Legal Suspense Thrillers

Small-town lawyer Bocephus Haynes comes home late one night to find District Attorney General Helen Lewis waiting for him. Her ex-husband has just been killed. She’s about to be arrested for his murder. And she wants Bo to represent her. There’s a lot working against them. Just before his death, Helen’s ex-husband threatened to reveal a dark secret from her past. Bo has been in a tailspin since his wife’s death.

Former New Jersey prosecutor Sandy Moss moved to a prestigious Los Angeles law firm to make a new start as a family lawyer. So it seems a little unfair that Seaton, Taylor have created a criminal law division specifically for her. Just because she's successfully defended two murder trials, it doesn't mean she likes them! But when abrasive Hollywood movie director Robert Reeves is accused of murdering a stuntman on set, Sandy finds she can't say no when he demands her help. Robert might be an egotistical liar, but something tells Sandy he's innocent—even if no one else can see it.

In the ninth installment of New York Times best-selling author Sheldon Siegel's iconic San Francisco series, ex-spouses Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez have come a long way from their days as small-time defense attorneys. No longer working in a converted martial arts studio on the earthy side of Mission Street. Rosie is now San Francisco's Public Defender, and Mike is the head of the Felony Division. Their daughter is in college. Their son is in middle school. For the first time in years, there is a semblance of order in their lives. It doesn't last long.

It starts with a phone call Mike Daley never expected, from District Attorney Prentice Marshall Gates III, San Francisco's chief law enforcement officer and front-runner candidate for California attorney general. Friends they're not, but Gates needs Daley now - badly. He's just been arrested. A couple of hours earlier he woke up in his hotel room and found the dead body of a young male prostitute in the bed.

Defense attorney Brad Madison likes to call the shots. Normally, he gets to choose his clients. Not this time. When Walter Powell is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, property mogul Rubin Ashby asks Brad to defend him. But it's not a request; it's an order. Brad loathes Ashby; his mother lost a fortune in one of Ashby's failed property schemes. He's forced to make a deal: clear Powell's name and his mother's loss will be repaid.

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.

When Riley Schoenberg strides into family lawyer Sandy Moss’s office without knocking and coolly sits down, Sandy’s more irritated than amused. She has a client meeting to prepare for, and being interrupted by an eleven-year-old girl is not on her to-do list. But then Sandy hears Riley’s pitch, and it’s a killer one: Riley’s father’s been convicted of murdering her mother…and the oddly intimidating pre-teen will do anything to get him out of jail.

With some of the most spine-chilling scenes in modern suspense fiction, Bait guarantees the listener a roller coaster ride with a hero not afraid to cross the line. Life for narcotics detective Jack Walsh is one continuous drunken binge - until one blurry night when his car veers into an oncoming car, killing the son of Boston’s premier crime boss. Now Jack must decide if he wants to hide from D’Angelo’s vengeful compatriots or reclaim his life.

Scott Turow has written a supercharged, exquisitely suspenseful novel about a vicious triple murder and the man condemned to die for it. No other writer offers such a profound understanding of what is at stake when the state holds the power to end a man's life.

How can a girl who was raised in a trailer park be working at a top D.C. law firm? Cadence Elliott beat graduates from the country's best law schools to the job. No Ivy-League pedigree. No powerful Washington connections. She got there on merit. Cadence found her exceptional drive as a teen when she learned she could never trust her mother again, when she realized the adults who claimed to be looking out for her were liars. She wanted to make damn sure she'd never have to rely on anyone else, ever again. Becoming a lawyer meant she could be someone who stood up for the powerless.

Northern New Jersey has a new local hero on its cultural crime turf. He's Andy Carpenter, the Paterson defense attorney who can sling a quip as fast as he can outmaneuver a snarling prosecutor. Acclaimed author David Rosenfelt's first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award. Now, in this new novel, the intrepid lawyer is thrust into the spotlight where he risks becoming a media victim...of the most fatal kind.

Homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite has returned to the police force after the sensational retrial of her sister’s killer. Still scarred from that ordeal, Tracy is pulled into an investigation that threatens to end her career, if not her life. A serial killer known as the Cowboy is killing young women in cheap motels in North Seattle.

The man who brutally murdered Uncle Harry is dead. In an effort to recover from the confrontation and collect himself, Jack takes refuge on Torcello, a small island in the Venetian lagoon, to return to his writing career. Even more urgently, he wants to win back Kerry, the beautiful lawyer who rejected him after the bloody episode with Harry's assassin.

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.

Elliot Rosenzweig, a respected civic leader and philanthropist, is attending a fundraiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, the Butcher of Zamosc. Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser is convinced he is right and engages attorney Catherine Lockhart to bring Rosenzweig to justice.

In this first installment of the Brad Madison novel series, Madison finds himself defending Patrick Strickland against a mounting evidence base. Despite Strickland claiming he has no criminal connections, there are clear signs his involvement in organized crime runs deep. When the case receives national attention, the underbelly of power in LA is thrown into the limelight. Madison fights desperately to find the one piece of evidence that will prove his client's innocence. But where there's power, there's danger. The further Madison digs for the truth, the more he puts his life at risk.

As the edge of winter slices through Washington, DC, Josie Bates testifies before Congress about the Albanian blood feud that sent Hannah Sheraton and Billy Zuni fleeing for their lives while Archer reluctantly abandons a trail that has gone cold in his search for the teenagers. Determined to stay one step ahead of the authorities who want Billy back and a blood feud that will only be satisfied when he is dead, Hannah and Billy head north. There they will hunker down in the darkest corner of earth they can find and wait for the danger to pass.

Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Eastern European crime, Josie Bates testifies passionately about the brutal Albanian blood feud that has sent Hannah into hiding with Billy Zuni and Archer on a quest to find them. While Senator Patriota, the man sure to be the next president of the United States, promises his patronage, Josie isn't convinced he was even listening - but someone was.

As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and “peace walls” segregating one community from the other. But the IRA has called a ceasefire. So, it’s as good a time as any for Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke to visit the city: Monty to do a short gig in a law firm, and Brennan to reconnect with family. And it’s a good time for Brennan’s cousin Ronan to lay down arms and campaign for election in a future peacetime government. But then a man goes off a bridge on a dark, lonely road; a rogue IRA enforcer is shot; and a series of car bombs remains an unsolved crime.

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.