Richard North Patterson books in order

A Yankee through and through, Adam Shaw never felt at ease among the upper crust of the Deep South. An attorney to some of the most powerful people in Alabama, he is close with only two of them.

When Adam’s best friend, Henry Cantwell, disappears after his wife is murdered, Adam starts asking questions, delving beneath the town’s tranquil façade.

While the police hunt for the killer, Adam risks everything—his professional standing, his marriage, and his very life to save Henry from the electric chair and bring the right man to justice.

Peter Carey was born into privilege during the McCarthy era, when the paranoia of Washington infected his parents’ house and seeped into Peter’s bones. His father was so obsessed with the family publishing business that he never had time for his son. Even as a teenager, Peter barely knew his father—and one dark night, an accident on a lonely road ensured he never would.

Peter’s memories of that horrific night have been erased by amnesia, but decades later he is still tortured by nightmares. When a strange conspiracy threatens to steal his company and take his life, he will have to remember...and find the key to survival that is locked in his own mind.

A young man has been murdered. His girlfriend, twenty-two-year-old Brett Allen, is found at the scene of the crime. She claims she is innocent—even though she's dripping in blood, the murder weapon covered with her fingerprints.

Enter attorney Caroline Masters, Brett's estranged aunt. She's been summoned back to her affluent New England hometown to help Brett out of this mess…and revisit the troubled family she left behind.

Caroline learned a long time ago that the ties that bind can also be broken. Now that she's back home, she can't help but doubt her family's motives—and Brett's innocence. As the trial heats up, Caroline finds herself up against those who would kill to keep dark secrets hidden…and the state prosecutor, who happens to be her former lover and will do anything to expose the truth.

Now, with her family's fate—and her own reputation—hanging in the balance, Caroline must assume the role of a lifetime as she fights to save her niece. Or destroy them both…

NB: This book is also called Caroline Masters.

In Steelton, a struggling Midwestern city on the cusp of an economic turnaround, two prominent men are found dead within days of each other. One is Tommy Fielding, a senior officer of the company building a new baseball stadium, the city's hope for the future. The other is Jack Novak, the local drug dealers' attorney of choice.

Fielding's death with a prostitute, from an overdose of heroin, seems accidental; Novak is apparently the victim of a ritual murder. But in each case the character of the dead man seems contradicted by the particulars of his death. Coincidence or connection?

The question falls to Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz. Despite a traumatic breach with her alcoholic and embittered father, she has risen from a working-class background to become head of the prosecutor's homicide unit.

A driven woman, she is called the Dark Lady by defense lawyers for her relentless, sometimes ruthless, style: in seven years only one case has gotten away from her, and only because the defendant took his own life. She has earned every inch of both her official and her off-the-record titles, and recently she's decided to go after another: to become the first woman elected Prosecutor of Erie County. But that was before the brutal murder of her ex-lover--Jack Novak.

Novak's death leads her into a labyrinth where her personal and professional lives become dangerously intertwined. There is the possibility that Novak fixed drug cases for the city's crime lord, Vincent Moro, with the help of law enforcement personnel, and perhaps with someone in Stella's own office . . . the bitter mayoral race which threatens to undermine her own ambitions . . . her attraction to a colleague who may not be what he seems . . . the lingering, complicated effects of her painful affair with Novak . . . the growing certainty that she is being watched and followed.

Making her way through a maze of corruption, deceit, and greed, trusting no one, Stella comes to believe that the search for the truth involves the bleak history of Steelton itself--a history that now endangers her future, and perhaps her life.

David Wolfe is a successful American lawyer being primed for a run for Congress. But when the phone rings and he hears the voice of Hana Arif―the Palestinian woman with whom he had a secret affair in law school―he begins a completely unexpected journey.

The next day, the prime minister of Israel is assassinated by a suicide bomber while visiting San Francisco. Soon, Hana is accused of being the mastermind behind the murder. Now David faces an agonizing choice: Will he, a Jew, represent her?

The most challenging case of David's career requires that he delve deep into the lives of Hana and her militant Palestinian husband, all the way back to Israel and the West Bank. There he uncovers the couple's dangerous connections…culminating in an explosive trial where the stakes are Hana's life―and the future of two peoples.

Can an honest man become president?

Corey Grace―a handsome and charismatic Republican senator from Ohio―is plunged by an act of terrorism into a fierce presidential primary battle with the favorite of the party establishment and a magnetic leader of the Christian right.

A decorated Gulf War Air Force pilot known for speaking his mind, Grace's reputation for voting his own conscience rather than the party line―together with his growing romance with Lexie Hart, an African-American movie star―has earned him a reputation as a maverick and an iconoclast.

But Grace is still haunted by a tragic mistake buried deep in his past, and now his integrity will be put to the test in this most brutal of political contests, in which nothing in his past or present life is off-limits.

Depicting contemporary power politics at its most ruthless, The Race takes on the most incendiary issues in American culture: racism, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, gay rights, and the rise of media monopolies with their own agenda and lust for power. As the pressure of the campaign intensifies, Grace encounters betrayal, excruciating moral choices, and secrets that can destroy lives.

Ultimately, the race leads to a deadlocked party convention where Grace must resolve the conflict between his romance with Lexie and his presidential ambitions―and decide just who and what he is willing to sacrifice.

Damon Pierce's life has just reached a defining moment: a gifted California lawyer, he's being divorced by his wife and his work often seems soulless. Then he receives a frantic e-mail from Marissa Brand Okari—a woman he loved years ago—and decides to risk everything to respond to her plea for help.

Marissa's husband, Bobby Okari, is the charismatic leader of a freedom movement in the volatile west African nation of Luandia, which is being torn apart by the world's craving for its vast supply of oil. Bobby's outspoken opposition to the exploitation of his homeland by PetroGlobal—a giant American oil company with close ties to Luandia's brutal government—has enraged General Savior Karama, the country's autocratic ruler.

After Bobby leads a protest rally during a full eclipse of the sun, everyone in his home village is massacred by government troops. And now Bobby has been arrested and charged with the murder of three PetroGlobal workers.

Still drawn to Marissa, Pierce agrees to defend Bobby, hoping to save both Bobby and Marissa from almost certain death. But the lethal politics of Luandia may cost Pierce his life instead.

Mark Darrow grew up in a small Ohio town with no real advantages beyond his intelligence and athletic ability. But thanks to the intervention of Lionel Farr—a professor at Caldwell, the local college—Darrow became an excellent student and, later, a superb trial lawyer. Now Farr asks his still-youthful protégé for a life-altering favor. An embezzlement scandal has threatened Caldwell's very existence—would Darrow consider becoming its new president?

Darrow accepts, but returning to his alma mater opens old wounds. Sixteen years ago, on the night of his greatest triumph as Caldwell's star quarterback, he discovered the body of a black female student named Angela Hall at the base of the Spire, the bell tower that dominates the leafy campus. His best friend, Steve Tillman, was charged with Angela's murder and ultimately sent to prison for life. But now, even as Darrow begins the daunting task of leading Caldwell, he discovers that the case against his friend left crucial questions unanswered.

Despite his new obligations—and his deepening attachment to Farr's beautiful though troubled daughter—Darrow begins his own inquiry into the murder. Soon he becomes convinced that Angela's killer is still at large, but only when another mysterious death occurs does he understand that his own life is at risk.

The McCarrans and the Gallaghers, two military families, have been close for decades, ever since Anthony McCarran—now one of the army's most distinguished generals—became best friends with Jack Gallagher, a fellow West Pointer who was later killed in Vietnam. Now a new generation of soldiers faces combat, and Lt. Brian McCarran, the general's son, has returned from a harrowing tour in Iraq.

Traumatized by wartime experiences he will not reveal, Brian depends on his lifelong friendship with Kate Gallagher, Jack's daughter, who is married to Brian's commanding officer in Iraq, Capt. Joe D'Abruzzo. But since coming home, D'Abruzzo also seems changed by the experiences he and Brian shared—he's become secretive and remote.

Tragedy strikes when Brian shoots and kills D'Abruzzo on their army post in Virginia. Brian pleads self-defense, claiming that D'Abruzzo, a black-belt martial artist, came to his quarters, accused him of interfering with his marriage, and attacked him. Kate supports Brian and says that her husband had become violent and abusive. But Brian and Kate have secrets of their own, and now Capt. Paul Terry, one of the army's most accomplished young lawyers, will defend Brian in a high-profile court-martial.

Terry's co-counsel is Meg McCarran, Brian's sister, a brilliant and beautiful attorney who insists on leaving her practice in San Francisco to help save her brother. Before the case is over, Terry will become deeply entwined with Meg and the McCarrans—and learn that families, like war, can break the sturdiest of souls.

The McCarrans and the Gallaghers, two military families, have been close for decades, ever since Anthony McCarran—now one of the army's most distinguished generals—became best friends with Jack Gallagher, a fellow West Pointer who was later killed in Vietnam. Now a new generation of soldiers faces combat, and Lt. Brian McCarran, the general's son, has returned from a harrowing tour in Iraq.

Traumatized by wartime experiences he will not reveal, Brian depends on his lifelong friendship with Kate Gallagher, Jack's daughter, who is married to Brian's commanding officer in Iraq, Capt. Joe D'Abruzzo. But since coming home, D'Abruzzo also seems changed by the experiences he and Brian shared—he's become secretive and remote.

Tragedy strikes when Brian shoots and kills D'Abruzzo on their army post in Virginia. Brian pleads self-defense, claiming that D'Abruzzo, a black-belt martial artist, came to his quarters, accused him of interfering with his marriage, and attacked him. Kate supports Brian and says that her husband had become violent and abusive. But Brian and Kate have secrets of their own, and now Capt. Paul Terry, one of the army's most accomplished young lawyers, will defend Brian in a high-profile court-martial.

Terry's co-counsel is Meg McCarran, Brian's sister, a brilliant and beautiful attorney who insists on leaving her practice in San Francisco to help save her brother. Before the case is over, Terry will become deeply entwined with Meg and the McCarrans—and learn that families, like war, can break the sturdiest of souls.

THE DEVIL’S LIGHT tells the story of an AL Qaeda operative named Amer Al Zaroor, who, on orders from Osama Bin Laden, directs the theft of a nuclear weapon from the Pakistani military, and then transports it toward its intended target, Israel.

Meanwhile Bin Laden announces to the world that he will make a major terrorist strike on 9/11/10, the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Deep inside Washington, Brooke Chandler, a CIA operative whose cover was blown by an incompetent colleague in Lebanon, thinks he knows how the bomb is being moved toward its target and how to find it.

First he must overcome the skepticism of the CIA and the White House, and then he must find the bomb and disable or detonate it before it causes the Middle East to go up in flames.

A Black eighteen-year-old voting rights worker, Malcolm Hill, is stopped by a white sheriff’s deputy on a dark country road in rural Georgia. His single mother, Allie, America’s leading voting rights advocate, restlessly awaits his return before police inform her that Malcolm has been arrested for murder. 

In Washington D.C., the rising, young, white congressman Chase Brevard of Massachusetts is watching the morning news with his girlfriend, only to find his life transformed in a single moment by the appearance of Malcolm’s photograph. Suddenly all three are enveloped in a media firestorm that threatens their lives—especially Malcolm’s.

After ten years away from home, Adam Blaine returns to Martha’s Vineyard to attend the funeral of his estranged father, Ben, a famous and charismatic writer who was fond of sailboats, good wine—and women other than his wife.

When Adam learns that Ben disinherited his family in favor of his mistress, he begins to wonder if his father’s death—caused by an inexplicable fall from a cliff—might have been suicide or murder.

Using his training as a CIA operative, Adam unearths some shattering revelations about the mistress’s past. But even more disturbing are the family secrets that can’t stay buried any longer—secrets that make Adam question everything he thought he knew about every player in this fateful game. Even himself...

June, 1968. America is in a state of turbulence, engulfed in civil unrest and uncertainty. Yet for Whitney Dane - spending the summer of her twenty-second year on Martha's Vineyard - life could not be safer, nor the future more certain.

Educated at Wheaton, soon to be married, and the youngest daughter of the patrician Dane family, Whitney has everything she has ever wanted, and is everything her all-powerful and doting father, Charles Dane, wants her to be.

But the Vineyard's still waters are disturbed by the appearance of Benjamin Blaine. An underprivileged, yet fiercely ambitious and charismatic young man, Blaine is a force of nature neither Whitney nor her family could have prepared for.

As Ben's presence begins to awaken independence within Whitney, it also brings deep-rooted Dane tensions to a dangerous head. And soon Whitney's set-in-stone future becomes far from satisfactory, and her picture-perfect family far from pretty.

Two months after the suspicious and much-publicized death of his father on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, it is taking all of Adam Blaine’s will to suture the deep wounds the tragedy has inflicted upon his family and himself.

As the court inquest into Benjamin Blaine’s death casts suspicions on those closest to him, Adam struggles to protect them from those who still suspect that his father was murdered by one of his kin.

But the sternest test of all is Adam’s proximity to Carla Pacelli—his late father’s mistress; and a woman who, despite being pivotal to his family’s plight, Adam finds himself increasingly drawn to. The closer he gets to this beautiful, mysterious woman, the further Adam feels from his troubles.

Yet the closer he also comes to revealing the secrets he’s strived to conceal, and condemning the people he’s so hard fought to protect.

The investigation of a politically powerful industrialist; the death of a key witness; the corruption of a federal agency. These are the explosive elements facing cynical young government lawyer Christopher Paget as he embarks on a mission that will hurl him into a brutal world of murder, kidnapping, and deception.

From its intriguing beginnings to its stunning climax, international best-selling author Richard North Patterson’s first novel is a taut, gripping thriller about real people forced to face their inner fears and values.

TV journalist Mary Carelli admits that she shot and killed Mark Ransom, one of the world's most famous authors. She claims it was self-defense. She swears he tried to rape her. Now she has to prove it in a court of law―with her former lover acting as her attorney…

Christopher Paget is one of the top lawyers in the country. But defending the mother of his son in the trial of the decade, he begins to have doubts. Is Mary telling the truth? Did she invent her story about the rape? What is she hiding?

With each shocking revelation, Paget is forced to question his defense, his ethics, and the whole legal system. Because no one, not even the judge, is completely innocent. And guilt is a matter of degree…

A man has been found dead, a gun still wedged in his mouth. It looks like Ricardo Arias killed himself…but the physical evidence tells a different story.

The police investigation turns up all sorts of troubling data―a bitter estrangement between Ricardo and his wife, Terri; an ugly custody battle over their six-year-old daughter, Elena; charges of child molestation. And before long there's a murder suspect: San Francisco defense attorney and political hopeful Christopher Paget.

But where's the motive? It could be that Paget is Terri's new lover. Or that Paget's own teenage son is the one who's accused of abusing Elena.

But a series of long-hidden secrets―on both sides of the case―are slowly rising to the surface…and threaten to explode in the courtroom, where the final verdict will be delivered. 

Where the truth about what really happened to Ricardo Arias will either be revealed―or buried for good...

When the body of nine-year old Thuy Sen is found in the San Francisco Bay, the police quickly charge Rennell and Payton Price with her grisly murder. A twelve-person jury, abetted by an incompetent defense lawyer, is nearly as quick to find the brothers guilty, and to sentence them both to die for their crimes.

Fifteen years later, overworked pro bono lawyer Teresa Peralta Paget, her husband Chris, and stepson Carlo, a recent Harvard law graduate, become convinced not only that Rennell didn't receive a fair trial but that he may well be innocent.

Racing against the clock and facing enormous legal obstacles, Teresa, Chris, and Carlo desperately try to stay Rennell's execution, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and to an enormously moving and powerful conclusion.

In the high-stakes, high-pressure 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 just may 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 their 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...

On a cold day in January, President-elect Kerry Kilcannon takes the oath of office—and within days makes his first, most important move: appointing a new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Kilcannon’s choice is a female judge with a brilliant record. And a secret.

While the Senate spars over Caroline Masters’s nomination, an inflammatory abortion rights case is making its way toward the judge—and will explode into the headlines. Suddenly, the most divisive issue in America turns the President’s nomination into all-out war.

And from Judge Masters to a conservative, war-hero senator facing a crisis of conscience and a fifteen-year-old girl battling for her future, no one will be safe.

President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancée, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington–the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA).

Allied with the President’s most determined rival, the resourceful and relentless Senate Majority Leader Frank Fasano, the SSA declares all-out war on Kerry Kilcannon, deploying its arsenal of money, intimidation, and secret dealings to eviscerate Kilcannon’s crusade–and, it hopes, destroy his presidency.

This 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.

And others in the crossfire may also pay the price: the idealistic lawyer who has taken on the gun industry; the embattled CEO of America’s leading gun maker; the war-hero senator caught between conflicting ambitions; the female senator whose career is at risk; and the grief-stricken young woman fighting to emerge from the shadow of her sister, the First Lady.

By fall 2015, the rise of Donald Trump as the likely Republican nominee confirmed that, for better or worse, Americans had been transported to a strange new land populated by mysterious creatures, where the normal laws of the political universe no longer applied.

Fascinated, amused, and appalled, bestselling novelist Richard North Patterson accepted an invitation to write one column per week for the Huffington Post about the presidential race. Those essays are collected here for the first time in a highly personal "journal" chronicling Patterson's observations in real time.

Before long, thousands of Americans were reading Patterson's weekly descriptions of the campaign, a gauntlet without rules in which the projected psyches of the candidates reflected--and stirred--the roiling emotions of a substantially disgruntled electorate. 

Smart, prescient, funny, and deeply informed by extensive background research, these pieces form a narrative that captures the race as it occurred--the bald-faced lies, the painful truths, the pivotal issues, and the astonishing personalities that made the election of 2016 utterly unpredictable and uniquely consequential. 

Best of all, in marginalia scattered throughout the book Patterson looks back to see where he was right, where he was wrong, and where events were so beyond human experience that no one could have predicted them.

In this bracing, funny book, Patterson brings to bear a novelist's piercing sensibility to the process of examining the election, moments that betray a candidate's character and inner life and hold up a mirror to the American population.

Filled with fresh insights and indelible prose, Fever Swamp is a masterful take on a unique campaign filled with the pathos, humor, and important lessons of the liveliest playground shoving match.

Here collected for the first time, complete in one volume, are two courtroom novels by The New York Times best-selling author, Richard North Paterson.

Recognized internationally for the expertise and authenticity of the legal aspects of his novels, Patterson is also famous for imaginative plot twists, detailed characterizations and page-turning narratives.

These two stories weave complex motives, cold-blooded murder, the drama of men and women under pressure, and courtroom dynamics to tell explosive tales of human excess, betrayal and emotional truth.

All of America is watching when a sniper’s bullet cuts down presidential hopeful James Kilcannon. As the nation rises up in outrage, one lawyer is bold enough to represent the Vietnam veteran accused of firing the fatal shot. Tony Lord has never shied away from a fight, and he will do whatever it takes to get his client a fair trial.

A year later, tragedy strikes Kilcannon’s rock-star girlfriend, Stacy Tarrant. Her assistant is kidnapped by a masked terrorist known as Phoenix, who threatens to execute him on live television unless he meets Phoenix’s demands.

As Tony helps Stacy through the ordeal, he discovers that Phoenix has connections to the Kilcannon slaying and intends to mount his own televised trial—in which Tony and Stacy are the defendants and Phoenix is the executioner.

After the murder of his high school sweetheart left him shattered, Tony Lord vowed never to return to his Ohio hometown of Lake City. Twenty-eight years later, Tony is a successful California criminal lawyer with a beautiful celebrity wife. He’s living the good life…until long-buried memories come crashing down when he hears from an old friend, who needs his help.

Sam Robb is a track coach at Lake City High. He swears he is not responsible for the death of one of his female team members…even though forensic evidence reveals that he’s the father of her unborn child.

Back when they were teenagers, Sam stood by Tony when he was a suspect in his young girlfriend’s murder—and Tony desperately wants to do the same for him today. In doing so, Tony will have to revisit his troubled past and probe the darkest secrets of small-town life to get to the truth. And what he will find is more shocking than he ever could have imagined….