Frank Carlson Library

Twenty five years ago, Rufus Harms was convicted of a murder he believes he committed. But when his memory is jogged by a letter from the army, he has a shocking realization: he's not guilty. From prison, Rufus secretly files an appeal with the Supreme Court, unaware that the real killers are onto him. But the long-time convict knows he's running out of time when his lawyer and the Supreme Court clerk--the first person to see Rufus's appeal--are murdered....

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends,...

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...

Gwyn Weaver is as resilient as anyone could be. Having survived an attempted murder, she has rebuilt her life and reclaimed her dignity and strength. She's always known about her feelings for defense attorney Thomas Thorne, but as her friend and a colleague there could be no chance of anything more ... or could there? Thorne has known violence and pain all his life. He's overcome the hardships thanks to his own steel, and the love of his loyal friends....

As prosecutor Ellen North prepares to try the man arrested for the abduction of little Josh Kirkwood in the small hamlet of Deer Lake, Minnesota, she confronts the sensation-driven news media, an old lover who has become a defense attorney, an unwanted partner, and, suddenly, a second kidnapping.

The murder trial of a Black gangster accused of killing a State senator's wife, shot driving her husband's car. Question is, was the ambush meant for the senator, as police claim, or was she, in fact, the intended victim in a plot involving the senator?

"A literary courtroom thriller about a mother accused of murdering her eight-year-old autistic son"-- In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine-- a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic 'dives' with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. When the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends...

When Malcolm Hill, a black eighteen-year-old voting rights worker, is arrested for murder, white congressman Chase Brevard of Massachusetts finds his life transformed in a single moment by the appearance of Malcolm's photo on the news, enveloping him, Malcolm, and Malcolm's mother in a media firestorm that threatens their lives.

When Riley Schoenberg strides into family lawyer Sandy Moss's office without knocking and coolly sits down, Sandy's more irritated than amused. But then Sandy hears Riley's pitch, and it's a killer one: Riley's father's been convicted of murdering her mother, and the oddly intimidating pre-teen will do anything to get him out of jail. Sandy agrees to look into her dad's case for free, which is a decision she regrets when it turns out Riley's inheritance...

"Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There's Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, and who grapples with the expectations of a first generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there's...