Legal Thriller Crime Fiction

When China's and Ruby's friend Karen Prior is mugged in a mall parking lot and dies a few days later, China begins to suspect that her friend's death was not a random assault. Karen was a filmmaker supervising a student documentary about the fifteen-year-old murder of a woman named Christine Morris and the acquittal of the man accused of the crime. Is it possible that the same person who killed Christine Morris targeted Karen?

One dark secret. One act of revenge. When Emma Joseph met her husband, David, he was a man shattered by grief. His first wife had been killed outright when her car veered off the road. Just as tragically, their six-year-old daughter mysteriously vanished from the scene of the accident. Now, six years later, Emma believes the painful years are behind them. She and David have built a new life together and have a beautiful baby son, Ollie.

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.

When lawyer Kit Chase loses her job, a three-month job with an international law team in post-conflict Kosovo seems like the perfect distraction from the boring comfort of her life—and fiancé—in New Zealand. But with her first case, hunting down the head of an organized crime group, Kit realizes the conflict in Kosovo is far from over. And she’s right in the middle of it.

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.

My name is Kate. I volunteer at a local charity - young people who have run away from home call me and I pass on messages to their loved ones, no questions asked. I don't get many phone calls, and those I do are usually short and vague, or pranks. But this morning a girl named Sophie called. I'm supposed to contact her parents to let them know their child is safe. The problem is, Sophie isn't safe. And Sophie is my daughter.

When the body of Jamal Cousin, president of the pre-eminent black fraternity at the Florida's flagship university, is discovered hogtied in the Stygian water swamps of the Suwanee River Valley, the death sets off a firestorm that threatens to rage out of control when a fellow student, Mark Towson, the president of a prominent white fraternity, is accused of the crime. Contending with rising political tensions, racial unrest, and a sensational media, Townson's defense attorney, Jack Swyteck, knows that the stakes could not be higher.

In the Missouri Ozarks, some things aren't talked about...even abuse. But prosecutor Elsie Arnold is determined to change that. When she is assigned to prosecute a high-profile incest case in which a father is accused of abusing his three young daughters, Elsie is ready to become the Ozarks' avenging angel. But as Elsie sinks her teeth into the case, everything begins to turn sour.

Julia Rodriguez and her teenage daughter, Beatriz, escaped bloodthirsty gangs, random violence, and Julia's abusive husband back in El Salvador. Arriving in Miami, mother and daughter struggled to carve their own piece of the American dream. While life in the States is hard, it is safer, until Julia rejects her boss' unwanted sexual advances. Suddenly - thanks to an "anonymous" tip to US immigration authorities - she is arrested, locked in detention with criminals, and slated for deportation. Attorney Jack Swyteck's only viable legal move to save her is asylum.

A teenage girl is boldly kidnapped from her school, minutes after her mother dropped her off. While a frenzied search begins, bringing together the entire police force of the city that never sleeps, for Detectives Baxter and Holt, this isn’t a crime like any other - it is personal. Detective Holt is faced with an inconceivable decision: Sacrifice everything he holds sacred or jeopardize the life of an innocent girl. But the man holding all the cards in this game of life and death isn’t willing to negotiate; he’s only willing to kill.

Nora's daughter, Annabelle, has disappeared, last seen on her way home from a party. Gullspång's inexperienced police are wilting under the national media spotlight - and its residents desperate for answers. Stockholm DI Charlie Lager must return home to find Annabelle and then get out of town as soon as she can. Before everyone discovers the truth about her....

On May 23, 1992, a roadside explosion killed the Palermo judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three police officers. A few weeks later judge Paolo Borsellino and five police officers were killed in the center of Palermo. These anti-mafia judges became heroes but the violence spread to the region of Bari in Puglia, where we meet a new, memorable character, Maresciallo Pietro Fenoglio, an officer of the Italian Carabinieri. Fenoglio, recently abandoned by his wife, must simultaneously deal with his personal crisis and the new gang wars raging around Bari.

In Wolf's Revenge, the fifth novel in Lachlan Smith's Shamus Award-winning series, attorney-detective Leo Maxwell seeks an exit strategy from his family's deepening entanglement with a ruthless prison-based gang. Caught between the criminals and the FBI, Leo charts his own path in defending a young woman who was manipulated into brazenly murdering a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood.

#taken in the night: They thought they were kidnapping the mistress of one of London’s most powerful gangsters. But they’ve taken the wrong woman. And crossed the wrong detective. #taken underground: Detective Max Wolfe's hunt for the missing woman takes him from New Scotland Yard’s legendary Black Museum to the glittering mansions of career criminals, from sleazy strip joints to secret sex dungeons - and to unspeakably dark deeds committed decades ago.

Spain. An ex-con breaks into a villa by the sea to steal something very precious from a safe. He will not leave without hurting someone. England. Tycoon Simon Chan asks Eric Ward to find a missing businessman. And Ward is also involved in a case involving his arch-enemy, the shady lawyer Charles Davison. Then a body washes up on a Spanish beach … Eric Ward will face the fight of his life against a professional killer inside and outside the courtroom.

An ambitious Stanford graduate, David Adams has begun a fast-track career at Austin’s most prestigious law firm. It’s a personal victory for the rising superstar - a satisfying reversal from his impoverished and despairing childhood. Now he has the life he’s always wanted: An extravagant salary, a high-rise condo, a luxury SUV, and no limit to how far he can go in the eyes of the top partners.

Alex Cross has never been on the wrong side of the law - until now. Charged with gunning down followers of his nemesis Gary Soneji in cold blood, Cross is being turned into the poster child for trigger-happy cops who think they're above the law. Cross knows it was self-defense. But will a jury see it that way? As Cross fights for his professional life and his freedom, his former partner, John Sampson, brings him a gruesome, titillating video tied to the mysterious disappearances of several young girls.

James Drinker is a bit of an oddball. A funny-looking, geeky loner, he walks into Jason Kolarich’s office one day with a preemptive concern: two women have recently been murdered, seemingly by the same killer, and Drinker thinks he will be the police’s main suspect. One woman was his ex-girlfriend, he says, and the other was a friend. He’s the only link between the victims and he has no alibi for the night of either murder - surely the police will realize it soon. Believing he’s the target of a frame-up, Drinker hires Kolarich for his defense. Something about James Drinker seems off from the start, but Kolarich doesn’t give it too much thought. Until another murder occurs....

When amiable Italian immigrant Pigeon Tony discovers that local drug dealers are pressuring his young neighbor into joining their ranks, he resolves to put an end to the crime wave before it can take over the community. Pigeon Tony knows the law isn’t always on the right side, but it takes only one person to rally a revolution.

Renowned human rights lawyer Elizabeth Maurier lies dead, her body mutilated, her killer unknown. For DI Olivia Martins and her team, it’s a mystery. For the victim’s daughter Lizzy, a poet and academic with a shaky grasp on reality, it’s a tragedy. But for Sam Williams, the man Elizabeth fired a decade ago and hasn’t spoken to since, it’s a whole new world of pain.