One L , Scott Turow's journal of his first year at law school introduces and a best-seller when it was first published in 1977, has gone on to become a virtual bible for prospective law students. Not only does it introduce with remarkable clarity the ideas and issues that are the stuff of legal education; it brings alive the anxiety and competiveness--with others and, even more, with oneself--that set the tone in this crucible of character building. Turow's multidimensional delving into his protagonists' psyches and his marvelous gift for suspense prefigure the achievements of his celebrated first novel, Presumed Innocent , one of the best-selling and most talked about books of 1987. Each September, a new crop of students enter Harvard Law School to begin an intense, often grueling, sometimes harrowing year of introduction to the law. Turow's group of One Ls are fresh, bright, ambitious, and more than a little daunting. Even more impressive are the faculty: Perini, the dazzling, combative professor of contracts, who presents himself as the students' antagonist in their struggle to master his subject; Zechman, the reserved professor of torts who seems so indecisive the students fear he cannot teach; and Nicky Morris, a young, appealing man who stressed the humanistic aspects of law. Will the One Ls survive? Will they excel? Will they make the Law Review , the outward and visible sign of success in this ultra-conservative microcosm? With remarkable insight into both his fellows and himself, Turow leads us through the ups and downs, the small triumphs and tragedies of the year, in an absorbing and throught-provoking narrative that teaches the reader not only about law school and the law but about the human beings who make them what they are. In the new afterword for this edition of One L , the author looks back on law school from the perspective of ten years' work as a lawyer and offers some suggestions for reforming legal education.

"For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation-until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation, insisting to Rik that the accusations against her are part of an ugly smear campaign designed to destroy her career and empower her enemies-both outside the police force and within. Clarice "Pinky" Granum spent most of her youth experimenting with an impressive array of drugs and failing out of various professions, including the police academy. Pinky knows that in the eyes of most people, she's nothing but a screwup-but she doesn't trust most people's opinions anyway. Moreover, she finally has a respectable-enough job as a licensed P.I. working for Rik on his roster of mostly minor cases, like workman's comp, DUIs and bar fights. Rik's shabby office and even shabbier cases are a far cry from the kinds of high-profile criminal matters Pinky became familiar with in the law office of her grandfather, Sandy Stern. But Rik and Pinky feel that Chief Gomez's case, which has attracted national attention, is their chance to break into the legal big leagues. Guided by her gut instinct and razor-sharp investigative skills, Pinky dives headfirst into a twisted scandal that will draw her into the deepest recesses of the city's criminal networks, as well as the human mind. But she will need every scrap of tenacity and courage to unravel the dark secrets those closest to her are determined to keep hidden"--

"After Rusty Sabich's heated acquittal in the trial for his life, he's restlessly tried to accept his retirement and get his name out of the spotlight. Now, years later, he's found himself living a quiet life in the town of Mirror with a house on the idyllic lake and a new love, Bea. But the peace that's taken him so long to find comes crashing down when Bea's adoptive son, Aaron, who's under Rusty and Bea's supervision while on probation for a possession conviction, goes missing. The court has ordered that Aaron stay in contact with Rusty and Bea, and if he doesn't return soon, he might get sent back to jail. The trouble doesn't end when Aaron eventually turns up. It turns out that he'd been camping with Mae, his childhood sweetheart who has been an endless source of trouble for Aaron. Except Mae didn't return with Aaron. Mae's prosecuting attorney father, Hardy, brings in all of his resources from local police to the FBI to find his daughter. And when Mae is discovered dead, Hardy immediately points the finger at Aaron and the state jumps to trial. Rusty finds himself coming out of retirement to defend his step-son-to-be from a murder charge where the evidence doesn't seem to add up. But regardless of where the truth is pointing, it seems that the odds are stacked against Aaron. It's going to take all of Rusty's knowledge as a lawyer and judge to show the jury that Aaron isn't a murderer and that if they have any reasonable doubt, they must cast "Not guilty." Aaron's life is on the line and so is the one that Rusty has worked so hard for and all that stands between freedom for both of them is the rage-fueled prejudice against Aaron"--

The Laws of Our Fathers opens with a spectacular drive-by shooting in one of Kindle County's most notorious drug-plagued housing projects. The victim is an aging white woman who has never been seen there before; within days her son, Nile Eddgar, a probation officer, is charged in connection with the crime. Nile's trial is presided over - and narrated by - Judge Sonia "Sonny" Klonsky, whom Turow's fans will remember from his second novel, The Burden of Proof. It brings together a vivid cast of characters from Sonny's student years during the turbulent sixties, among them Nile's father, Loyell Eddgar, once a leading campus revolutionary, and Sonny's old boyfriend Seth Weissman, who is now a renowned journalist. All have been permanently marked by the heady iconoclasm of their youth; some carry terrible secrets that come to bear on the case at hand in unforeseeable and explosive ways.

America's leading writer about the law takes a close, incisive look at one of society's most vexing legal issues Scott Turow is known to millions as the author of peerless novels about the troubling regions of experience where law and reality intersect. In "real life," as a respected criminal lawyer, he has been involved with the death penalty for more than a decade, including successfully representing two different men convicted in death-penalty prosecutions. In this vivid account of how his views on the death penalty have evolved, Turow describes his own experiences with capital punishment from his days as an impassioned young prosecutor to his recent service on the Illinois commission which investigated the administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 164 death row inmates on his last day in office. Along the way, he provides a brief history of America's ambivalent relationship with the ultimate punishment, analyzes the potent reasons for and against it, including the role of the victims' survivors, and tells the powerful stories behind the statistics, as he moves from the Governor's Mansion to Illinois' state-of-the art 'super-max' prison and the execution chamber. This gripping, clear-sighted, necessary examination of the principles, the personalities, and the politics of a fundamental dilemma of our democracy has all the drama and intellectual substance of Turow's celebrated fiction.