Legal Mystery

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.

Tough-as-nails criminal defense attorney Jane Smith is hip-deep in the murder trial of the century. Actually, her charmless client might’ve committed several murders. She’s also fallen in love with a wonderful guy. And an equally wonderful dog, a mutt. But Jane doesn’t have much time. She’s just received a terminal diagnosis giving her twelve months. Unless she’s murdered before her expiration date.

Clanton, Mississippi. The life of a 10-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. Until her father acquires an assault rifle - and takes justice into his own outraged hands. For 10 days, with burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spreading through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life...and then his own....

In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching forty, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change.

The Dollmaker was the name of the serial killer who had stalked Los Angeles ruthlessly, leaving grisly calling cards on the faces of his victims. Now, with a single faultless shot, Harry Bosch thinks he has ended the city's nightmare.

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.

Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder.

When Marshall McEwan left his hometown at age 18, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away ultimately spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington DC. But just as the political chaos in the nation’s capital lifts him to new heights, Marshall is forced to return home in spite of his boyhood vow. His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from failing, and the town is in the midst of an economic rebirth that might be built upon crimes that reach into the state capitol - and perhaps even to Washington.

To everyone else, Denny Sizemore is the handsome face on a highway billboard. A man to be trusted. Respected. Reelected. To college student Neveah Ward, he is her monster. When Neveah accuses the former mayor of a brutal rape, it’s easier for everyone not to believe her. Mayor Sizemore has lived his life in the public eye. He’s a family man. A rising star in Ohio politics. She’s a nobody with questionable motives and a shady past. Except DNA doesn’t lie, and Neveah never wavers from her story.

She's old-money Miami. He's barefoot Coconut Grove. The only thing they had in common was the law, until they faced each other in the steamiest murder trial of the century, a case that would make sparks fly, headlines scream, and opposites attract. Surrounded by crooks, con men, and a cast of colorful characters, Steve Solomon and Vickie Lord must solve the crime before they end up in ruin, in jail, or, worse, in bed.

Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant DC law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone. A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm's plush offices. When it is all over, the man's blood is splattered on Michael's face - and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable. Rediscovering a conscience he lost long ago, Michael is leaving the big time for the streets where his attacker once lived.

When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he’s certain there’s not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past four years, convicted of brutally murdering the pastor of a megachurch. But as a law professor working for the Innocence Project, Boady agrees to look into Elijah’s file. When he does, he is alarmed to find threads that lead back to the death of his colleague and friend, Ben Pruitt, a man shot to death four years earlier in Boady’s own home.

Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.

It starts with the body of a Hollywood producer in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce, shot twice in the head at close range - what looks like "trunk music", a Mafia hit. But the LAPD's organized crime unit is curiously uninterested, and when Harry follows a trail of gambling debts to Las Vegas, the case suddenly becomes more complex - and much more personal.

Hunting Jack Reacher is a dangerous business, as FBI Special Agents Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar are about to find out. Otto and Gaspar are by-the-book hunters who know when to break the rules; Reacher is a wanted man, and a stone cold killer when things get personal. But is he friend or enemy? Armed with disinformation, they intend to find out. Only the secrets hidden in Margrave, Georgia, will tell them.

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his Black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier. The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly?

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?

The incomparable master of the legal thriller takes us deeper into the labyrinth that is the American justice system, always drawing us in with an irresistible hook, pulling the thread of tension tighter and tighter, and then knocking us out with a conclusion that's never "by the book". Maybe that's why, after more than 20 years of consecutive number-one New York Times best sellers, a new novel by America's favorite storyteller is still a major publishing event.

After more than twenty years away from the law, Joe Hennessy is forced back into the courtroom. Trying to save his vineyard after years of drought, Hennessy returns to practice in Charleston, South Carolina–the city he walked away from after the murder of his ten-year-old son. When one of South Carolina's most powerful men is charged with possessing stolen artwork, Hennessy steps forward to defend him. But as Hennessy digs into the evidence, as he navigates the truth, he finds that the criminal charges are only the start of their problems…

The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit DC every week. As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe.