Showing results by author "Richard North" in All Categories

Self-made millionaire William Lasko has an eye for wealth and the ear of the President and a talent for using both to get whatever he wants. But the Economic Crimes Commission wants to bring the corrupt, untouchable Lasko down, and they enlist the services of straightlaced U.S. Attorney Christopher Paget to do it. Paget has to walk a tightrope, gathering enough evidence to nail Lasko without alienating the White House, knowing full well that men like Lasko make their own rules - including the elimination of enemies like him.

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.

The spellbinding story of an American lawyer who takes on a nearly impossible case - the defense of an African freedom fighter against his corrupt government's charge of murder. Damon Pierce's life has just reached a defining moment: a gifted California lawyer, he's being divorced by his wife and his work often seems soulless. Then he receives a frantic e-mail from Marissa Brand Okari - a woman he loved years ago - and decides to risk everything to respond to her plea for help.

President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancée, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington - the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA).

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 Devil's Light tells the story of an al-Qaida operative named Amer al-Zaroor, who, on orders from Osama bin Laden, directs the theft of a nuclear weapon from the Pakistani military, and then transports it toward its intended target, Israel. Meanwhile, bin Laden announces to the world that he will make a major terrorist strike on the tenth anniversary of 9/11....

A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret; and the prospect that a volatile abortion case- a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents- will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal.

Two prominent men are found dead. One is the victim of a ritual murder, the other a heroin overdose. But in each case the character of the dead man seems contradicted by the particulars of his death. Coincidence or connection?

Browse more Richard North Patterson.

In August of 2011 an Al Qaeda operative masterminds the theft of a Pakistani military weapon: a two-hundred-pound nuclear warhead, capable of causing destruction on an unprecedented scale. A chilling transmission is then broadcast to the world, promising a major attack on a US city to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Intelligence indicates that the bomb has been smuggled out of Pakistan and is en route to the US, with Washington, D.C. or New York the likely target. But Agent Brooke Chandler knows otherwise.

David Wolfe's life is approaching an exhilarating peak: he's a successful San Francisco lawyer, he's about to get married, and he's being primed for a run for Congress. But when the phone rings and he hears the voice of Hana Arif—the Palestinian woman with whom he had a secret affair in law school—he begins a completely unexpected journey. The next day, the prime minister of Israel is assassinated by a suicide bomber while visiting San Francisco.

Corey Grace—a handsome and charismatic Republican senator from Ohio—is plunged by an act of terrorism into a fierce presidential primary battle with the favorite of the party establishment and a magnetic leader of the Christian right. A decorated Gulf War Air Force pilot known for speaking his mind, Grace's reputation for voting his own conscience rather than the party line—together with his growing romance with Lexie Hart, an African-American movie star—has earned him a reputation as a maverick and an iconoclast.

Fifty-nine days. That's how long Rennell Price has to live after spending 15 years on death row for the horrifying sexual assault and murder of a girl whose body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. But attorney Terri Paget has dedicated her life to fighting for people like Rennell Price. This time, Terri has a client she believes may actually be innocent, which means that an unpunished killer may still be free.