Legal Mystery Suspense

In The Justice Game by Christy Award-winning author Randy Singer, a brutal murder triggers a gun-rights debate with wide-ranging consequences. When a man guns down a pregnant reporter on live TV, her husband sues the manufacturer of the killer's firearm. As opposing lawyers ignite the courtroom with their eloquence and theatrics, a shadowy cabal threatens the advocates and the justice they seek.

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.

Smack in the middle of a capital murder trial, small-town prosecutor Mara Brent gets a cryptic note from the defendant. He wants to cut a deal. His freedom in exchange for information about the kidnapping and murder of a young girl that made national news a decade ago. Is he telling the truth? Or is this just the desperate ploy of a marked man?

Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five.... Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this wickedly clever new novel from John Grisham, the undisputed master of the legal thriller.

Benedetta "Bennie" Rosato is a maverick lawyer who prosecutes police misconduct and excessive-force cases, and business at her firm has never been better. Then, without warning, a savage murder tears the firm apart. All evidence points to Bennie, who has motive aplenty and an unconfirmable alibi. Her world turns upside down as the lawyer becomes the client and the cops she once prosecuted are now after her with a vengeance.

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.

When racial tension erupts in the sleepy community of Colleton County, North Carolina, Deborah is caught off guard. She is happily tending her own home fires: her simmering romance with Kidd Chapin, the house she's building on her family's land, and her campaign for reelection as district judge. But then the first black church is burned, and all of Deborah's alarms go off.

In Los Angeles in 1988, a 16-year-old girl disappeared from her home and was later found dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. The death appeared at first to be a suicide, but some of the evidence contradicted that scenario, and detectives came to believe this was in fact a murder. Despite a by-the-book investigation, no one was ever charged.

Raised in Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned all he knows from his father, Dr. Tom Cage. But now Tom has been accused of murdering the Black nurse with whom he worked in the 1960s and Penn is determined to exonerate him. The quest for answers leads down a trail of corruption and brutality that places Penn’s family squarely in the crosshairs of the Double Eagles, a vicious offshoot of the KKK controlled by some of the state’s most powerful men. Penn ultimately must acknowledge that secrets from his father’s past have put the Cage family in great jeopardy.

Sheriff Bill Clancy humbly served the citizens of Maumee County for three decades. He wanted nothing more than to finish his term and retire to the woods he called home. When he’s found shot to death behind the wheel of his own car, every cop in the county is out for blood.

A taut thriller about two rural Minnesota towns locked in a deadly feud - and a teenage girl caught in the crossfire. In affluent Barron, a powerful and secretive scientific research corporation enriches its residents, while downriver in blue-collar St. Croix, victims of that company’s carcinogenic waste struggle to survive. The bad blood between the communities escalates into open warfare when the beautiful Ashlynn, daughter of the corporation’s president, is found shot dead - and a St. Croix girl, Olivia Hawk, is accused of the crime.

Reverend Green was a fierce challenger to Anderson's faith healing techniques, protesting against his every move, preaching that Anderson was performing the Devil's work. When Green is found murdered only hours after a physical altercation with Anderson, all the evidence points to one man. A white supremacist group throws their unwanted support behind Anderson, and the case threatens to turn the streets of Chicago into a battleground for race riots.

Kansas City attorney Josephina Jillian Jones, 3J to her friends, has dealt with people perpetrating online disinformation, white supremacists, and clients hiding assets, so when a couple who heads up a company that builds inner city housing for marginalized communities comes to her for legal help because their longtime banking partner has shut off their funding, the case appears at first blush to be tame by comparison. But when the bank president disappears and his greed-driven brother seems the likely culprit, things heat up.

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer's career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track - until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the "lucky" associates. She's offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she'd get her old job back. In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about.

Skyscraper developer Quincy Witherman has continued his family's 200-year practice of hiding assets in Switzerland. Now, needing protection from his creditors, he hires Kansas City bankruptcy lawyer Josephina Jillian Jones – 3J – but fails to disclose the Swiss assets to 3J, his bankers, the IRS, and the bankruptcy court...all felonies. 3J knows in her gut that something is wrong. So does Witherman's banker, Stacy Milnes. Will anyone catch him?

Landon Reed is an ex-quarterback convicted of organizing a points-shaving scheme. During his time in prison, he found forgiveness and faith and earned his law degree. Now he longs for an opportunity to prove his loyalty and worth. Be careful what you ask for. Harry McNaughton is one of the founding partners of McNaughton & Clay and the only lawyer willing to take a chance employing an ex-con-turned-lawyer.

In a weedy lot on the outskirts of Memphis, two boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull up to the curb... Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America. Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years.

In Chicago’s top law firm, a young lawyer stands on the brink of a brilliant career. Now twenty-six-year-old Adam Hall is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. Cayhall has run out of chances—except for one: a determined lawyer who just happens to be his grandson.

Mark, Todd, and Zola came to law school to change the world, to make it a better place. But now, as third-year students, these close friends realize they have been duped. They all borrowed heavily to attend a third-tier, for-profit law school so mediocre that its graduates rarely pass the bar exam, let alone get good jobs. And when they learn that their school is one of a chain owned by a shady New York hedge-fund operator who also happens to own a bank specializing in student loans, the three know they have been caught up in The Great Law School Scam.

Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore is an expert on killers. She’s spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives - predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. The case against Thompson as the Bloody Heart Killer is damning - and closed, as far as Gwen and the media are concerned. If not for one new development.