Legal Mystery Suspense

Set in the era of the Nixon and Reagan presidencies, this novel examines the American conscience while inviting us into the glittering world of the East Coast legal community. Stephen L. Carter's book follows black Ivy League law professor Talcott Garland as he investigates the death of his father, Judge Oliver Garland, the eponymous "Emperor."

Someone has been watching D.A. Rachel Knight - someone who's Rachel's equal in brains, but with more malicious intentions. It began when a near-impossible case fell into Rachel's lap, the suspectless homicide of a homeless man. In the face of courthouse backbiting and a gauzy web of clues, Rachel is determined to deliver justice. She's got back-up: tough-as-nails Detective Bailey Keller. As Rachel and Bailey stir things up, they're shocked to uncover a connection with the vicious murder of an LAPD cop a year earlier.

Cate Fante is strong and smart, but when she gets appointed a federal judge, even she wonders if she can do the job justice. She's in her 30s, and she feels like she's joining the world's most exclusive retirement village. But Cate keeps her doubts a secret. And, as it happens, much else. For she leads a dark, double life that she hides from everyone.

JAG lawyer Sean Drummond has gotten himself in way over his head - with a case that challenges his deepest fears and a co-counselor who challenges just about everything else. Assigned to South Korea as an advocate for a gay officer accused of brutally killing the son of a South Korean war hero, Drummond is teamed up with an old law-school nemesis. Katherine Carson is a curvy, liberal, William Kunstler-like attorney with a reputation for manipulating the media on behalf of her mostly gay clients.

Widower Jack Harris has resisted the dating scene ever since the shooting of his wife Molly by a fifteen-year-old boy three years ago. An early morning run along the Hudson River changes that when he spots a woman in last night’s party dress, barefoot, enjoying a champagne picnic alone, reading his favorite novel. Everything about her reminds him of what he used to have with Molly. Eager to help Jack find love again, his best friend posts a message on a popular website after he mentions the encounter.

Martin H. Ehrengraf, dapper and diabolical, may be Lawrence Block's darkest creation. He's the defense attorney who never sees the inside of a courtroom, because all his clients are innocent - no matter how guilty they may seem. Some even believe themselves to be guilty: They remember pulling the trigger, or wiring the dynamite to their spouse's car, or holding the bloody blade. But things have a way of working out when Martin Ehrengraf is on the case.

An old house, a new lover, a fresh life for Dominick - or will the faith-driven doom it all? The past just won't go away. Dominick likes to idle there in history's comfortable remove, but when his mother dies and he meets the half sister he never knew he had, the past becomes more personal - and the present more dangerous. Dominick's perpetual peregrinations are interrupted by a visit to his newfound sibling's historic Hudson Valley estate, which is also home to a Wiccan coven.

Known to locals as the “Christmas Guy,” Nick Whittaker has delighted his neighbors with an elaborate holiday light show and his uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus. A bit of a loner, Nick has found his place and his calling as a mall Santa in the quaint Northern Michigan town of Helene. He’s the last person anyone would have suspected in the brutal beating of a local politician. But when the bloodied murder weapon turns up in his trash and surveillance video puts him at the crime scene, Nick finds himself on trial for his freedom.

Graham Greene's first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling.

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages, and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all. If only Flashman had got on with his dinner and ignored the handkerchief dropped by a flirtatious hussy in a Calcutta hotel....

Leo Maxwell thinks he's found a career-making case when a mysterious woman nearly runs him down, then appears at his office to hire him to defend her brother on a murder charge. One problem: Leo hasn't actually met the client when he sets out to investigate what seems like a hot tip on a burgeoning scandal in the Oakland Police Department. When he presents evidence of deep-set corruption in the Department to the District Attorney's office, he quickly learns that all is not as it seems, beginning with Leo's client and the alluring woman who hired him.

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.

Chief of homicide district attorney Abby Endicott hasn't had the easiest adjustment to normal life. Her wealthy Boston family has cut her off because of her dangerous job. However, her personal life is about to be put on hold when the catcher for the Red Sox goes missing and she gets the case. Soon, it's not just a case of a missing celebrity. Another player turns up dead and the frantic search for Rudy Maddox escalates. It's when Abby discovers greased baseballs and mysterious sums of cash belonging to the victims that she realizes this goes far deeper than she realizes.

Compelling Evidence Paul Madriani was once a promising associate with the prestigious Potter, Skarpellos law firm, co-founded by his mentor, Ben Potter. But after a scandalous affair with Ben's wife, Talia, Paul left the firm to begin a brilliant career as a criminal defense attorney. Ben's impeccable reputation has made him a leading candidate for the Supreme Court, until he is found dead on the eve of the nomination, and Talia becomes the prime suspect.

Fabrizio Collini is recently retired. He’s a quiet, unassuming man with no indications that he’s capable of hurting anyone. And yet he brutally murders a prominent industrialist in one of Berlin’s most exclusive hotels. Collini ends up in the charge of Caspar Leinen, a rookie defense lawyer eager to launch his career with a not-guilty verdict. As Leinen searches for clues he discovers a personal connection to the victim and unearths a terrible truth at the heart of Germany’s legal system that stretches back to World War II.

When a high-end hooker crashes the party and ends up dead, shameful secrets of prominent men hang in the balance. The kind of secrets that get folks killed. Chance Meridian and his murder squad soon learn that the dead woman had a penchant for playing dangerous games with the wrong people. Powerful people—including a United States Senator whose decades-old hatred of Chance still burns hot. As past and present converge to put him in a vise, Chance discovers a hard truth about his line of work. Some cases can only be solved at the point of a gun.

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.

A young man with Down's syndrome has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people, but a fellow inmate at his secure psychiatric unit has hired Thora to prove Jakob is innocent. If he didn't do it, who did? And how is the multiple murder connected to the death of Magga, killed in a hit and run on her way to babysit?

Best-selling author James Grippando is back with another innovative and action-packed thriller featuring the ever-popular Jack Swyteck. Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck guards his own family secrets as closely as anyone, and while his father's two terms as Florida's governor made some family rifts public, things are finally better between the two men. Whenever Harry Swyteck asks for Jack's help, he gets it, and suddenly he needs it more than ever before.

The blonde wandering nude at the Remuda Gold Club tells Perry Mason a strange story. She says that while she peacefully sun-bathed near the course, someone made off with her Cadillac, her trailer, and all of her belongings - including her precious diary. The woman blames the police who suspect her of having stashed away nearly half a million dollars allegedly stolen by her father, who is now in prison. She swears that both she and her father are innocent. So who is bankrolling her leisurely lifestyle?