Losing my home to Hurricane Katrina taught me the importance of order in a disordered world, an appreciation for the segments of society that maintain order, and an understanding of what all victims of traumatic events experience. When the rug has been pulled out from under you, you need to find a new source of stability and safety. Psychologists call this the “new normal,” but it is anything but normal for those who find themselves enmeshed in it. What to do? Write about it, with an emphasis not on procedure but on people, on the characters who will make a story come alive and stay alive.
A prolific author, Picoult is particularly good at highlighting contemporary issues which defy easy answers. Nineteen Minutesdescribes a school shooting in a small New Hampshire town. The teenager who committed the crime began as a young boy who wanted only to fit in. When that proved impossible, he endeavored not to stand out. Finally he could not accept a life where he was not seen. However, no one – not his classmates, his parents, the police, or the members of the legal system – has a pure motive in the actions which follow.
'Picoult makes us ponder the ambiguous relationships between love and lying, legality and morality; the strange ways repressed memories leak into the present.' Los Angeles Times
Intricately textured and rich with psychological and social insight, Jodi Picoult's novels grab readers by the throat from page one and never let go. As emotionally charged as any she has written, Nineteen Minutes is one of her most powerful works to date.
Set in a small town in the wake of a horrific school shooting, Nineteen Minutes features the return of two beloved Picoult characters - Jordan McAfee, the lawyer from The Pact…
The first novel in Anne Perry’s William Monk series takes place in Victorian London. Monk, a brilliant detective with partial amnesia, needs answers as much about himself as about the crimes he investigates. Not a particularly well-liked individual, he is assisted by a nurse who served in the Crimean War, a compassionate and independent woman, and Oliver Rathbone, an elegant lawyer. Without the benefits of modern technology, all three must be sensitive to the nuances and subtleties of human behavior in order to be successful.
He is not going to die, after all, in this Victorian pesthouse called a hospital. But the accident that felled him on a London street has left him with only half a life, because his memory and his entire past have vanished. His name, they tell him, is William Monk, and he is a London police detective; the mirror reflects a face that women woud like, but he senses he has been more feared than loved. Monk is given a particularly sensational case: the brutal murder of Major the Honourable Joscelin Grey, Crimean war hero and a popular man about…
Like the concentric circles from a pebble dropped into a pond, a murder in the small Canadian village of Three Pines has far-reaching effects. Armand Gamache, a chief inspector from Montreal, brings his quiet but powerful presence to the investigation. Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, a handsome man a little too full of himself, adds some insights. Meet the wife who thinks her art inferior when compared to her husband’s and the poet whose oral language belies her gift for expressing herself in print. All are human beings with vices as well as virtues.
In Still Life, bestselling author Louise Penny introduces Monsieur L'Inspecteur Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec, a modern Poirot who anchors this beloved traditional mystery series.
Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain…
Landay’s novel examines the impact on a family when the fourteen-year-old son, Jacob Barber, is accused of murdering a classmate. Jacob’s father, an assistant district attorney in a small town in Massachusetts, is called to be objective but discovers that his professional duties clash with his responsibilities as a parent. Jacob’s mother wavers between unconditional belief in her son’s innocence and a small kernel of doubt that she cannot dismiss. Shouldn’t their judgment be more mature than that of their son’s? What may appear to an outsider as cowardice may in fact be courage.
If your son was on trial for murder, what would you do?
Andy Barber's job is to put killers behind bars. And when a boy from his son Jacob's school is found stabbed to death, Andy is doubly determined to find and prosecute the perpetrator.
Until a crucial piece of evidence turns up linking Jacob to the murder. And suddenly Andy and his wife find their son accused of being a cold-blooded killer.
In the face of every parent's worst nightmare, they will do anything to defend their child. Because, deep down, they know him better than anyone.
In this legal drama, Grisham delivers a classic portrayal of how racism can affect cases with Black defendants. The initial crime, the rape of ten-year-old Black Tonya Hailey, escalates when her father Carl Lee kills the two white men who were responsible. Carl Lee’s attorney Jake Brigance discovers as he prepares the defense case that perceptions of guilt and innocence differ when race is involved. In fact, attitudes are so extreme that his own family will be in danger if he proceeds. Are law and order incompatible in this small Southern town?
______________________________ THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER
John Grisham's first and most shocking novel, adapted as a film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey
When Carl Lee Hailey guns down the violent racists who raped his ten-year-old daughter, the people of the small town of Clanton, Mississippi see it as justice done, and call for his acquittal.
But when extremists outside Clanton - including the KKK - hear that a black man has killed two white men, they invade the town, determined to destroy anything and anyone that opposes their sense of justice. A national media circus descends on Clanton.
A hostage incident becomes critical. Police negotiations have failed. The potential for violence has escalated. London Police Constable Brian Davies, a well-trained and experienced officer, discharges his firearm and rescues the victim, but the aftermath of his action seems unending. A life was saved, but some in authority doubt the propriety of PC Davies’ response. While the victim seeks healing from her harrowing encounter, PC Davies finds himself at the mercy of the British judicial process. As one reviewer commented, “There’s more than one hostage in this book.”
A treat for Anglophiles, this legal and forensic dramais the concluding novel in The Witnesstrilogy.
I’ve adored reading a good snarky first-person story since I first read Bloodlist, so long as the snark doesn’t go too far and become total unlikeable jerk… It can be a fine line!I hope I stay on the right side of it, but having read it enough and written in it for years with my Blood Rights Series, I feel qualified to say I’m a…snark connoisseur. (If you ask my family, this is how my own internal/life narrator speaks! My mother says that my character Dakota is me if I “said everything aloud that I think in my head.” She’s probably right, and I’m okay with that.)
Bad Blood is paranormal suspense in First Person Snark, so if you like sarcastic, strong female characters set in a world where the preternatural is run amok (i.e., legal citizens in the United States), then this book and series are for you.
Follow Sadie Stanton–"poster girl for the preternatural"–as she deals with all sorts of messes and sets up her business while being a vampire in a new day...or night, really.
I’m Sadie Stanton, and I don’t know why everyone makes such a big deal out of me. I’m just like everyone else—I’m trying to start a business, not spending much time on my social life, and dealing with an obnoxious roommate...
Oh, and being a vampire. There’s that. But it’s okay, because we’re all legal now.
But believe me, that doesn’t make life easy. In fact, it might be harder now than ever before, but I did it to myself… And now vampires are attacking people seemingly at random and not even trying to feed. Everyone…
