Key Witness


J.F. Freedman - 1997
    Against the advice of his partners and the wishes of his wife, Wyatt takes on a seemingly unwinnable case: the defense of Marvin White, a young black man with a criminal record who has been accused of seven vicious rape-murders. With the city on the edge of panic, all odds are against White's beating the rap - especially when he is identified at the scene of the latest slaying. The trial will exact a price higher than even Wyatt knows. With the State's entire case resting on the airtight testimony of one key witness, he must assemble his own arsenal of unbeatable legal weapons. His most powerful ally is a black drug dealer who has his own shadowy reasons for offering to help clear White. As he plays for the highest stakes of all in a charged arena where class lines are drawn in blood, sex is used to distort the truth, and erupting racial tensions threaten to divide the city, Wyatt realizes that this is a case that goes beyond one man's innocence or guilt. Forced to question his own hidden motives as his faith and loyalty are put to the ultimate test, he struggles to discover exactly where true justice lies.

The List


Steve Martini - 1997
    Gable Cooper has penned a novel to kill for. Six million dollars in book and film rights are looming just off the table for this unknown author. But there is a problem: Gable Cooper doesn't exist. Abby Chandlis is an attorney turned novelist and the creator of Gable Cooper. In an age when glamour, not grammar, is often the secret to selling books, Abby has an intriguing plan to keep her writing career alive: find a charismatic male face to pose as the phantom author for the knock-dead thriller she has written. Jack Jermaine is a man with dangerous good looks and a shadowy past. Trained by the military to kill, his obsession is to pen a blockbuster book. He has a trunk filled with rejected manuscripts and a gnawing problem that has turned him bitter: Jack can't write. Desperate to find a man to play the role of Gable Cooper, Abby is about to give up when Jack forces his way into her life. Reluctantly she is convinced that Jack's humor and looks will clinch success for her novel. She uses her legal wits and makes a deal with the devil. Jack becomes Gable Cooper. When Jack is propelled into the orbit of celebrity, Abby finds herself at once seduced and trapped by her own creation. Success turns to terror.The story careens from the Pacific Northwest to New York City and finally through the islands of the Caribbean as Abby races for her life to the one person she can trust--the one person who can prove to the world that she wrote the novel, and put an end to the nightmare that was once her dream, the dream of making The List.

After Dark


Phillip Margolin - 1995
    Reynold's client - and the chief suspect - is none other than the icy but celebrated prosecutor Abigail Griffen, the Justice's estranged wife. Tracy's research plunges her into a web of betrayal and revenge, of secret deals and hidden passions. At the heart of the case lies a twisted truth - and when the verdict comes in, she will discover that nothing is as it seems...after dark.

The First Counsel


Brad Meltzer - 2001
    To protect her, the lawyer admits to something he shouldn't. So begin the problems and she may have to do something she shouldn't.

Speaking In Tongues


Jeffery Deaver - 1995
    One seeking only peace. The other, violence." Tate Collier, once one of the country's finest trial lawyers, is trying to forget his past. Now a divorced gentleman farmer, land developer, and community advocate in rural Virginia, he's regrouping from some disastrous mistakes in the realms of love and the law. But controversy -- and danger -- seem to have an unerring hold on Tate. Even as he struggles to rebuild his life, his alter ego is plotting his demise.Aaron Matthews, a brilliant psychologist, has turned his talents away from curing patients to far deadlier goals. He's targeted Tate, Tate's ex-wife, Bett, and their estranged daughter, Megan, for unspeakable revenge. Matthews, ruthless and hell-bent, will destroy anything that inhibits his plans. When their daughter disappears, Tate and Bett reunite in a desperate, heart-pounding attempt to find her and to stop Matthews, a psychopath whose gift of a glib tongue and talent for coercion are as dangerous as knives and guns. Featuring an urgent race against the clock, gripping details of psychological manipulation, and the brilliant twists and turns that are trademark Deaver, "Speaking in Tongues" delivers the suspense punch that has made this author a bestseller. It will leave you speechless.

Inadmissible Evidence


Philip Friedman - 1993
    And he's not about to let millionaire real-estate tycoon and community hero Roberto Morales slip out of a murder charge--not again. Morales is being retried for the rape and murder of his mistress, Mariah Dodge. Estrada knows he needs a miracle to nail a conviction. But his sweat, pain, and emotional investment lead him to a gut wrenching possibility: the man he is trying so hard to convict may, in fact, be innocent. His life and his career hanging in the balance, Estrada struggles toward the truth. What he finds is...inadmissible evidence....

A Certain Justice


John Lescroart - 1995
    He failed, and now, thanks to a deceptive news photo taken during the melee, he is wanted for the murder himself-and the real culprits have threatened his life if he says a word.As riots rage and politicians posture, Lieutenant Abe Glitsky finds himself under pressure to bring Shea in at all costs. And as respect for the law crumbles-even among those sworn to uphold it-true justice is the only thing that can prevent the death of another innocent man.

Total Control


David Baldacci - 1996
    A husband she loves. A job at which she excels, and a cherished young daughter. Then, as a plane plummets into the Virginia countryside, everything changes. And suddenly there is no one whom Sidney Archer can trust. Jason Archer is a rising young executive at Triton Global, the world's leading technology conglomerate. Determined to give his family the best of everything, Archer has secretly entered into a deadly game of cat and mouse. He is about to disappear - leaving behind a wife who must sort out his lies from his truths, an aircrash investigation team that wants to know why the plane he was ticketed on suddenly fell from the sky, and a veteran FBI agent who wants to know it all. From Seattle to Washington, D.C., from New Orleans to Maine, the hunt for Jason Archer follows a trail as complex as the world he lived and worked in - a world of enormously powerful computers, a multimillion-dollar takeover deal, titanic financial standoffs, artificial intelligence, and the Internet. With brilliant minds colliding, ruthless men waging battles of intimidation, rainmakers going toe-to-toe with killers, and security specialists making a fortune trying to plug the holes, the startling truth behind Jason Archer's disappearance explodes into a sinister plot with the murder of the country's single most powerful individual. And soon Archer's wife, Sidney, aided by the relentless and sharp-eyed FBI agent Lee Sawyer, will plunge straight into the violence that is leaving behind a trail of dead bodies and shocking, exposed secrets...

Fatal Tide


Iris Johansen - 2003
    Marine researcher Melis Nemid is treading dangerous water—and she’s about to be dragged under. Melis knows something that has already caused one oceanographer to disappear from the face of the earth . . . and that’s only part of a past torn by violence and betrayal. She thought she had put that past behind her when she arrived at her Caribbean island home to research dolphin behavior. But Melis’s peace—and her life—are about to be shattered by a savage killer who is cutting a path of destruction and death that leads directly to her. Only one person can save her—a man who claims to be a fellow oceanographer. But what this enigmatic stranger really wants, Melis may not discover until it’s too late. Because whoever is after her knows her fears intimately. And soon Melis will be forced to relive them all over again. Except for the final nightmare—the one she cannot possibly survive.

See How They Run


James Patterson - 1979
    David Strauss's parents is attacked by gunmen during a glittering party. As he watches helplessly, his wife is murdered. In Los Angeles, Strauss's brother is killed during the Academy Award ceremonies. In Manhattan, his past sweetheart, Alix Rothchild, is running for her life. Dr. David Strauss is soon obsessed with finding the explosive secret behind the murders of his family members. His dangerous odyssey takes him across Europe, and finally to the Olympics, where one of the most shattering surprises in suspense fiction will take place.

The 500


Matthew Quirk - 2012
    Their specialty: pulling strings and peddling influence for the five hundred most powerful people inside the Beltway, the men and women who really run Washington -- and by extension the country, and the world. The namesake of the firm, Henry Davies, knows everyone who matters; more importantly, he knows their secrets. Davies' experience goes back 40 years -- he worked for Lyndon Johnson, jumped shipped to Nixon, then put out his own shingle as the Hill's most cut-throat and expensive fixer. Now he's looking for a protégé to tackle his most high-stakes deal yet, and Mike fits the bill. Quickly pulled into a seductive, dangerous web of power and corruption, Mike struggles to find his way out. But how do you save your soul when you've made a deal with the devil?

Dark Lady


Richard North Patterson - 1999
    Once the dead man was an honest lawyer. Now Stella Marz stares at the body of her former lover, hanging from a doorway in a gruesome tableau.For Stella Marz, the search for Jack Novak's killer leads into another bizarre homicide case, back through her own past and through the city where she was born and where now--a good Catholic girl turned career woman--she is in crisis. Somewhere in this city a hidden alliance of big money, big plans, and dark secrets is fueling a great American revival. And somehow Stella Marz will bring the darkness into the light--no matter what it reveals, no matter who it destroys. . . .

Paranoia


Joseph Finder - 2004
    But when corporate security catches up with Adam Cassidy, a low ambition junior staffer at the high-tech behemoth, they call it something else: embezzlement, to the tune of nearly $80 grand.Ruthless CEO Nick Wyatt is impressed by Adam's scheming, and offers him one way out-take on the role of a rising corporate hotshot and infiltrate Wyatt's rival, Trion Systems. His mission is to get close to Trion's legendary founder Jock Goddard, and his ultra-secret "Project Aurora," and report back to Wyatt.With Wyatt pulling the strings and a dramatically improved identity, Adam is set up as Trion's new boy genius. Suddenly, he's got a sweet new Porsche, a closet full of $1,500 suits, and even a lovely lady who thinks he's a dream. But it's all just a mirage, because Adam is about to learn that nothing is what it seems and that it isn't paranoia...everyone is out to get him...

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume II


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1986
    Watson has faithfully recorded Holmes’s feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the thrilling The Adventure of the Red Circle and the twelve baffling adventures from The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes.Conan Doyle’s incomparable tales bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where for more than forty years Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time.

The Crush


Sandra Brown - 2002
    Notorious hit man Ricky Lozada is on trial and Dr. Rennie Newton is on his jury. She soon delivers a verdict of not guilty - and gains a new admirer. But days after Lozada's release, one of Rennie's professional rivals is brutally murdered. Although Lozada's dark shadow looms over the case, Rennie becomes the prime suspect... while Lozada stalks her, growing more obsessed with having her. She forms an uneasy alliance with Wick Threadgill, a rogue detective with his own personal vendetta against Lozada. Wick has nothing to lose by confronting a killer who, like the prize scorpions he treasures, strikes so quickly Rennie may never see it coming.