North House

Hours after 22-year-old Brett Allen finds her boyfriend brutally slain, she finds herself in police custody, the prime suspect. Her aunt, Caroline Masters, is summoned to act as her defense attorney. The result is a painful meeting with Brett, whom Caroline has not seen since infancy, and a confrontation with 3 people from whom she is deeply estranged: her first lover who is now the prosecutor, her half-sister, and most difficult of all, her domineering father. The story moves quickly now, opening into the police investigation and the courtroom. Yet the truths about herself and her family that Caroline ultimately uncovers are painful beyond the deepest doubts and shocking beyond the deepest fears that haunt her adult life - and make up the explosive core of the author's most powerful novel to date.

Powerful, glamorous television journalist Mary Carelli is charged with the murder of famed novelist Mark Ransom. However, she pleads self-defense against rape. Christopher Paget, Mary's attorney (and former lover), prepares to shock the courtroom with revelations about Ransom's past as a twisted sexual predator. But as the trial unfolds, Paget is in for some surprises of his own. He learns that Mary may not be telling the whole truth about the rape, and may well have a secret motive for murder. Meanwhile, newly disclosed tapes of Ransom force Mary to confront ugly secrets about her own past, including testimony at Congressional hearings 15 years earlier that led to her stardom and helped Paget bring down the President.

Attorney Tony Lord left his hometown and the bitter memories of his girlfriend's murder behind. Now, 28 years later, he's pulled back to Lake City to defend his closest high school friend against a charge of homicide. Sam Robb, the married father of two, is a local football legend. But he was also the last to see 16-year-old Marcie Calder alive, and as shocking forensic evidence at the trial reveals, he is the father of her unborn child. Probing the darkest recesses of love and friendship, Lord will discover things too disturbing to ignore.

The nation is stunned silent when presidential hopeful James Kilcannon is shot dead in front of his rock-star girlfriend Stacy Tarrant. Fiercely independent attorney Tony Lord dares to defend the shooter, but the already bizarre plot takes another twist. As America watches, a mysterious and ruthless figure, known only as Phoenix, takes to the airwaves - and takes the wife of a wealthy newspaper mogul and Stacy's manager as his hostages.

I've always been in a fight with her, ever since she took him from me. And now she had the nerve to leave me out? I wasn't about to take it lying down so I went to crash her party. What I didn't expect was for it to turn sexual, with me at the center of attention. What I expected even less was to enjoy it and make a new friend in the process.