Frank Carlson Library

In Biloxi, Mississippi, a woman sues a tobacco company for the death of her husband from lung cancer. The protagonists are a jury fixer, that is a lawyer whose role is to assure a jury favorable to the company, and a rogue juror whom the fixer cannot eliminate or control. This is a landmark tobacco trial with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake which begins routinely, then swerves mysteriously off course. The jury is behaving strangely, and at...

In 1946 North Carolina, seamstress Maddie Sykes, a dressmaker for Bright Leaf's most influential women--the wives of powerful tobacco executives, uncovers dangerous truths about this lucrative industry in a place where everyone depends on Big Tobacco to survive. Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who's just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina--the tobacco capital of the South--where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of...

When former executive Jeffrey Wigand is fired by his employer, one of the largest tobacco companies in America, Wigand agrees to become a paid consultant for a story by veteran 60 minutes producer Lowell Bergman, regarding alleged unethical practices within the tobacco industry. But what begins as a temporary alliance leads to a lengthy battle for both men to save their reputations and more.