Well I had a good mailbox again this week. I really need to stay off of Paperbackswap!! Oh well. (I also received Assassin of Secrets from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program, but I’m not listing that book and you can read why here.)
So from Paperbackswap:
Computers, poetry and Samurai lore were successful businessman Tadeo Kurobashi’s passions. So it stood to reason that the ancient “art” of hara-kiri would be his suicide method of choice. But Detective J.P. Beaumont wasn’t certain that the dead software magnate had any choice in the matter of his own demise – despite the bloody Samurai sword Kurobashi clutched in his lifeless hand. Especially since an error in the time-honored death ritual indicated cold-blooded homicide … of a most traditional sort.
Her male-bashing pop-psych bestseller created a storm of controversy on the talk-show circuit. Now Professor Hope Devane is dead, brutally slashed on a quiet street in one of L.A.’s safest neighborhoods. The LAPD’s investigation has reached a dead end, and homicide detective Milo Sturgis turns to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware for a psychological profile of the victim – and a portrait of a killer. Hope Devane had very different public and private faces. The killer could be any one of the millions who read her book, or someone from the personal lives she kept so carefully separate. As Alex and Milo dig deeper into her shadowy past, they will set an elaborate trap for her killer … and reveal the unspeakable act that triggered a dark chain of violence.
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 from his inheritance, Peter’s 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 retarded client, accused of the savage murder of a college coed, faces the death penalty. And Peter faces a choice – between the pursuit of headlines and the pursuit of truth, between the compulsion to save himself and the courage to save his client – in a devastating trial by fire.
The papers call him the Ice Man. David Nash, defense attorney – cool, unruffled, practically unbeatable in the courtroom. Most of his clients are guilty. A few may be monsters. Suddenly the Ice Man is assailed by doubts and unanswerable questions. What is the cost of each victory, each rapist or murderer set free – to society and to Nash’s soul? Then comes a case that may be Nash’s redemption. A client whose innocence he can believe in, a rising lawyer and family man accused of the brutal murder of an undercover vice cop. But as the case moves toward trial, new doubts grip him: What is truth and what is carefully fabricated falsehood? Is Nash, a master at handling juries, being manipulated himself? And by whom? By the time Nash’s perfect case is finished, the questions become a matter of life and death.
An epic story that movies with force, passion, and authority, Balance of Power begins when President Kerry Kilcannon and television journalist Lara Costello at last decide to marry. But the momentous occasion is followed by an unspeakable tragedy – a massacre of innocents by gunfire – that ignites a high-stakes game of politics and legal maneuvering in the Senate, the courtroom, and across the country, which the charismatic but untested young President is determined to win at any cost. But in the incendiary clash over gun violence and gun rights, the cost to both Kilcannons may be even higher than he imagined.
Long estranged from her blue-blooded New England family, attorney Caroline Masters is summoned home to defend her niece against charges of murder. Police found twenty-two-year-old Brett Allen blood-splattered and incoherent near the scene of the crime, the weapon covered with her fingerprints. Caroline has doubts of her own about Brett’s innocence. But as the sensational trial heats up, she’ll find disturbing inconsistencies in the testimony of the toughest challenges of her life and career – from trusting her former lover, state prosecutor Jackson Watts, to risking the federal judgeship she’s worked her whole life for, to exposing a dark family secret that could save her niece or destroy them both…
In the high-stakes, high-pressured world of presidential politics, where predators carry microphones and one misstep can savage a lifetime of achievement, Kerry Kilcannon is the rarest player of all. Kilcannon believes he can make the system work. And he may just die trying. Driven by the violent nightmare of his childhood, fueled by forces that few could understand, and burdened by secrets no one must know, Kilcannon is running for President – and entering the crucial battleground of California with seven days to go. But for Kilcannon, there are hurdles that his courage, charisma, and compassion may not overcome: the network correspondent he still loves; the reporter bent on the exposure; the rival who’ll do anything to win; and the fanatic who believes that he must murder Kilcannon to protect the right to life…
Tales of a Book Addict 