A woman stumbles onto a dark road in rural Oregon - tortured, battered, and bound. She tells a horrific story about being kidnapped, then tortured, until she finally managed to escape. She was the lucky one - two other women, with similar burns and bruises, were found dead. The surviving victim identifies the house where she was held captive, and the owner, Alex Mason - a prominent local attorney - is arrested.

Phillip Margolin, best selling author of The Undertaker's Widow, introduces the world to the first genuinely monstrous psychopath of the new century. Also available abridged.

Daniel Ames is an associate at Reed, Briggs, Portland's most prestigious law firm, earning more money than he ever imagined possible. When a charismatic civil litigator sues the firm's biggest client for manufacturing a drug that he claims causes unspeakable birth defects, Daniel is certain the claim has no merit. But as he begins to investigate, his world comes tumbling down around him.

The first woman ever hired by legendary defense lawyer Matthew Reynolds, Tracy Cavanaugh cuts her teeth on a horrifying crime: the car-bomb murder of Oregon Supreme Court Justice Robert Griffen. Reynolds's client--and the chief suspect--is none other than the icy but celebrated prosecutor Abigail Griffen, the Justice's estranged wife. Tracy's research plunges her into a web of betrayal and revenge, of secret deals and hidden passions.

Defense attorney David Nash has made a career out of setting monsters free — and no one does it better. Now a case has come to “the Ice Man” that could help cleanse Nash of the guilt and doubts that torment him: that rarest of all defendants, an innocent man.

Peter Hale is a young attorney with a lot to prove. Crossing his father, one of Portland's most powerful lawyers, was a costly mistake. Now, cut loose from his job and his inheritance, Peter's has landed in the public defender's office of a small Oregon town - and in the middle of a high-profile case that could make or break his career. His mentally handicapped client, accused of the savage murder of a college coed, faces the death penalty.

Author Miles Van Meter is on a book tour to promote his sensational best seller Sleeping Beauty, a true-crime account of a deeply personal subject: the attack by a serial killer that left his twin sister, Casey, in a coma. Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case, unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed.

It's a beautiful summer night in Portland, Oregon. Ami Vergano, a young attorney and single mother, arrives at her son Ryan's little league game with their tenant and new friend, Dan Morelli. When the assistant coach calls in sick, Morelli seems happy to help out. But then one player roughly blocks another and a fight erupts. Before the game ends, Ami witnesses violence that shocks and horrifies her and makes her question everything she thought she knew about Morelli.

Visiting an art museum displaying a retrospective of acclaimed photographer Kathy Moran's work, aspiring novelist Stacey Kim is stunned by the photo at the center of the show - the famous Woman with a Gun, which won a Pulitzer Prize and launched the photographer's career. Shot from behind, the enigmatic black-and-white image is a picture of a woman in a wedding dress, standing on the shore at night, facing the sea. Behind her back, she holds a six-shooter.

This trial should be a slam-dunk. A faceless powerbroker has other ideas.... Small-town prosecutor Mara Brent must be tough as nails to succeed in her male-dominated profession. But she harbors a soft spot for the victims who rely on her courtroom skill, especially the wheelchair-bound rape survivor she’s known since her first day on the job. So when her friend’s unsolved case reopens with a DNA match and an arrest, she’s determined to finally bring a monster to justice.

Dr. Emory Charbonneau, a pediatrician and marathon runner, disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina. By the time her husband Jeff, miffed over a recent argument, reports her missing, the trail has grown cold. Literally. Fog and ice encapsulate the mountainous wilderness and paralyze the search for her. While police suspect Jeff of "instant divorce," Emory, suffering from an unexplained head injury, regains consciousness and finds herself the captive of a man whose violent past is so dark that he won't even tell her his name.

Attorney Nate Shepherd left a big firm to go out on his own. He sees nothing but opportunity when an out-of-town lawyer wants to hire him as local counsel on a high-profile murder case. Though his family worries that the case hits too close to home, Nate joins the defense team. When circumstances force him to take on a bigger role, Nate ignores his family’s fears and throws himself into his client’s defense.

To defend her client, she must dig up a town’s darkest secrets. Defense attorney Cass Leary thought she’d escaped her hometown for good. But after leaving her high-paying job in Chicago, she decides to revisit her troubled past. When someone murders the beloved high school basketball coach and Cass steps in to defend the girl accused of the crime, she doesn’t expect the death threats that follow.... Confronting the town that shunned her as a child, she unearths secrets that some would kill to keep buried.

After more than twenty years away from the law, Joe Hennessy is forced back into the courtroom. Trying to save his vineyard after years of drought, Hennessy returns to practice in Charleston, South Carolina–the city he walked away from after the murder of his ten-year-old son. When one of South Carolina's most powerful men is charged with possessing stolen artwork, Hennessy steps forward to defend him. But as Hennessy digs into the evidence, as he navigates the truth, he finds that the criminal charges are only the start of their problems…

Sam Johnstone was hoping for renewal when he took a job at a boutique law firm in rustic Wyoming. The mountains and streams of the West would be a refreshing, quiet place to start over after years of war and turmoil in his personal life. But after a local woman is brutally murdered, Sam realizes that things aren’t so quiet in this rural American town. The accused is one Tommy Olsen, a known delinquent who had been sleeping with the victim. Sam is repulsed by the crime and wants nothing to do with the case but meets with Tommy to make sure he has legal representation.

When private detective Dana Cutler is hired by an attorney with powerful political connections, the assignment seems simple enough: follow a pretty college student named Charlotte Walsh and report on where she goes and whom she sees. But then the unexpected happens.

They were young, popular, the perfect couple. But the youthful passion that led them to Lookout Park that terrible evening would prove fatal. For Richie Walters the end came swiftly, as death descended upon him in a savage orgy of violence. Elaine Murray would live long enough to learn just how lucky her boyfriend had been. Two brutal slayings have rocked a stunned city. But the murders are merely the nightmare’s beginning, flinging open a terrifying Pandora’s box of sordid secrets.

Charlie Webb is a third rate lawyer who graduated from a third rate law-school and, because he couldn’t get hired by any of the major law firms, has opened his own law firm, where he gets by handling cases for dubious associates from his youth and some court appointed cases. Described as “a leaky boat floating down the stream of life,” Charlie has led unremarkable life, personally and professionally. Until he’s appointed to be the attorney for a decidedly crackpot artist who calls himself Guido Sabatini (born Lawrence Weiss).

A woman stumbles onto a dark road in rural Oregon - tortured, battered, and bound. She tells a horrific story about being kidnapped, then tortured, until she finally managed to escape. She was the lucky one - two other women, with similar burns and bruises, were found dead. The surviving victim identifies the house where she was held captive, and the owner, Alex Mason - a prominent local attorney - is arrested.

Visiting an art museum displaying a retrospective of acclaimed photographer Kathy Moran's work, aspiring novelist Stacey Kim is stunned by the photo at the center of the show - the famous Woman with a Gun, which won a Pulitzer Prize and launched the photographer's career. Shot from behind, the enigmatic black-and-white image is a picture of a woman in a wedding dress, standing on the shore at night, facing the sea. Behind her back, she holds a six-shooter.