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Legal Fiction
A civil action
by Harr, Jonathan
Described as "a page-turner filled with greed, duplicity, heartache, and bare-knuckle legal brinksmanship" by The New York Times, A Civil Action is the searing, compelling tale of a legal system gone awry--one in which greed and power fight an unending struggle against justice. Yet it is also the story of how one man can ultimately make a difference. Representing the bereaved parents, the unlikeliest of heroes emerges: a young, flamboyant Porsche-driving lawyer who hopes to win millions of dollars and ends up nearly losing everything, including his sanity. With an unstoppable narrative power reminiscent of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, A Civil Action is an unforgettable reading experience that will leave the reader both shocked and enlightened.
An innocent client
by Pratt, Scott
A preacher is stabbed to death in a Tennessee motel, and the suspect is a strip-club waitress. Defense attorney Joe Dillard is sure the vulnerable Angel is not capable of killing anyone. What Dillard doesn't count on are the others drawn into the storm of this stunning crime. Original.
Billy Budd and other tales
by Melville, Herman
Featured in this rich collection are "Billy Budd," Melville's posthumously published novella; a chapter from Melville's masterpiece, "Moby-Dick;" and the short stories The Piazza, The Bell-Tower, and Bartleby, along with a new Introduction. Revised reissue.
Bleak house
by Dickens, Charles
The complex story of a notorious law-suit in which love and inheritance are set against the classic urban background of 19th-century London, where fog on the river, seeping into the very bones of the characters, symbolizes the corruption of the legal system and the society which supports it.
Bring up the bodies : a novel
by Mantel, Hilary
The sequel to Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?
Crime and punishment
by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
One of the world’s greatest novels, Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder and its consequences—an unparalleled tale of suspense set in the midst of nineteenth-century Russia’s troubled transition to the modern age.
In the slums of czarist St. Petersburg lives young Raskolnikov, a sensitive, intellectual student. The poverty he has always known drives him to believe that he is exempt from moral law. But when he puts this belief to the test, he suffers unbearably. Crime and punishment, the novel reminds us, grow from the same seed.
Defending Jacob : a novel
by Landay, William
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney for two decades. He is respected. Admired in the courtroom. Happy at home with the loves of his life: his wife, Laurie, and their teenage son, Jacob. Then Andy's quiet suburb is stunned by a shocking crime: a young boy stabbed to death in a leafy park. And an even greater shock: The accused is Andy's own son--shy, awkward, mysterious Jacob.
Judgment : a novel
by Finder, Joseph
New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder returns with an explosive new thriller about a female judge and the one personal misstep that could lead to her--and her family's--undoing. It was nothing more than a one-night stand. Juliana Brody, a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in consideration for the federal circuit, maybe someday the highest court in the land. At a conference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and in a moment of weakness has an unforgettable night with him. They part with an explicit understanding that this must never happen again. But back home in Boston, it becomes clear that this was no random encounter. The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a case she's presiding over--a sex-discrimination case that's received national attention. Juliana discovers that she's been entrapped, her night of infidelity captured on video. Strings are being pulled in high places, a terrifying unfolding conspiracy that will turn her life upside down. But soon it becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy. In the end, turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are.
My sister's grave
by Dugoni, Robert
Tracy Crosswhite has spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House — a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder — is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers
Old filth
by Gardam, Jane
Sir Edward Feathers has had a brilliant career, from his early days as a lawyer in Southeast Asia, where he earned the nickname Old Filth (FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong) to his final working days as a respected judge at the English bar. Yet through it all he has carried with him the wounds of a difficult childhood. Now an eighty-year-old widower living in comfortable seclusion in Dorset, Feathers is finally free from the regimen of work and the sentimental scaffolding that has sustained him throughout his life. He slips back into the past with ever mounting frequency and intensity, and on the tide of these vivid, lyrical musings, Feathers approaches a reckoning with his own history. Not all the old filth, it seems, can be cleaned away.
Sycamore Row
by Grisham, John
A Time to Kill is one of the most popular novels of our time. Now we return to that famous courthouse in Clanton as Jake Brigance once again finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial-a trial that will expose old racial tensions and force Ford County to confront its tortured history.
Testimony
by Turow, Scott
In the bestselling tradition of Presumed Innocent--the 1987 debut novel that made him "one of the major writers in America" (NPR)--comes what may be Scott Turow's best thriller yet... Bill ten Boom has walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his career, his wife, Kindle County, even his country. Still, when he is tapped to examine the disappearance of an entire Gypsy refugee camp--unsolved for ten years--he feels drawn to what will become the most elusive case of his career. In order to uncover what happened during the apocalyptic chaos after the Bosnian War, Boom must navigate a host of suspects ranging from Serb paramilitaries to organized crime gangs to the U.S. government, while also maneuvering among the alliances and treacheries of those connected to the case: Morgan Merriwell, a disgraced U.S. Major General; Ferko Rincic, the massacre's sole survivor; and Esma Czarni, an alluring barrister with secrets to protect. A master of the legal thriller, Scott Turow has returned with his most irresistibly confounding and satisfying novel yet.
The children act : a novel
by McEwan, Ian
Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts. But Fiona's professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. His departure leaves her adrift, wondering whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability; whether it was not contempt and ostracism she really fears. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy whose parents will not permit a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses. But Jack doesn't leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case--as well as her crumbling marriage--tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page
The firm
by Grisham, John
When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his brother Ray--doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail--already knew. You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch's firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice--if he wants to live.
The jailhouse lawyer
by Patterson, James
A young lawyer takes on the judge who is destroying her hometown--and ends up in jail herself. In picture-perfect Erva, Alabama, the most serious crimes are misdemeanors. Speeding tickets. Shoplifting. Contempt of court. Then why is the jail so crowded? And why are so few prisoners released? There's only one place to learn the truth behind these incriminating secrets. Sometimes the best education a lawyer can get is a short stretch of hard time.
The judge's list
by Grisham, John
Lacy Stoltz is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, and ready for a change. Then she meets Jeri Crosby, whose father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with, and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims. Suspicion is easy-- proof seems impossible. The man is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement-- he is a judge in Florida-- under Lacy's jurisdiction. How can Lacy pursue him, without becoming the next name on his list?
The law of innocence
by Connelly, Michael
Defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is charged with murder and can't make the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge. Mickey elects to defend himself and must strategize and build his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles, all the while looking over his shoulder, as an officer of the court he is an instant target. Mickey knows he's been framed. Now, with the help of his trusted team, he has to figure out who has plotted to destroy his life and why. Then he has to go before a judge and jury and prove his innocence
The missing piece
by Lescroart, John T.
No one mourned when DA Wes Farrell put Paul Riley in prison for the rape and murder of his girlfriend. And no one is happy to see him when he's released after uncovered evidence pinned the crime on someone else. In fact, Riley soon turns up murdered. To the cops, it's straightforward: the father of Riley's dead girlfriend killed the former prisoner. Farrell, now practicing law with Dismas Hardy, agrees to represent the defendant--Doug Rush--and is left in the dust when his client suddenly vanishes. The search takes PI Abe Glitsky through a hall of mirrors populated by wounded parents, crooked cops, cheating spouses, and vigilantes.
The tenth justice
by Meltzer, Brad
Fresh from Yale Law School, Ben Addison has just landed one of the most coveted positions in the field of law--a Supreme Court clerkship. After inadvertently revealing the confidential outcome of an upcoming decision to the wrong person, Ben enlists the aid of his housemates and his co-clerk, Lisa, to trap a blackmailer. By pitting co-worker against co-worker, roommate against roommate, "The Tenth Justice" keeps one question ringing in readers' heads--whom can you trust?
The vendetta defense
by Scottoline, Lisa
Lawyer Judy Carrier takes the case of her career when an elderly pigeon racer named Anthony Lucia is arrested for the murder of his lifelong enemy, Angelo Coluzzi. "Pigeon Tony," as he's known to all his South Philly neighbors, confesses he killed Coluzzi because of a vendetta begun more than fifty years ago, a blood feud that has brought great tragedy to Pigeon Tony's life.
Theodore Boone : kid lawyer
by Grisham, John
In the small city of Strattenburg, there are many lawyers, and though he's only thirteen years old, Theo Boone thinks he's one of them. Theo knows every judge, policeman, court clerk--and a lot about the law. He dreams of being a great trial lawyer, of a life in the courtroom.
To kill a mockingbird
by Lee, Harper
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.
While justice sleeps : a novel
by Abrams, Stacey
Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together--excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn--the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases--has slipped into a coma, Avery's life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Justice Wynn has left instructions for her to serve as his legal guardian and power of attorney. Plunged into an explosive role she never anticipated, Avery finds that Justice Wynn had been secretly researching one of the most controversial cases before the court--a proposed merger between an American biotech company and an Indian genetics firm, which promises to unleash breathtaking results in the medical field. She also discovers that Wynn suspected a dangerously related conspiracy that infiltrates the highest power corridors of Washington.