American Legal

Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with "separate but equal", created remarkably little stir when the justices announced their near-unanimous decision on May 18, 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the 19th century, whose outcome embraced and protected segregation, and whose reverberations are still felt into the 21st. Separate spans a striking range of characters and landscapes, bound together by the defining issue of their time and ours - race and equality.

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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.

Prosecutor Justine Boucher has only asked for the death penalty once, in a brutal murder case. In doing so, she put her own life on the line. Because, if the convicted are later found innocent, the lawyer who requested the execution will be sentenced to death. Justine had no doubt that the man she sent to the chair was guilty. Until now. Presented with evidence that could prove his innocence, Justine must find out the truth before anyone else does. Her life depends on it.

Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in United States history, from the government's 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn't changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City's Chief Medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a Black man in police custody was a homicide.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

What terrible secrets will Tyler Matthews and his star lawyers discover within the forbidden sanctuary on the mysterious, sacred planet Adao-2? Can the legal team from Matthews Interstellar Industries learn the truth in time to save M-double-I’s century-long quest to open Jump Gate Omega, bridge the 2.5 million light years to the Andromeda galaxy, and prevent economic ruin and war in the Milky Way?

Two African-American attorneys, the best of friends, find themselves opposing council in the legal battle for African-American slavery reparations from the United States, while navigating the U.S. legal system and wrestling with the resulting personal turbulences in their lives.

Fifteen years after the events of Black Water Rising, Jay Porter is struggling to cope with catastrophic changes in his personal life and the disintegration of his environmental law practice. His victory against Cole Oil is still the crown jewel of his career, even if he hasn't yet seen a dime thanks to appeals. But time has taken its toll. Tired and restless, he's ready to quit.

Expect another wild ride form the mind of Keith Lee Johnson with his original smash hits, Little Black Girl Lost Book 1: The Innocent and Little Black Girl Lost Book 2: The Forbidden. Written as only Keith Lee Johnson can, Little Black Girl Lost Book 3: Legal Tender takes you back into New Orleans' seedy underbelly, into a world where no one can be trusted; especially with $250,000 at stake. Will the past catch up with this beautiful, vivacious teenager? Or will her wise and nimble intellect preserve her young life in this edge of the seat roller coaster?

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.

Mission at Nuremberg is Tim Townsend's gripping story of the American Army chaplain sent to save the souls of the Nazis incarcerated at Nuremberg, a compelling and thought-provoking tale that raises questions of faith, guilt, morality, vengeance, forgiveness, salvation, and the essence of humanity.

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!

Yoshi Lomax loves playing dirty. She'll do whatever it takes to win a case - including bribing cops, sleeping with her superiors, and convincing her DEA pals to make evidence disappear. But when Yoshi runs out of tricks while defending a Haitian mob boss, the gangster makes one thing clear: Yoshi either wins the case or loses her life.

Hard White explains how the mainstreaming of white nationalism occurred, pointing to two major shifts in the movement. While the book argues that white extremism will have enduring effects on American electoral politics for some time to come, it suggests that the way forward is to refocus the conversation on social solidarity, concluding with ideas for how to build this solidarity.