Central Kansas Library System

John Grisham's first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet. In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A's, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits--...

Court-appointed lawyer Jake Brigance puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line to defend a sixteen-year-old suspect who is accused of killing a local deputy and is facing the death penalty. Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in...

Sweetheart roses -- the traditional gift of lovers. Yet they had been an important clue in the murder 10 years ago of strikingly beautiful Suzanne Reardon, whose husband, Skip, is now serving a life sentence for that murder. Kerry McGrath had only begun to work in the county prosecutor's office at the time of the infamous "Sweetheart Murder Case," yet she remembers being impressed by both the ability her new boss, Frank Green, displayed in successfully...

The life of a ten-year-old girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. Until her black father acquires an assault rifle--and takes justice into his own hands.

Pete Banning was Clanton's favorite son, a returning war hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning in 1946, he rose early, drove into town, walked into the church, and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell. As if the murder wasn't shocking enough, it was even more baffling that Pete's only statement about it - to the sheriff, to his...

"In this exciting thriller from Mary Higgins Clark, the #1 New York Times bestselling 'Queen of Suspense,' a news reporter tries to find her birth mother just as she is assigned to cover the high-profile trial of a woman accused of murdering her wealthy husband. Television journalist Delaney Wright is on the brink of stardom after she begins covering a sensational murder trial for the six p.m. news. She should be thrilled, yet her growing desire to...

In Ohio, a school teacher accused of murdering a pregnant student appeals to lawyer Tony Lord to defend him. For Lord it will be a tricky business. As a youth he was a suspect in the murder of a local girl, a crime never solved, and the town has not forgotten. By the author of The Final Judgment.

Relates the stories of two innocent men who were wrongly accused and convicted of crimes due largely to the legally condoned failures perpetrated by invalid forensic science and institutional racism. --Publisher. "A shocking and deeply reported account of the persistent plague of institutional racism and junk forensic science in our criminal justice system, and its devastating effect on innocent lives. After two three-year-old girls were raped and...