After their daughter, Emily, dies of a gunshot wound to the head, the Golds and their next-door neighbors, the Hartes, try to determine whether young Chris Harte murdered her, or whether her death was part of a suicide pact, as Chris claims.

Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected-- and first female-- state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides. As Lu prepares for the trial,...

Hired by a woman who believes that the accidental shooting of a friend was actually orchestrated by the victim's depraved nephew, defense lawyer Derek Mitchell comes to realize that the nephew is a psychotic movie buff who enjoys acting out violent film plots.

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and attorney Jake Brigance into a conflict that raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what...