prosecutor Butch Karp takes on one of the most notorious homicide cases in modern history when the US Congress invites him to become legal counsel to the Congressional committee charged to reinvestigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Teaming up with his crime-fighting wife, Marlene, and two loyal assistants, Karp knows the only way to determine what occurred is to let the facts and the evidence lead inexorably to a just result.

Lily Forrester is a tough judge in Ventura County, California, who has overcome adversity and heartache to achieve a position of power from which she can help those who can't help themselves, as in the current case before her: the sensational murder trial of a woman who tortured and killed her beautiful two-year-old son.

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.

Jilly Truitt has made a name for herself as one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the city. Where once she had to take just about any case to keep her firm afloat, now she has her pick - and she picks winners. So when Joseph Quentin asks her to defend his wife, who has been charged with murdering her own mother in what the media are calling a mercy killing, every instinct tells Jilly to say no. Word on the street is that Vera Quentin is in denial, refusing to admit to the crime and take a lenient plea deal.

After a shocking loss, Stone Barrington is at loose ends, unsure if he wants to stay in New York and continue his work as a partner at Woodman & Weld. It comes as a welcome relief when he's summoned to Washington, D.C., by President Will Lee. The president has a special operation that calls for Stone's unique skill set, and it's a mission that will reunite him with his former partner in crime and in bed, Holly Barker.

On a quiet August morning, Judge Deborah Knott's father, Kezzie, makes a shocking discovery on a remote corner of his farm: the body of a man bludgeoned to death. Investigating this crime, Deborah's husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, soon uncovers a long-simmering hostility between Kezzie and the slain man over a land dispute. The local newspaper implies that Deborah's family may have had something to do with the murder - and that Dwight is dragging his feet on the case.

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.