American Legal

A secret project to pipe water from the wet Northwest to the arid Southwest is discovered by a young reporter and it almost gets him killed when he and his girl friend try to find the projects investors. Later, in court, he and her make history as they fight for water rights for an ancient Indian culture.

Nobody's Child traces the legal definition of "insanity" back to its inception in Victorian Britain nearly 200 years ago, from when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy, to today, when questions of race, class, and ability so often determine who is legally "insane" and who is criminally guilty. Vinocour explains how "competency" and "insanity" are creatures of a legal system, not of psychiatric reality, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has too often been a luxury of the rich and white.

Attorney Danny O’Brien thought her biggest problem was that her middle-aged widowed mother went to law school and insisted on joining Danny’s law practice. Until Danny heads to court for an uncontested divorce trial and a gun is found in her briefcase. Until the gun is linked to a murder trial in which her hotshot criminal lawyer husband represents an alleged cop killer. Until her husband is found dead, naked with a woman in a hotel room in Boston. Life can only get better. Until Danny unearths her husband’s clever secret life and starts to question whether he is alive and stalking ...

"Behind my house were 20,000 acres of woods. This was my ocean of great trees and saplings, fast streams and small lakes, ancient stone walls and tiring hills." From this opening, the stage is set for Grant Harper to go on the adventure of a lifetime, a secret trek with Jason Talbot that will change their lives forever. The quest takes them across an ice-covered forest and just when it seems they have acquired the holy grail, the location of Lone Pine, things go terribly wrong.

A severed finger. A missing person. Are they linked? Detective Amber Cooper believed in resolving cases fast. When visitors picked up a severed finger in a national monument, Detective Cooper felt that the leads were just like needles in a haystack. In addition, Amber found out that a man had gone into thin air. Amber felt that the vanished man was the key to saving lives. She risked almost everything in her pursuit of solving the mystery, though time was not on her side. Could she bring the perpetrators to justice? Just a Finger is the second book in the American Small Town Mysteries ...

Six years ago, a group of complete strangers began gathering each morning for coffee in a convenience store, The American Market, on the outskirts of Washington, DC, and a community was born. Their story is chronicled by Charlie Pratt, son of a wealthy New England family. After a legal education that left him marginally disinterested in law, Charlie moved to Washington where he lived a comfortable and solitary life until he (and his fat and affable Black Lab, Flynn) became a central player in the morning group at the Market.

Violent death of a veteran resident in the neighborhood shook everyone. Can Detective Harper Bush find the killer before anyone else is harmed? Detective Harper Bush is a meticulous detective with the Department of Police, Plano, Texas. Murder of Mrs. Tammy Jones appeared to her as a personal blow to her childhood memory of treasure hunting during Halloween for the candies in the neighborhood where she grew up with her sisters. The mystery deepens as another member of the community went missing. The missing person was Harper's English teacher. Harper’s sisters, Alice and Joan, started an ...

Thanks to a nomadic childhood, Revelle Lee is fluent in ten languages, which she puts to use at crime scenes and in courtrooms across London. Being a court interpreter is a stressful job, one that makes her privy to the most personal and often dark details of others’ lives. In the meantime, she’s close to adopting a six-year-old boy named Elliot from foster care. Revelle is determined to be the mother she never had, and to make up for a terrible mistake she made years ago.

Jimmy Johnson’s body appeared in his neighbor’s backyard long after he was dead. Can the detectives bring a joyful holiday to a mourning community? Peyton Anderson was a feisty young detective in the Police Department of Moscow, Idaho. When a half decomposed body was discovered by a long absent city home owner in his backyard as he returned home, Peyton became one of the investigators. Peyton felt helpless as it took a long time to establish the identity of the victim. Peyton spent restless nights thinking that the murderer could escape before the identity of the victim was confirmed. ...

By the early 19th century, several European nations had banned slavery, but while the United States had banned the international slave trade, slavery was still legal in the country itself. As a result, there was still a strong financial motive for merchants and slave traders to attempt to bring slaves to the Western hemisphere, and a lot of profits to be gained from successfully sneaking slaves into the American South and the Caribbean by way of locations like Havana, Cuba.

An extraordinary fiction debut: a large, stirring novel of suspense that is, at the same time, a work of brilliantly astute social observation. Publishers Weekly predicts this "will be the talk of the political in-crowd this summer," and Booklist's starred review calls it "a roman à clef with fascinating insights into the behind-the-scenes machinations of racial and power politics." Don't miss this one!

A true story of law, betrayal, and survival in Ukraine’s Wild East. The Steel Barons follows the harrowing descent of Jack Parker, a thirty-year-old American lawyer sent to Kyiv in the early 1990s to negotiate a multimillion-dollar telecom deal. It should have been a fast track to equity partnership in one of Manhattan’s most prestigious law firms. Instead, one reckless night lands him in a Soviet-era venereal disease clinic — and from there, everything begins to unravel. Abandoned by his firm, hunted by mob-connected investors, and betrayed by his own government, Jack finds himself ...

Miguel was doing time for offenses that he did not commit. Will he be the free man of honor again? Detective Alexis Kawarski of Azusa Police Department was all for catching the criminals and helping the victims of crimes. When she found a body inside the closet of Benjamin King, she was not surprised, but sad. Nobody in the neighborhood was willing to come forward to testify against Benjamin. Alexis needed to search for roundabouts as all straight paths seemed closed for her. An assistant in the office of a defense attorney tried to trade favors with her, in exchange for proving her husband...

An engineer is dead. His friend has been charged with his murder. How many lives would the conspiracy take before it is unveiled to its roots? Blake Turley grew up in a series of foster homes and joined the police force in Page, Arizona to give back to the community. The community of native Navajo people around and the city of vendors and employees of power plants was bewildered by the murder of a young engineer. The evidence pointed towards his colleague and his sole friend in the city. Blake was not convinced about all the evidence, though. The accused claimed of a deeper conspiracy that ...

Murder of Emma, the billionaire at twenty-two, threatened the town of business owners. Can the police bring justice before anyone else gets hurt? Detective Avery Hudson thought the dead body at the Crompton Gardens Park would be a routine investigation. When the dead body was identified as the body of Emma Holden, the owner of a tenth of the city real estate, then Avery felt some extra pounds on her shoulder. The entire town is watching Avery with their microscopes. The height of public attention wrecks Avery’s nerves. Investigation of Emma’s murder turns ever more complicated because ...

Lives in the city are all under attack. Can she nab the killer or the attackers before they hurl on another life? Young yet respectable Keira Jones is a detective in the Collinsville Police Department in Illinois. Each case appeared before her as a new challenge as it is difficult for others to accept that her eyes are as sharp as those of the eagles. The difficulty deepens when she is asked to take part in a joint investigation with the federal agents. To prove her smartness she always needed to move fewer steps ahead of her partner from the federal agencies. The stress pushed her on the ...

A dead bride and a missing maiden - in a small town, surrounded by loved ones. Can detectives save lives and bring the killer to justice? Detective Danielle Hall believed in the goodness in everyone. When her best friend found the dead body in the bridal suit she was about to rent for her own wedding, Danielle had no option other than finding the killer in their small town community. She discovered that one of the bride’s maids disappeared. Danielle felt that the bride was not killed because she was hated. She risked her personal relationship with her town folks to get to the bottom of ...

Veteran fashion designer Claude Macaron was killed during his own after-party following an annual fashion show celebrating Valentine’s Day. Can the city police bring justice to the artistic soul? Detective Anna Barnhurt of Moon Township Police Department, was quick in reaching conviction in nine out of ten cases. When a famous fashion designer from France was killed in the town, Detective Anna Barnhurt was the obvious choice of her supervisors to bring justice to a deceased foreigner so that the city could save some face. Many out of town suspects were hurrying to leave the town making ...

The pet doctor of the town who knew too much about the animals was murdered. Would the community come forward and stand together to take the devil? Jennifer Moore was a brilliant Detective in the East Liverpool Police Department in Ohio. The community was shaken when the body of the popular pet doctor was discovered in Beaver Creek. The prime suspect had left the country even before the discovery of the dead body. Moore was not sure if the killer would ever be back. Hatching a plan to catch the killer would further put the lives of the community members at risk. Could Moore measure her ...

In 1904 Czarist Russia, four-year-old Max witnesses the rape and murder of his mother by Russian soldiers. After the boy’s father extracts terrible revenge, the father and son escape to New York, a teeming melting pot of immigrants. Max meets a young Polish girl, Sophie, who grows into a stunningly beautiful young woman. The two fall in love but their plans are shattered when Sophie is forced to marry a local crime boss and, once again, Max must watch as the most important person in his life is taken from him.