American Legal

Benton Marcotte is a man of many talents but with an aversion to commitment. At age 33 he's a duly qualified CPA and lawyer in New York State but for the past two years he's worked as a long-haul truck driver. The poor kid hasn't yet found a career he enjoys. Benton accepts a temporary job at his uncle's kitty litter factory in Wellsville, New York to work undercover as the company's truck driver while he tries to figure out why the plant is losing money each year. Perhaps Benton can finally put his extensive education to good use. Who knows? Maybe he'll even meet a fantastic girl in the ...

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 ...

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.

"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.

Leah Ly a driven, exceptionally talented, Chinese-American actress, working her way through Hollywood’s system, determined to make it on her own, involved with an equally driven Jewish man, discovers she has a Chinese fiancé, arranged at her birth when the Hong Kong businessman comes to LA to meet her. Life collides with life and Leah finds herself unhappy, torn, and conflicted between the love of two men she loves dearly and her heart's greatest desire, as she learns that in all things, she's the key to her happiness or unhappiness.

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.

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 ...

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.

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 potent and original examination of how the Supreme Court subverted justice and empowered the Jim Crow era. In the years following the Civil War, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery; the 14th conferred citizenship and equal protection under the law to white and black; and the 15th gave black American males the right to vote. In 1875, the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in the nation's history granted all Americans "the full and equal enjoyment" of public accommodations. Just eight years later, the Supreme Court, by an 8-1 vote, overturned the Civil Rights Act as ...

Mary DiNunzio is strong, smart, and she's got plenty of attitude. In recent years, she's become a big-time business-getter at Rosato & Associates, but the last person she expects to walk into her office is Trish Gambone, her high school rival. Trish's life has taken a horrifying turn. She's terrified of her live-in boyfriend, who's an abusive, gun-toting drug dealer for the South Philly mob. There's only one problem—Mary remembers the guy, too, and had a major crush on him.

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.

"A finely executed legal thriller that fans of John Grisham’s The Innocent Man will fall for." –BestThrillers.com In 1980s East Texas, Luther Holman, a local janitor, awaits trial for the murder of a prominent local, the same man potentially responsible for the murder of Luther's young daughter, Summer. Unexpected help arrives with a new legal aid attorney, who replaces the pliable local defender. As the trial opens, the certainty of Luther's conviction crumbles as the capable defense attorney exposes the state's falsified and contrived evidence. Determined that Luther will be convicted...

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 ...

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 ...

Equality is easy to grasp in theory but often hard to achieve in reality. In this accessible and wide-ranging work, American University law professor Robert L. Tsai offers a stirring account of how legal ideas that aren't necessarily about equality at all - ensuring fair play, behaving reasonably, avoiding cruelty, and protecting free speech - have often been used to overcome resistance to justice and remain vital today.

Vivian is a cosmopolitan Taiwanese-American tourist who often escapes her busy life in London through adventure and travel. Johnny is a 15-year-old Irish teenager living a neglected life on the margins of society. He has grown up in a family where crime is customary, violence is a necessity, and everything - and anyone - can be yours for the taking. As Vivian looks to find her calling professionally, she delights in exploring foreign countries, rolling hillsides, and new cultures. But all of that changes when...Vivian's path collides with Johnny.

Crimes and violations of the law require punishment, and our legal system is set up to punish, but what if the system was recalibrated to also weigh grounds for forgiveness? What if something like bankruptcy - a fresh start for debtors - were available to people convicted of crimes? Martha Minow explores the complicated intersection of the law, justice, and forgiveness, asking whether the law should encourage people to forgive, and when courts, public officials, and specific laws should forgive.

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 ...