Twenty-eight books were submitted for the 2018 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The distinguished selection committee included Dr. Hilary Green, Jini Koh, Tony Mauro, and Dr. Sena Jeter Naslund, among others.
Three finalists were chosen for the 2018 award: Exposed by Lisa Scottoline, Proof by C.E Tobisman, and Testimony by Scott Turow.
Cynthia E. Tobisman's novel Proof was awarded the 2018 prize. In Proof, Tobisman's debut-novel hacker-turned-lawyer heroine Caroline Auden returns is drawn into high-level local government intrigue when she looks into a potential elder abuse case involving her late grandmother.
Tobisman was presented with the award during a special ceremony coinciding with the Library of Congress' National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. on August 30, 2018.
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The outsider
Anthony Franze
A young Supreme Court law clerk finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a serial killer in The Outsider, a breathtaking thriller #1 New York Times bestseller James Patterson called "as authentic and suspenseful as any John Grisham novel." Things aren't going well for Grayson Hernandez. He just graduated from a fourth-tier law school, he's drowning in student debt, and the only job he can find is as a messenger. The position stings the most because it's at the Supreme Court, where Gray is forced to watch the best and the brightest—the elite group of lawyers who serve as the justices' law clerks—from the outside. When Gray intervenes in a violent mugging, he lands in the good graces of the victim: the Chief Justice of the United States. Gray soon finds himself the newest—and unlikeliest—law clerk at the Supreme Court. It's another world: highbrow debates over justice and the law in the inner sanctum of the nation's highest court; upscale dinners with his new friends; attention from Lauren Hart, the brilliant and beautiful co-clerk he can't stop thinking about. But just as Gray begins to adapt to his new life, the FBI approaches him with unsettling news. The Feds think there's a killer connected to the Supreme Court. And they want Gray to be their eyes and ears inside One First Street. Little does Gray know that the FBI will soon set its sights on him. Racing against the clock in a world cloaked in secrecy, Gray must uncover the truth before the murderer strikes again in this thrilling high-stakes story of power and revenge by Washington, D.C. lawyer-turned-author Anthony Franze.
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Proof
C. E. Tobisman
Winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. In this gripping sequel to C.E. Tobisman’s legal thriller Doubt, techie turned attorney Caroline Auden struggles to move on with her life after her last case nearly destroyed her career. Still haunted by the betrayal that forced her to leave a prestigious law firm, Caroline Auden struggles to keep her fledgling practice afloat―and her paranoia in check. When her grandmother dies, she mourns losing the only constant in her life. But grief soon turns to suspicion when she discovers her grandmother left her entire estate―including a valuable antique watch, the family’s sole heirloom’to a charity called Oasis Care. On the surface, Oasis helps society’s outcasts, like Caroline’s alcoholic, homeless uncle. But as she digs deeper, Caroline uncovers a sinister plot that sends her running for her life on the dangerous streets of Los Angeles. Plunged into a world of addicts and broken souls and operating without a phone or a computer, Caroline finds sanctuary with her uncle and a ragtag group of outcasts while building evidence for her case. As she sifts through the shadowy world of the Goliath nonprofit, Caroline is also forced to confront her own dark shadows, casting doubt on her ability―and her sanity.
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Little boy lost
J D. Trafford
A broken city, a missing young man, and a lawyer searching for truth when nobody else cares. Attorney Justin Glass’s practice, housed in a shabby office on the north side of Saint Louis, isn’t doing so well that he can afford to work for free. But when eight-year-old Tanisha Walker offers him a jar full of change to find her missing brother, he doesn’t have the heart to turn her away. Justin had hoped to find the boy alive and well. But all that was found of Devon Walker was his brutally murdered body―and the bodies of twelve other African American teenagers, all discarded like trash in a mass grave. Each had been reported missing. And none had been investigated. As simmering racial tensions explode into violence, Justin finds himself caught in the tide. And as he gives voice to the discontent plaguing the city’s forgotten and ignored, he vows to search for the killer who preys upon them.
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Testimony
Scott Turow
At the age of fifty, former prosecutor Bill ten Boom has walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his law career, his wife, Kindle County, even his country. Still, when he is tapped by the International Criminal Court--an organization charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity--he feels drawn to what will become the most elusive case of his career. Over ten years ago, in the apocalyptic chaos following the Bosnian war, an entire Roma refugee camp vanished. Now for the first time, a witness has stepped forward: Ferko Rincic claims that armed men marched the camp's Gypsy residents to a cave in the middle of the night--and then with a hand grenade set off an avalanche, burying 400 people alive. Only Ferko survived. Boom's task is to examine Ferko's claims and determinine who might have massacred the Roma. His investigation takes him from the International Criminal Court's base in Holland to the cities and villages of Bosnia and secret meetings in Washington, DC, as Boom sorts through a host of suspects, ranging from Serb paramilitaries, to organized crime gangs, to the US government itself, while also maneuvering among the alliances and treacheries of those connected to the case: Layton Merriwell, a disgraced US major general desperate to salvage his reputation; Sergeant Major Atilla Doby,a vital cog in American military operations near the camp at the time of the Roma's disappearance; Laza Kajevic, the brutal former leader of the Bosnian Serbs; Esma Czarni, Ferko's alluring barrister; and of course, Ferko himself, on whose testimony the entire case rests-and who may know more than he's telling. A master of the legal thriller, Scott Turow has returned with his most irresistibly confounding and satisfying novel yet.
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The extraditionist
Todd Merer
When the world’s most notorious cartel bosses get arrested, they call Benn Bluestone. A drug lawyer sharp enough to exploit loopholes in the system, Bluestone loves the money, the women, the action that come with his career…but working between the lines of justice and crime has taken its toll, and he desperately wants out. He’s convinced himself that only an insanely rich client can guarantee him a lavish retirement. When the New Year begins with three promising cases, Bluestone thinks he’s hit pay dirt. But then the cases link dangerously together―and to his own past. Does the mysterious drug kingpin Sombra hold the key to Bluestone’s ambitions? Or does the key open a door that could bring the entire federal justice system to a screeching halt and net Bluestone a life in jail without parole?
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Exposed : a Rosato & DiNunzio novel
Lisa Scottoline
A BATTLE FOR JUSTICE PITS PARTNER AGAINST PARTNER... Mary DiNunzio wants to represent her old friend Simon Pensiera, a sales rep who was wrongly fired by his company, but her partner Bennie Rosato represents the parent company. When she confronts Mary, explaining this is a conflict of interest, an epic battle of wills and legal strategy between the two ensues―ripping the law firm apart, forcing everyone to take sides and turning friend against friend. SOMETIMES LOYALTY CAN BE LETHAL.
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April fool
William Deverell
A new edition of the Arthur Ellis Award winning crime novel Arthur Beauchamp, the scholarly, self-doubting legend of the B.C. criminal bar, is enjoying his retirement on B.C.’s Garibaldi Island when he is dragged back to court to defend an old client. Nick “The Owl” Faloon, one of the world’s top jewel thieves, has been accused of raping and murdering a psychologist. Beauchamp has scarcely registered how unlikely it is that the rascally Faloon could commit a savage murder when his own personal life takes an abrupt turn. His new wife, Margaret Blake, organic farmer and environmental activist, has taken up residence 50 feet above ground in a tree of an old-growth forest that she is determined to save for the eagles and from the loggers. Beauchamp shuttles between Vancouver and the island, doing what he can to defend Faloon, save the forest, and rescue his wife. Part courtroom thriller, part classic whodunit, April Fool sees Deverell writing at the top of his form, with a big dollop of humour.
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A criminal defense: a legal thriller
William L. Myers Jr.
Losing the trial of his life could mean losing everything. When a young reporter is found dead and a prominent Philadelphia businessman is accused of her murder, Mick McFarland finds himself involved in the case of his life. The defendant, David Hanson, is Mick's best friend, and the victim, a TV news reporter, had reached out to Mick for legal help only hours before her death. Mick's played both sides of Philadelphia's courtrooms. As a top-shelf defense attorney and former prosecutor, he knows all the tricks of the trade. And he'll need every one of them to win. But as the trial progresses, he's disturbed by developments that confirm his deepest fears. This trial, one that already hits too close to home, may jeopardize his firm, his family-- everything. Now Mick's only way out is to mastermind the most brilliant defense he's ever spun, one that may cross every legal and moral boundary -- Provided by publisher
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Snap judgment
Marcia Clark
In the third installment of Marcia Clark’s bestselling series, attorney Samantha Brinkman’s investigation into a family’s deadly secrets is compromised by a threat from her past. When the daughter of prominent civil litigator Graham Hutchins is found with her throat slashed, the woman’s spurned ex-boyfriend seems the likely suspect. But only days later, the young man dies in what appears to be a suicide. Or was it? Now authorities are faced with a possible new crime. And their person of interest is Hutchins. After all, avenging the death of his daughter is the perfect reason to kill. If he’s as innocent as he claims, only one lawyer has what it takes to prove it: his friend and colleague Samantha Brinkman. It’s Sam’s obligation to trust her new client. Yet the deeper she digs on his behalf, the more entangled she becomes in a thicket of family secrets, past betrayals, and multiple motives for murder. To win her case, she’s prepared to bend any law and cross any boundary that stands in her way. Sam has always played by her own rules, and it’s always worked…so far. But this case cuts so deep and so personal that one false move could cost her everything.
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Beach Lawyer
Avery Duff
After five grueling years, Robert Worth is just days away from making partner at a powerful Santa Monica law firm. When a client confides in him that senior partner Jack Pierce sexually assaulted her, Robert breaks two of his mentor’s cardinal rules: Never let yourself get emotional about clients. And never make an enemy of Jack Pierce. Robert crosses Pierce and is fired on the spot, losing not only his job but also his reputation. Advised to go quietly, Robert vows revenge against the ruthless man who betrayed him. But his investigation uncovers a twisted shadow world of sex, infidelity, and deception, where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. Only one thing is clear: Pierce will go the limit to keep his secrets. This straight shooter will need to use every angle if he hopes to win. But could victory come at too high a price?
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Close to home
Robert Dugoni
While investigating the hit-and-run death of a young boy, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite makes a startling discovery: the suspect is an active-duty serviceman at a local naval base. After a key piece of case evidence goes missing, he is cleared of charges in a military court. But Tracy knows she can’t turn her back on this kind of injustice. When she uncovers the driver’s ties to a rash of recent heroin overdoses in the city, she realizes that this isn’t just a case of the military protecting its own. It runs much deeper than that, and the accused wasn’t acting alone. For Tracy, it’s all hitting very close to home. As Tracy moves closer to uncovering the truth behind this insidious conspiracy, she’s putting herself in harm’s way. And the only people she can rely on to make it out alive might be those she can no longer trust.
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The trapped girl
Robert Dugoni
In this #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, Tracy Crosswhite must first identify the victim to catch the killer. When a woman's body is discovered submerged in a crab pot in the chilly waters of Puget Sound, Detective Tracy Crosswhite finds herself with a tough case to untangle. Before they can identify the killer, Tracy and her colleagues on the Seattle PD's Violent Crimes Section must figure out who the victim is. Her autopsy, however, reveals she may have gone to great lengths to conceal her identity. So who was she running from? After evidence surfaces that their Jane Doe may be a woman who suspiciously disappeared months earlier, Tracy is once again haunted by the memory of her sister's unsolved murder. Dredging up details from the woman's past leads to conflicting clues that only seem to muddy the investigation. As Tracy begins to uncover a twisted tale of brutal betrayal and desperate greed, she'll find herself risking everything to confront a killer who won't go down without a deadly fight. Once again, New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni delivers a taut, riveting thriller in the fourth installment of his acclaimed Tracy Crosswhite series.
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A shattered circle / Kevin Egan
Kevin Egan
After an accident leaves New York City judge William Lonergan mentally impaired, his wife, Barbara, who doubles as the judge’s confidential secretary, is determined to protect his health, his career, and his reputation. Barbara and Larry Seagle, the judge’s law clerk, support Judge Lonergan enough for him to fulfill his judicial duties, keeping his true condition secret. Months pass under this exhausting routine, until suddenly Barbara finds her new way of life under siege. A private investigator needs Judge Lonergan's help in investigating the murder of a well-known lawyer in upstate New York. A bitter litigant files a grievance against the judge with the Judicial Conduct Commission. Driven by loyalty and guilt, court officer Foxx is looking into a decades-old courthouse murder to exonerate a childhood friend who is dying in prison. He hits many dead ends, until he learns that Barbara Lonergan, who worked as a stenographer long before she married the judge, likely has information about the murder victim. After the judge is attacked, Barbara decides they should leave New York City. Arriving at their summer house, Barbara believes that she and the judge are safe. She could not be more wrong. A Shattered Circle by Kevin Egan is a tensely plotted legal thriller set in New York City's iconic 60 Centre Street
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Justice delayed
Marti Green
The fifth legal thriller in the award-winning Help Innocent Prisoners Project series is Dani Trumball’s most personal case yet, as she races to stop an execution and identify the real killer. The brutal murder of sixteen-year-old Kelly Braden sends shock waves through a community―and an intellectually disabled man to jail. The only witness to Kelly’s murder is the five-year-old cousin she was babysitting. The young girl names their neighbor, Jack Osgood, as the bat-wielding criminal. Two decades later, Osgood faces execution. Defense Attorney Dani Trumball and her partner, investigator Tommy Noorland, are summoned to the Georgia prison where Osgood is on death row. With no friends or family of his own, there is no one left to believe Jack didn’t kill Kelly but Dani and her Help Innocent Prisoners Project. With a mentally disabled son of her own, defending Osgood could be her most heartrending case yet. While fighting a system that blocks her attempts to overturn his conviction, Dani must race to identify the real killer before Osgood’s time runs out―and the murderer strikes again.
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The edge of innocence
David P. Miraldi
The Edge of Innocence is a work of historical fiction based on the 1964 murder trial of Casper Bennett, a man accused of drowning his wife in a bathtub of scalding water in Lorain, Ohio. Bennett's sensational trial pitted an aggressive, mercurial county prosecutor against the author's father, a civil trial attorney who had never before defended anyone for murder. The book not only recreates the tension and excitement of this courtroom battle, but also highlights the uncertain edge that often divides guilt from innocence.The author was ten years old when he answered the phone late at night when Bennett called his father from jail, seeking his legal representation. Forty years later and long after his father's death, the author found the Bennett file in the bottom of his mother's closet. From the moment he began reading the papers, the long-forgotten drama cast a spell on him. As he uncovered more and more of the facts, the story he had known as a child disappeared, replaced by one far different.
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Dead certain : a novel
Adam Mitzner
Ella Broden is living a double life. By day, Ella works as a buttoned-up attorney on some of the city’s most grueling cases. By night, she pursues her passion for singing in the darkest clubs of Manhattan. No one knows her secret, not even Charlotte, the younger sister she practically raised. But it seems she’s not the only one in the family with something to hide. When Charlotte announces she’s sold her first novel, Ella couldn’t be more thrilled…until she gets a call that her sister’s gone missing. Ella starts investigating with the help of Detective Gabriel Velasquez, an old flame in the NYPD, and what she finds is shocking. If art imitates life, then her sister’s novel may contain details of her real-life affairs. And any one of her lovers could be involved in her disappearance. Desperate to bring Charlotte home, Ella works through her list of suspects, matching fictitious characters with flesh-and-blood men. But will it be too late to save the sister she only thought she knew?
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Al-Tounsi : a novel
Anton Piatigorsky
The powerful debut novel by Anton Piatigorsky. How do the personal lives of Supreme Court Justices affect their decisions? Al-Tounsi tells the behind-the-scenes story of U.S. Supreme Court Justices as they consider a landmark case involving the rights of detainees held in an overseas U.S. military base. Inspired by a true case from 2008 addressing Guantanamo Bay, the fictional lawsuit of Al-Tounsi v. Shaw pits Majid Al-Tounsi, an Egyptian prisoner, against the President of the United States. It challenges U.S. laws that apply to non-citizens under wartime circumstances and the extent of executive power. As the controversial case maneuvers through the minds and hands of the Justices, the novel explores in detail how the personal life dramas, career rivalries, and political sympathies of these judicial titans blend with their philosophies to create the most important legal decisions of our time.
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Justice burning
Scott Pratt
Former defense attorney Darren Street is desperately trying to put his life back together after spending two years in a maximum-security prison for a murder he didn’t commit. He’s rebuilding his law practice, reconnecting with his son, and falling more deeply in love with his girlfriend, fellow attorney Grace Alexander. But the past casts a long shadow, and for Street, there’s no outrunning it. Tormented by nightmares and violent mood swings, Street is seeking treatment for PTSD when a new trauma shakes his world: his mother is killed in an explosion, but the police believe Street was the intended target. Payback from an old enemy, or the calling card of a deadly new foe? Whoever’s behind it, Street begins to lose his grip on reality and decides to take matters in his own hands. And the law won’t stop him from revenge. Justice has a new name: Darren Street.
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Shining city
Tom Rosenstiel
Peter Rena is a “fixer.” He and his partner, Randi Brooks, earn their living making the problems of the powerful disappear. They get their biggest job yet when the White House hires them to vet the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Judge Roland Madison is a legal giant, but he’s a political maverick, with views that might make the already tricky confirmation process even more difficult. Rena and his team go full-bore to cover every inch of the judge’s past, while the competing factions of Washington D.C. mobilize with frightening intensity: ambitious senators, garrulous journalists, and wily power players on both sides of the aisle. All of that becomes background when a string of seemingly random killings overlaps with Rena’s investigation, with Judge Madison a possible target. Racing against the clock to keep his nominee safe, the President satisfied, and the political wolves at bay, Rena learns just how dangerous Washington’s obsession with power—how to get it and how to keep it—can be. Written with razor-sharp political insight and heart-pounding action, Shining City is a hugely impressive debut that announces a major new talent.
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The Killdeer connection
Tom Swyers
Hang out with the wrong friend, end up a wanted terrorist . . . Worn-out lawyer David Thompson is on a mission to prove his innocence. Falsely accused of murdering his friend, he must desert his family and seek out a secret society of bird-watchers in a desperate search for the truth. When the feds talk of adding a terrorism charge, the death penalty looms and Thompson is on the run from both the law and the real killer. With Thompson out of the way, his family becomes a target. Thrust on a riveting thrill ride through the oil fields of North Dakota, Thompson's quest to save his own skin explodes into a race to save both his family and the nation from a deadly tidal wave of terror. But he may be too late . . . Don't miss this action-packed, realistic, and thought-provoking legal thriller filled with mystery, family secrets, conspiracy, financial intrigue, captivating characters, deception, prejudice, greed, courtroom drama, and a bird! The standalone prequel to The Killdeer Connection in the Lawyer David Thompson Series is Saving Babe Ruth. Check it out!
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A time to stand
Robert Whitlow
Adisa Johnson is living her dream of practicing law with a prestigious firm in downtown Atlanta. Then a split-second mistake changes the course of her career. Left with no other options, Adisa returns to her hometown where a few days earlier a white police officer shot an unarmed black teen who is now lying comatose in the hospital. Adisa is itching to jump into the fight as a special prosecutor but feels pulled to do what she considers unthinkable as a young black woman—defend the officer. As the court case unfolds, everyone in the small community must confront their own prejudices. Caught in the middle, Adisa also tries to chart her way along a path complicated by her budding relationship with a charismatic young preacher who leads the local movement demanding the police officer answer for his crime. In a small Georgia town where racial tensions run high and lives are at stake, can one lawyer stand up for justice against the tides of prejudice?
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Race to judgment
Frederic Block
Fast paced legal thriller and powerful urban drama from Frederic Block, the Brooklyn based federal judge who sentenced Peter Gotti of the Gambino crime family. Based partly on fact and seething racial tensions and political corruption, it doesn't get any more "New York" than Race to Judgment! Race to Judgment is a "reality-fiction" debut novel loosely based on a number of high-profile cases handled by its author, a federal trial court judge, over his 23 years on the federal bench in Brooklyn-such as the Crown Heights riots and the Peter Gotti trial. It tracks the rise of the fictional African-American civil rights protagonist Ken Williams (in real life, the recently deceased Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson) from his days as an Assistant United States Attorney through his meteoric rise to unseat the long-term, corrupt Brooklyn DA because of a spate of phony convictions against black defendants, including another one of the judge's real cases (JoJo Jones in the book) for the murder of a Hasidic rabbi. Williams' dramatic courtroom antics (with the aid of his colorful private eye) results in JoJo's exoneration after 16 years behind bars. In addition, Williams defends a young black guidance counselor accused of killing the rabbi's son many years ago, and champions the cause of a young Hasidic woman raped by her father. As a hobby, Williams plays jazz piano and writes country songs written by the author-which are reproduced in the book and can be heard on e-books and the Internet.
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Before we were yours : a novel
Lisa Wingate
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
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Fractured justice
James A. Ardaiz
When investigators are called to a meticulously staged crime scene on a canal bank in rural Central California―the latest in a series of murders that have killed three young women in one month―they realize a dangerous serial killer is on the loose, someone who is highly adept at hiding his tracks. And before the murderer can be brought to justice, young assistant DA Matt Jamison will lose his illusions about what justice means. As a fourth victim is abducted and investigators race against time, Jamison must cope with a sophisticated and elusive killer, a politically-minded sheriff eager to claim credit and spread blame, mounting pressure to win a high-profile trial, and his own conscience as part of the machinery of justice. A gripping, fast-paced, and coldly realistic thriller that tracks a killer from the crime scene to the courtroom and to a devastating aftermath, Fractured Justice is a stunning debut crime novel from a former investigator, prosecutor, and judge who intimately knows the real world of attorneys, detectives, and men who kill.
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It happened at two in the morning
Alan Hruska
In this fast-moving, fast-talking legal thriller, brash young New York lawyer Tom Weldon happens to witness the 2 a.m. murder of a business tycoon and finds himself held captive with the murdered man’s arrogant daughter. The two escape and go on the run, trying to stay one step ahead of a hitwoman while Tom unravels the mystery behind the violence. Alan Hruska is the author of the novels Pardon the Ravens and Wrong Man Running, the writer of several plays, and the writer and director of multiple films, most recently The Man on Her Mind. A former trial lawyer, he is a New York native and a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School.
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Bum luck
Paul J. Levine
"Second-string linebacker turned trial lawyer Jake Lassiter squares off against his toughest, most unpredictable adversary yet: himself. The downward spiral begins when Jake's client, Miami Dolphins' running back Thunder Thurston, is cleared of murdering his wife. Jake didn't expect to win, didn't want to win, since he is sure his client is guilty. When Thurston walks free, Lassiter vows to seek his own kind of justice. Street justice. Vigilante justice. Law partners Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord can't believe their friend has become so deeply, inexplicably obsessed with killing Thurston. Convinced Jake's unhinged behavior is due to concussive brain injuries suffered during his pro football career, they beg him to seek treatment. But as Lassiter's raging fixation on vengeance grows, Solomon and Lord wonder if they're too late to help. Is it game over for Jake's career ... and his life?"-- From back cover
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Mississippi blood
Greg Iles
The endgame is at hand for Penn Cage, his family, and the enemies bent on destroying them in this revelatory volume in the epic trilogy set in modern-day Natchez, Mississippi—Greg Iles’s epic tale of love and honor, hatred and revenge that explores how the sins of the past continue to haunt the present. Shattered by grief and dreaming of vengeance, Penn Cage sees his family and his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised, and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Most terrifying of all, Dr. Cage seems bent on self-destruction. Despite Penn's experience as a prosecutor in major murder trials, his father has frozen him out of the trial preparations--preferring to risk dying in prison to revealing the truth of the crime to his son. During forty years practicing medicine, Tom Cage made himself the most respected and beloved physician in Natchez, Mississippi. But this revered Southern figure has secrets known only to himself and a handful of others. Among them, Tom has a second son, the product of an 1960s affair with his devoted African American nurse, Viola Turner. It is Viola who has been murdered, and her bitter son--Penn's half-brother--who sets in motion the murder case against his father. The resulting investigation exhumes dangerous ghosts from Mississippi's violent past. In some way that Penn cannot fathom, Viola Turner was a nexus point between his father and the Double Eagles, a savage splinter cell of the KKK. More troubling still, the long-buried secrets shared by Dr. Cage and the former Klansmen may hold the key to the most devastating assassinations of the 1960s. The surviving Double Eagles will stop at nothing to keep their past crimes buried, and with the help of some of the most influential men in the state, they seek to ensure that Dr. Cage either takes the fall for them, or takes his secrets to an early grave. Unable to trust anyone around him--not even his own mother--Penn joins forces with Serenity Butler, a famous young black author who has come to Natchez to write about his father's case. Together, Penn and Serenity battle to crack the Double Eagles and discover the secret history of the Cage family and the South itself, a desperate move that risks the only thing they have left to gamble: their lives. Mississippi Blood is the enthralling conclusion to a breathtaking trilogy seven years in the making--one that has kept readers on the edge of their seats. With piercing insight, narrative prowess, and a masterful ability to blend history and imagination, Greg Iles illuminates the brutal history of the American South in a highly atmospheric and suspenseful novel that delivers the shocking resolution his fans have eagerly awaited.
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Whipped
William Deverell
Now in paperback! Montreal journalist Lou Sabatino, under witness protection after nearly being gunned down by the Mafia, is sucked into the quirky world of a conniving Russian dominatrix who has secretly recorded herself putting the whip to the bare bottom of a high-ranking federal cabinet minister. It’s the scoop of the century, but too hot a potato ― if Lou breaks the story, he risks exposing himself to the mercies of the Mafia. Instead, he shows the video to Green Party leader Margaret Blake. The video is leaked, and Margaret is sued by the minister for $50 million. Enter Arthur Beauchamp, Margaret’s husband and famed criminal lawyer, who had found ― or so he hoped ― blissful retirement on idyllic Garibaldi Island on the West Coast. But now he’s representing the woman he loves while tormented by fears that she’s embroiled in an affair. Whether you’re encountering Arthur Beauchamp for the first time or have followed him from his first case, the paperback release of award-winning William Deverell’s Whipped is not to be missed.