Legal Fiction

Lena Woodward, elegant and poised, has lived a comfortable life among Chicago Society since she immigrated to the US and began a new life at the end of World War II. But now something has resurfaced that Lena cannot ignore: an unfulfilled promise she made long ago that can no longer stay buried. Driven to renew the quest that still keeps her awake at night, Lena enlists the help of lawyer Catherine Lockhart and private investigator Liam Taggart. Behind Lena’s stoic facade are memories that will no longer be contained.

Running his own law firm is harder than Leland Munroe ever imagined, but he’s determined to make it work. Judy Reed, accused of killing her wealthy father, is just the kind of high-profile and high-paying client he needs to keep his firm afloat. Yet the deeper he digs, the more complex her case becomes. Nurse LaDonna Winters’s financial situation isn’t as ideal. Struggling to make ends meet, she can barely afford legal representation. But her case is compelling—accused of a crime at her hospital she insists she didn't commit, LaDonna is desperate to clear her name.

Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates…. An unlikely suicide or a deadly conspiracy? When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from a motorway bridge, she little suspects that it has any connection with the sudden death of a friend’s thirteen year old daughter from a deadly strain of meningitis. But as Jenny pieces together the dead man’s last days, she’s drawn into a mystery whose dark ripples stretch across continents and back through decades.

Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is back, trying to get her feet on solid ground after unraveling an international conspiracy in While Justice Sleeps. But as the sparks of Congressional hearings and political skirmishes swirl around her, Avery is approached at a legal conference by Preston Davies, an unassuming young man and fellow law clerk to a federal judge in Idaho.

While settling into her new home in Los Angeles together with her boyfriend and TV star Patrick McNabb, attorney Sandy Moss receives a phone call from the LA Men's Detention Center. It's a new client accused of murder: the near-stoic Lt. K. C. Trench! Being good at his job but not well-liked in his department, Trench is accused of killing a fellow LA police officer whom he openly despised and threatened. With the odds against her, Sandy takes on the case of her sometime nemesis/sometime ally. She is certain that Trench can't be the killer.

To Robbie Feaver the law is all about making a play - to a client, a jury, or a judge. But when the flashy, womanizing, multimillion-dollar personal injury lawyer is caught offering bribes, he's forced to wear a wire. Even as the besieged attorney looks after his ailing wife, Feaver must also make tapes that will hurl his friends, his enemies, his city, and a particular FBI undercover agent into a crisis of conscience and law.

Rusty is a retired judge attempting a third act in life with a loving soon-to-be wife, Bea, with whom he shares both a restful home on an idyllic lake in the rural Midwest and a plaintive hope that this marriage will be his best, and his last. But the peace that’s taken Rusty so long to find evaporates when Bea’s young adult son, Aaron, living under their supervision while on probation for drug possession, disappears. If Aaron doesn’t return soon, he will be sent back to jail.

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey state senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a 19-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict. Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet as a trans woman, she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise.

Rumpole isn't particularly fond of Christmas; he finds it has a horrible habit of dragging on as he and She Who Must Be Obeyed go through the usual rituals in Froxbury Mansions. After the exchange of presents (lavender water for her, a tie for him) they settle down to a supermarket turkey with all the trimmings, followed by a glass of port. The only excitement comes in deciding whether to stand for the national anthem after the Queen's Speech.

In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

Betrayed by his own country, former spy Charles Jenkins survived an undercover Russian operation gone wrong. The retired family man is through with spy games. Then he learns of a woman isolated in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison. If it’s Paulina Ponomayova, the agent who sacrificed her life to save his, Jenkins can’t leave her behind. But there’s no guarantee it’s her. Or proof Paulina is still alive. To find out, Jenkins must return to Russia and blackmail Viktor Federov, a former Russian officer with his own ax to grind, into helping him infiltrate Lefortovo.

Someone didn’t just want Megan Lewis dead. They wanted her obliterated. Even the most seasoned crime scene analysts were haunted by what they found. When Megan’s married ex-boyfriend admits to the murder, her family may at least get the mercy of swift justice. Defense attorney Cass Leary has every reason to steer clear of this case. Her client, Reed Karl might just be the most hated man in town. But one look at the police report and Cass knows something doesn't add up. And when Reed’s wife and young daughter beg her to help him, she can’t find the heart to say no.

Leila Syed receives a call that cleaves her life in two. Her brother-in-law’s voice is filled with panic. His son’s nursery have called to ask where little Max is. Leila was supposed to drop Max off that morning. But she forgot. Racing to the carpark, she grasps the horror of what she has done. What follows is an explosive high-profile trial that will tear the family apart. But as the case progresses it becomes clear there’s more to this incident than meets the eye....

For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation—until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation.

A woman stumbles onto a dark road in rural Oregon - tortured, battered, and bound. She tells a horrific story about being kidnapped, then tortured, until she finally managed to escape. She was the lucky one - two other women, with similar burns and bruises, were found dead. The surviving victim identifies the house where she was held captive, and the owner, Alex Mason - a prominent local attorney - is arrested.

When a killer starts murdering lawyers in a prestigious law firm, and every lead takes them to a dead end, Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker finds herself grappling for a motive. What links these deaths, and why use a lethal injection? Alongside forensic psychologist, Dr. Georgina Cavendish, they close in on the killer, while all the while trying to not let their personal lives get in the way of the investigation.

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.

Tessa Ensler loves her job. She’s worked her way up to being a top criminal defense barrister against all the odds, and fights to defend those pleading not guilty. Tessa believes in the law, believes in the system. Her quick-witted cross-examinations and intelligence in the courtroom see her clocking up win after win—including securing freedom for men accused of rape and sexual assault. Innocence until proven guilty is, after all, the bedrock of a civilized society.

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.

Chance Meridian, finally able to take a long-delayed honeymoon after getting his murder squad up and running, has more interest in the beach than a new case. But the Governor has other plans. Thrust into an investigation far from home, Chance soon learns that the dead man had more enemies than is good for one’s health—most of them living under the victim’s own roof. Faced with a desperate murderer willing to kill again, Chance must untangle a web of deceit before one final act of violence changes his life forever.