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Scott Turow is an American lawyer and New York Times bestselling author of legal thriller novels. He has also authored non-fiction books.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, he attended Amherst College, where he graduated with high honors, before receiving a fellowship to study at the Stanford University Creative Writing Center.

Turow then taught creative writing at Stanford for three years, before attending the esteemed Harvard Law School, where he graduated with honors in 1978.

He served as Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago for nearly a decade, serving as lead prosecutor in a number of high-profile federal trials.

One of the highlights of his legal career was the successful reversal of the murder conviction of a man who had spent 11 years behind bars–a case which Turow did pro bono.

His books have been translated into more than 40 languages, selling over 30 million copies across the globe.

Four of his books have also received film adaptations, namely Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Reversible Errors, and Innocent.

Turow lives just outside of Chicago.

More about Scott Turow

Genres: Legal Thriller, Non-fiction, Thriller

Born: 1949

United States

Website: https://www.scottturow.com/

Non Series

  • Ordinary Heroes (2005)

Anthologies

  1. The Crown Crime Companion (1995)
  2. Guilty as Charged (Edited by Scott Turow) (1996)
  3. Great Writers & Kids Write Mystery Stories (1996)
  4. California Schemin': The 2020 Bouchercon Anthology (2020)

Best American Mystery Stories

  1. The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 (2006)

Kindle County

  1. Presumed Innocent (1986)
  2. The Burden of Proof (1990)
  3. Pleading Guilty (1993)
  4. The Laws of Our Fathers (1996)
  5. Personal Injuries (1999)
  6. Reversible Errors (2002)
  7. Limitations (2006)
  8. Innocent (2010)
  9. Identical (2013)
  10. Testimony (2017)
  11. The Last Trial (2020)
  12. Suspect (2022)

Non-fiction

  1. One L (1977)
  2. Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty (2003)
  3. Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All (2014)
Best American Mystery Stories

Detailed book overview

Non Series

Ordinary Heroes

Stewart Dubinsky knew his father had served in World War II. And he'd been told how David Dubin (as his father had Americanized the name that Stewart later reclaimed) had rescued Stewart's mother from the horror of the Balingen concentration camp.

But when he discovers, after his father's death, a packet of wartime letters to a former fiancée, and learns of his father's court-martial and imprisonment, he is plunged into the mystery of his family's secret history and driven to uncover the truth about this enigmatic, distant man who'd always refused to talk about his war.

As he pieces together his father's past through military archives, letters, and, finally, notes from a memoir his father wrote while in prison, secretly preserved by the officer who defended him, Stewart starts to assemble a dramatic and baffling chain of events.

He learns how Dubin, a JAG lawyer attached to Patton's Third Army and desperate for combat experience, got more than he bargained for when he was ordered to arrest Robert Martin, a wayward OSS officer who, despite his spectacular bravery with the French Resistance, appeared to be acting on orders other than his commanders'. In pursuit of Martin, Dubin and his sergeant are parachuted into Bastogne just as the Battle of the Bulge reaches its apex.

Pressed into the leadership of a desperately depleted rifle company, the men are forced to abandon their quest for Martin and his fiery, maddeningly elusive comrade, Gita, as they fight for their lives through carnage and chaos the likes of which Dubin could never have imagined.

In reconstructing the terrible events and agonizing choices his father faced on the battlefield, in the courtroom, and in love, Stewart gains a closer understanding of his past, of his father's character, and of the brutal nature of war itself.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2005
ISBN: 978-0446697422
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Anthologies

The Crown Crime Companion

The Top 100 Mystery Novels Of All Time

Selected by the Mystery Writers Of America.

Annotated by 0tto Penzler and Compiled by Mickey Friedman.

For The Crown Crime Companion, the Mystery Writers of America have compiled a list of the best 100 mystery novels of all time, as well as a list of favorites in ten categories.

Fully annotated and reviewed by Otto Penzler, this list of the top 100 mysteries will be a valuable resource to fans, introducing them to new novels and reminding them about books by favorite writers they may have missed.

Contributions by:

H.R.F. Keating

Mary Higgins Clark

Sue Grafton

Joseph Wambaugh

John Gardner

Richard Condon

Margaret Maron

Peter Lovesey

Gregory Mcdonald

Scott Turow

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1995
ISBN: 978-0517881156
Publisher: Crown Pub
Guilty as Charged (Edited by Scott Turow)

The evidence is clear: New York Times bestselling author Scott Turow redefined the legal thriller, taking readers into the heart of the criminal justice system and creating crackling, realistic novels of courtroom drama and the suspenseful search for criminals.

Now, following in his own traditions, Turow gathers a gallery of top contemporary writers to deliver an anthology of original stories that masterfully pay homage to today’s gritty legal thriller.

With stories from John Lutz, Sarah Shankman, Stuart Kaminsky, and many others, Turow has put together a masterful collection that explores the sometimes shadowy, always spellbinding world of crime and punishment, legal style.​

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1996
ISBN: 978-1501184116
Publisher: Gallery Books
Great Writers & Kids Write Mystery Stories

This anthology features 13 mystery stories written by well-known mystery authors collaborating with their children and grandchildren. Each story features a short personal introduction by the adult and child writing team on what it was like to collaborate on their included story. Contributors include Scott Turow, Sharyn McCrumb, Stuart Kaminsky, Jonathan Kellerman, Elizabeth Engstrom, and many others.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1996
ISBN: 978-0679879398
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
California Schemin': The 2020 Bouchercon Anthology

California Schemin’ is a new anthology of thrilling tales by nineteen of the world's best mystery authors. The official anthology of Bouchercon 2020, it is edited by the award-winning Art Taylor and features brand new works by acclaimed and award-winning writers like Scott Turow, Walter Mosley, Anne Perry, Anthony Horowitz, Cara Black, Janet A. Rudolph, and Catriona McPherson.

As the name implies, each tale in California Schemin’ features a Californian theme, exploring both the heights of ambition and the depths of depravity in the Golden State's shadowy streets. Filled with twists and turns, intrigue, betrayals, wit, and whimsy, California Schemin’ is the perfect book for any mystery lover.

Included are:

Jennifer Berg, “Schemes in the Dark”

Cara Black, “Cabaret aux Assassins”

David Boop, “Call Before You Die!”

Chris Dreith, “Old Soles”

Dixon Hill, “No Postman, No Doorbell”

Anthony Horowitz, “Camberwell Crackers”

Kim Keeline, “California Fold’em”

R.J. Koreto, “The Hollywood Gangster”

Joyce Kreig, “Last Call at the Zanzibar”

Ellen Clair Lamb, “The Assistant”

Catriona McPherson, “The Finishing Touch”

Walter Mosley, “Fearless”

Anne Perry, “An Affaire of Inconvenience”

Eileen Rendahl, “A Spoonful of Poison”

Christopher Ryan, “Hellhounds: Hollywood Demons”

Linda Townsdin, “Re-entry”

Scott Turow, “Tell Him No”

Gabriel Valjan, “Elysian Fields”

Carrie Voorhis, “The Fandancer’s First Murder”

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-1479451951
Publisher: Wildside Press

Best American Mystery Stories

The Best American Mystery Stories 2006

Best-selling author Scott Turow takes the helm for the tenth edition of this annual, featuring twenty-one of the past year's most distinguished tales of mystery, crime, and suspense.

Elmore Leonard tells the tale of a young woman who's fled home with a convicted bank robber. Walter Mosley describes an over-the-hill private detective and his new client, a woman named Karma. C. J. Box explores the fate of two Czech immigrants stranded by the side of the road in Yellowstone Park. Ed McBain begins his story on role-playing with the line "'Why don't we kill somebody?' she suggested." Wendy Hornsby tells of a wild motorcycle chase through the canyons outside Las Vegas. Laura Lippman describes the "Crack Cocaine Diet." And James Lee Burke writes of a young boy who may have been a close friend of Bugsy Siegel.

As Scott Turow notes in his introduction, these stories are "about crime -- its commission, its aftermath, its anxieties, its effect on character." The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 is a powerful collection for all readers who enjoy fiction that deals with the extremes of human passion and its dark consequences.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2006
ISBN: 978-0618517473
Publisher: Mariner Books

Kindle County

Presumed Innocent

Hailed as the most suspenseful and compelling novel in decades, Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes.

It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial—including his own life.

It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you...long after you have reached its shattering conclusion.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1986
ISBN: 978-1478948452
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
The Burden of Proof

Turow's acclaimed second novel, which topped international bestseller lists, is now available in trade paperback. Sandy Stern, the brilliant defense attorney from Presumed Innocent, faces an event so emotionally shattering that no part of his life is left untouched. It reveals a family caught in a maelstrom of hidden crimes, shocking secrets, and warring passions.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1990
ISBN: 978-0446677127
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Pleading Guilty

Returning to the now-renowned locale of Kindle County, Scott Turow gives us Mack Malloy, ex-cop, not-quite-ex-drunk, and partner-on-the-wane in one of the country's most high-powered law firms.

A longtime ally of the wayward, Mack is on the trail of a colleague, his firm's star litigator, who has vanished with more than five million dollars of a client's money.

Mack will descend into the enthralling and ominous heart of a city...taking you with him on his final, desperate, and courageous crusade to reinvent himself from the depths of his own shattered soul.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1993
ISBN: 978-0446574921
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
The Laws of Our Fathers

In Kindle County, a woman is killed in an apparent random drive-by shooting. The woman turns out to be the ex-wife of a prominent state senator and an old acquaintance of Judge Sonia Klonsky, on whose desk the case lands.

As the pursuit of justice takes bizarre and unusual turns, Judge Klonsky is brought face-to-face with a host of extraordinary personalities and formidable enemies bent on her destruction.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1996
ISBN: 978-0446574945
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Personal Injuries

Robbie Feaver (pronounced "favor") is a charismatic personal injury lawyer with a high profile practice, a way with the ladies, and a beautiful wife (whom he loves), who is dying of an irreversible illness. He also has a secret bank account where he occasionally deposits funds that make their way into the pockets of the judges who decide Robbie's cases.

Robbie is caught by the Feds, and, in exchange for leniency, agrees to "wear a wire" as he continues to try to fix decisions. The FBI agent assigned to supervise him goes by the alias of Evon Miller. She is lonely, uncomfortable in her skin, and impervious to Robbie's charms. And she carries secrets of her own.

As the law tightens its net, Robbie's and Evon's stories converge thrillingly.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1999
ISBN: 978-0446574914
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Reversible Errors

Rommy "Squirrel" Gandolph is a Yellow Man, an inmate on death row for a 1991 triple murder in Kindle County. His slow progress toward certain execution is nearing completion when Arthur Raven, a corporate lawyer who is Rommy's reluctant court-appointed representative, receives word that another inmate may have new evidence that will exonerate Gandolph.

Arthur's opponent in the case is Muriel Wynn, Kindle County's formidable chief deputy prosecuting attorney, who is considering a run for her boss's job. Muriel and Larry Starczek, the original detective on the case, don't want to see Rommy escape a fate they long ago determined he deserved, for a host of reasons.

Further complicating the situation is the fact that Gillian Sullivan, the judge who originally found Rommy guilty, is only recently out of prison herself, having served time for taking bribes.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2002
ISBN: 978-0446574938
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Limitations

Life would seem to have gone well for George Mason. His days as a criminal defense lawyer are long behind him.

At fifty-nine, he has sat as a judge on the Court of Appeals in Kindle County for nearly a decade. Yet, when a disturbing rape case is brought before him, the judge begins to question the very nature of the law and his role within it. 

What is troubling George Mason so deeply? Is it his wife's recent diagnosis? Or the strange and threatening e-mails he has started to receive? And what is it about this horrific case of sexual assault, now on trial in his courtroom, that has led him to question his fitness to judge?

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2006
ISBN: 978-0312426453
Publisher: Picador
Innocent

More than twenty years after Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto went head-to-head in the shattering murder trial in Presumed Innocent, the men are pitted against each other once again in a riveting psychological match.

Now over sixty years old and the chief judge of an appellate court, Sabich has found his wife, Barbara, dead under mysterious circumstances. Molto accuses him of murder for the second time, setting into motion a trial that is vintage Turow-the courtroom at its most taut and explosive.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2010
ISBN: 978-1478948469
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Identical

State Senator Paul Giannis is a candidate for Mayor of Kindle County. His identical twin brother Cass is newly released from prison, 25 years after pleading guilty to the murder of his girlfriend, Dita Kronon.

When Evon Miller, an ex-FBI agent who is the head of security for the Kronon family business, and private investigator Tim Brodie begin a re-investigation of Dita's death, a complex web of murder, sex, and betrayal-as only Scott Turow could weave-dramatically unfolds...

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-1455527199
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Testimony

At the age of fifty, former prosecutor Bill ten Boom has walked out on everything he thought was important to him: his law career, his wife, Kindle County, even his country.

Still, when he is tapped by the International Criminal Court--an organization charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity--he feels drawn to what will become the most elusive case of his career. Over ten years ago, in the apocalyptic chaos following the Bosnian war, an entire Roma refugee camp vanished.

Now for the first time, a witness has stepped forward: Ferko Rincic claims that armed men marched the camp's Gypsy residents to a cave in the middle of the night--and then with a hand grenade set off an avalanche, burying 400 people alive. Only Ferko survived.

Boom's task is to examine Ferko's claims and determine who might have massacred the Roma. His investigation takes him from the International Criminal Court's base in Holland to the cities and villages of Bosnia and secret meetings in Washington, DC, as Boom sorts through a host of suspects, ranging from Serb paramilitaries, to organized crime gangs, to the US government itself, while also maneuvering among the alliances and treacheries of those connected to the case: Layton Merriwell, a disgraced US major general desperate to salvage his reputation; Sergeant Major Atilla Doby,a vital cog in American military operations near the camp at the time of the Roma's disappearance; Laza Kajevic, the brutal former leader of the Bosnian Serbs; Esma Czarni, Ferko's alluring barrister; and of course, Ferko himself, on whose testimony the entire case rests-and who may know more than he's telling.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-1509843343
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
The Last Trial

At eighty-five years old, Alejandro "Sandy" Stern, a brilliant defense lawyer with his health failing but spirit intact, is on the brink of retirement. But when his old friend Dr. Kiril Pafko, a former Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, is faced with charges of insider trading, fraud, and murder, his entire life's work is put in jeopardy, and Stern decides to take on one last trial.

In a case that will be the defining coda to both men's accomplished lives, Stern probes beneath the surface of his friend's dazzling veneer as a distinguished cancer researcher. As the trial progresses, he will question everything he thought he knew about his friend. Despite Pafko's many failings, is he innocent of the terrible charges laid against him? How far will Stern go to save his friend, and -- no matter the trial's outcome -- will he ever know the truth?

Stern's duty to defend his client and his belief in the power of the judicial system both face a final, terrible test in the courtroom, where the evidence and reality are sometimes worlds apart.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-1538748091
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Suspect

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.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2022
Ebook: B09SYZY2TM
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Non-fiction

One L

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 competitiveness--with others and, even more, with oneself--that set the tone in this crucible of character building.

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. 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 thought-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.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 1977
ISBN: 978-0143119029
Publisher: Penguin Books
Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty

As a respected criminal lawyer, Scott Turow 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.

Telling the powerful stories behind the statistics, as he moves from the Governor's Mansion to Illinois's state-of-the art "super-max" prison and the execution chamber, Ultimate Punishment has all the drama and intellectual substance of Turow's bestselling fiction.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2003
ISBN: 978-0312423735
Publisher: Picador
Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All

In 1992, a cadre of the world’s best selling authors formed a garage band called the Rock Bottom Remainders. For two decades the band played proudly (and terribly) to sold-out crowds across the country and raised more than $2 million dollars for charity. Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All is a collective book by Stephen King, Scott Turow, Mitch Albom, Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, Roy Blount Jr., James McBride, Ridley Pearson, Greg Iles, Ted Habte-Gabr, Sam Barry, and Roger McGuinn.

These renowned authors share the behind-the-scenes, uncensored story of their two decades of friendship, love, writing, and the redemptive power of rock’n’roll. Includes stories, musings, group email exchanges, candid conversations, compromising photographs, and a writing contest in which several of the authors (including Stephen King) wrote a short story in King’s style. Readers get to guess which is the real thing.

Author: Scott Turow
First Release: 2014
ISBN: 978-1732326927
Publisher: Sam Barry