Books in the Genre Novels (P-Z)

List of recommended books of the genre novels, with author and brief synopsis of each book.

(arranged alphabetically)

(A-D) / (E-I) / (J-O) / (P-Z)

Featured books for the genre Novels (P-Z)

The Appeal

Book: The Appeal

Author: John Grisham

Description: Politics has always been a dirty game...

Now justice is, too...

In a crowded courtroom in Mississipi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town's water supply, causing the worst "cancer cluster" in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it.

Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided? The... (keep reading...)

The Associate

Book: The Associate

Author: John Grisham

Description: The master of the legal thriller, John Grisham was a criminal and civil lawyer in Mississippi when his first book, A Time to Kill, was published. But it was his next book, The Firm, that became a blockbuster and established him as king of the genre...

This time, Grisham bring us the story of Kyle McAvoy, who grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.

But Kyle has a... (keep reading...)

The Breathren

Book: The Breathren

Author: John Grisham

Description: They call themselves the Brethren: three disgraced former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison.

One was sent up for tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. And the third, for a career-ending drunken joyride.

Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can reminisce about old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where their lives went wrong.

Or they can use their time in prison to get very... (keep reading...)

The Broker

Book: The Broker

Author: John Grisham

Description: After being abruptly pardoned by a lame duck president, a notorious former Washington powerbroker is released from prison and smuggled out of the country, given a new identity, and hidden in a small town in Italy, but old enemies from the past are out to destroy him and his new life...

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison.

What... (keep reading...)

The Chamber

Book: The Chamber

Author: John Grisham

Description: In 1967 in Greenville, Mississippi, known Klan member Sam Cayhall is accused of bombing the law offices of Jewish civil rights activist Marvin Kramer, killing Kramer's two sons.

Cayhall's first trial, with an all-white jury and a Klan rally outside the courthouse, ends in a hung jury; the retrial six months later has the same outcome.

Twelve years later an ambitious district attorney in Greenville reopens the case. Much has changed since 1967, and this time, with a jury of eight whites and four blacks, Cayhall... (keep reading...)

The Client

Book: The Client

Author: John Grisham

Description: In a weedy lot on the outskirts of memphis, two boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull upt ot the curb... Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarrette when a chance encounter with a suicidal laywer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America.

Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer... (keep reading...)

The Da Vinci Code

Book: The Da Vinci Code

Author: Dan Brown

Description: While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum.

Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher.

While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist,... (keep reading...)

The Firm

Book: The Firm

Author: John Grisham

Description: Brimming with heart-pounding suspense and legal intrigue, the novel that placed John Grisham on the literary map forever changed the way the public looks at the law. In The Firm, a young attorney is drawn to a successful law firm in Memphis where the perks are good -- but the secrets are deadly...

At the top of his class at Harvard Law, he had his choice of the best in America. He made a deadly mistake.

When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife,... (keep reading...)

The Innocent Man

Book: The Innocent Man

Author: John Grisham

Description: John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is one of his most extraordinary legal thrillers...

In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory.

Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits—drinking, drugs, and women. He began to show signs... (keep reading...)

The Jungle

Book: The Jungle

Author: Upton Sinclair

Description: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a vivid portrait of life and death in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. A grim indictment that led to government regulations of the food industry, The Jungle is Sinclair's extraordinary contribution to literature and social reform.

1906 bestseller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon... (keep reading...)

The King Of The Torts

Book: The King Of The Torts

Author: John Grisham

Description: Washed-up public defender Clay Carter's latest case, a routine street killing, takes an unexpected turn when he discovers evidence of a conspiracy involving a large drug company and a lawsuit with a huge potential settlement...

The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street... (keep reading...)

The Last Juror

Book: The Last Juror

Author: John Grisham

Description: In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor.

The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.

The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed courthouse in Clanton,... (keep reading...)

The Partner

Book: The Partner

Author: John Grisham

Description: They hired him. They trusted him. Now they don't want justice--they want revenge....

For four years, Patrick had often wondered how it would feel if they caught him.

Now he was terror-stricken. Practically naked and strapped down like an animal, he knew the next few hours would be insufferable....

Once he was a well-liked, well-paid young partner in a thriving Mississippi law firm. Then Patrick Lanigan stole ninety million dollars from his own firm--and ran for his life. For four years, he evaded men who were... (keep reading...)

The Pelican Brief

Book: The Pelican Brief

Author: John Grisham

Description: In suburban Georgetown a killer's Reeboks whisper on the front floor of a posh home. In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly garroted to death.

The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief. To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment it was political dynamite.

Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder -- a murder intended for her.... (keep reading...)

The Rainmaker

Book: The Rainmaker

Author: John Grisham

Description: In his first courtroom thriller since A Time to Kill, John Grisham tells the story of a young man barely out of law school who finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America -- and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam...

He's a young lawyer who does yard work in exchange for rent. Then one little case begins to explode.

It's summer in Memphis. The sweat is sticking to Rudy Baylor's shirt and creditors are nipping at his heels. Once he had... (keep reading...)

The Runaway Jury

Book: The Runaway Jury

Author: John Grisham

Description: They are at the center of a multimillion-dollar legal hurricane -- 12 men and women who have been investigated, watched, manipulated, and harassed by high-priced lawyers and consultants who will stop at nothing to secure a verdict.

Now the jury must make a decision in the most explosive civil trial of the century, a precedent-setting lawsuit against a giant tobacco company. But only a handful of people know the truth -- that this jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him.

In Biloxi, Mississippi, a... (keep reading...)

The Street Lawyer

Book: The Street Lawyer

Author: John Grisham

Description: Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience.

But a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived; his assailant did not. Who was this man? Michael did some digging, and learned that... (keep reading...)

The Summons

Book: The Summons

Author: John Grisham

Description: Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep.

And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has... (keep reading...)

The Testament

Book: The Testament

Author: John Grisham

Description: Heart of darkness...

In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions, a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives.

Because Troy Phelan's new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil.

Enter the ... (keep reading...)

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