Best Selling Books by Richard North Patterson

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.

A Northern lawyer in a Southern town risks his life to bring a killer to justice in this suspenseful legal thriller by a #1 New York Times–bestselling author. 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 facade. 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.

“A crackerjack thriller” by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Silent Witness: A lawyer defending a Vietnam vet is caught in a kidnapper’s web (Publishers Weekly). 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.

Bestselling author Richard North Patterson''s Eclipse tells the spellbinding story of an American lawyer who takes on a nearly impossible case—the defense of an African freedom fighter against his corrupt government''s charge of murder. 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. Culminating in a dramatic show trial and a desperate race against time, Eclipse combines a thrilling narrative with a vivid look at the human cost of the global lust for oil. Here is Richard North Patterson at his compelling best, confirming his place as our most provocative author of popular fiction.

The mysterious, violent death of a prominent New England patriarch exposes a nest of dark family secrets in "New York Times"-bestselling author Patterson''s 20th compelling novel, now available in a tall Premium Edition.

#1 New York Times–bestselling author Richard North Patterson delivers a riveting novel of suspense and a powerful family’s secrets 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.

In Dark Lady, Richard North Patterson displays the mastery of setting, psychology, and story that makes him unique among writers of suspense, and one of today''s most original and enthralling novelists. 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. For his uncanny dialogue, subtle delineation of character, and hypnotic narrative, critics have compared Richard North Patterson to John O''Hara and Dashiell Hammett. Now, in the character of the Dark Lady, he has created a woman as fascinating as her world is haunting. Dark Lady is his signature work.

Trial confirms Richard North Patterson’s place as “our most important author of popular fiction.” In a propulsive narrative that culminates in a nationally televised murder case, Trial explores America’s most incendiary flashpoints of race. 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.

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 laywer 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.

Number one New York Times best-selling author Richard North Patterson, author of more than twenty novels, including Degree of Guilt and Silent Witness, returns with a sweeping family drama of dark secrets and individual awakenings. Loss of Innocence, the second book in the Blaine trilogy, "in one life of the 1960s, symbolizes a movement that keeps changing all our lives" (Gloria Steinem) in "a richly-layered look at the loss of innocence not only among his characters but that which America lost as a nation." (Martha''s Vineyard Times) "An extraordinary novel--profound, emotionally involving and totally addictive," said actor and author Stephen Fry, "this may be Richard North Patterson''s best work." In 1968 America is in turmoil, engulfed in civil unrest and in the midst of an unpopular war. Yet for Whitney Dane--spending the summer of her twenty-first year on Martha''s Vineyard, planning a September wedding to her handsome and equally privileged fiance--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 doting father, Wall Street titan Charles Dane, wants her to be: smart, sensible, predictable. Nonetheless, Whitney''s nascent disquiet about society and her potential role in it is powerfully stimulated by the forces transforming the nation. The Vineyard''s still waters are disturbed by the appearance of Benjamin Blaine, an underprivileged, yet fiercely ambitious and charismatic figure who worked as an aide to the recently slain Bobby Kennedy. Ben''s presence accelerates Whitney''s growing intellectual independence, inspires her to question long-held truths about her family, and stirs her sexual curiosity. It also brings deep-rooted tensions within the Dane clan to a dangerous head. Soon, Whitney''s future seems far less secure, and her ideal family far more human, than she ever could have suspected. An acknowledged master of the courtroom thriller, Patterson''s Blaine trilogy, a bold and surprising departure from his past novels, is a complex family drama pulsing with the tumult of the time and "dripping with summer diversions, youthful passion and ideals, class tensions, and familial disruptions." (Library Journal) From the Hardcover edition.

Tony flees his home at seventeen when he is suspected of murdering his girlfriend, and returns twenty-seven years later to defend his former best friend in the murder trial of a young teen.

"Mr. Patterson is a natural storyteller....Fast moving...A handsome job."-- The New York Times William Lasko is a self-made millionaire with an eye for wealth and influence, the ear of the president, and a talent for using both to get what he wants. Now the Economic Crime Commission wants Lasko brought down, and US Attorney Christopher Paget is tipped to take on the job.

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, in Richard North Patterson''s riveting legal thriller, Eyes of a Child. 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...

Now in a premium edition—a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller about an act of nuclear terrorism plotted by Al Qaeda, and the CIA officer who must find the weapon before it causes the Middle East to go up in flames. THE DEVIL’S LIGHT tells the story of an AL Qeda 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.

Thriller.

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 prosecution''s star witness and find herself facing some of the 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.

Number one New York Times best-selling author Richard North Patterson, author of more than twenty novels, including Degree of Guilt and Silent Witness, returns with the dramatic conclusion to the Blaine trilogy: Eden in Winter, the final volume that completes the story begun in Fall from Grace and Loss of Innocence. 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. An acknowledged master of the courtroom thriller, Patterson''s Blaine trilogy, a bold and surprising departure from his past novels, is a complex family drama pulsing with the tumult of the time and "dripping with summer diversions, youthful passion and ideals, class tensions, and familial disruptions." (Library Journal)

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.

An epic story that moves 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.

Can an honest man become president? In The Race, this timely and provocative novel from bestselling author Richard North Patterson, a maverick candidate takes on his political enemies and the ruthless machinery of American politics. 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.