AustLit

'US Vice President Tom Bradshaw is the perfect candidate, a "sure thing". But when he is found dead in the penthouse of Boston's finest hotel, the American people want answers and his administration needs a scapegoat.

'It has been twelve years since Boston attorney David Cavanaugh's ex-wife Karin left him for another man. Now, she has called to ask the impossible. She wants him to represent her husband. The charge - murder. The victim - the Vice President of the United States.

'Now Cavanaugh faces the toughest decision of his career, a decision he knows will ultimately see him face off with his past and carve out his future. What he does not realise is that Tom Bradshaw's death is only the beginning. Three more are dead and his enemies will stop at nothing to protect their secret and consolidate their power, for they are an unbreakable band of four, and their word is Gospel.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Set amongst the hallowed grounds of Deane University, the most expensive college in the country, America's privileged youth must allow nothing to jeopardise their chances to succeed.

'Nineteen-year-old Jessica Nagoshi, in her third year of economics at Deane, is the beautiful and intelligent heiress to her father's multi-million dollar empire and is being groomed, along with her brother Peter, to take control of Nagoshi Inc. That is, until she is brutally murdered in the greenhouse of her father's extensive Wellesley estate.

'David Cavanaugh, Boston's most sought-after defence attorney, is unwittingly forced into this high-society murder case when he must defend his young protégé James Matheson, final year law student at Deane. For in James he sees traces of his younger self - Matheson is dedicated, ambitious and unsullied by the nuances of a system more often driven by politics than justice.

'From the outset David realises the odds are against him. Unspoken alliances, corporate secrets, love, lust and a disastrous misplace of trust lead David down a road where nothing is as it seems.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Doctor Jeffrey Logan, daytime TV's most loved psychiatrist, has a top-rating talk show seen around the world. The perfect picture is completed by a beautiful, talented wife, Stephanie, who is the loving mother of their teenage son and daughter.

'This cosy domestic scene is shattered by a bullet. Stephanie is killed instantly at the kitchen table, the hunting rifle used at close range causing catastrophic damage.

'When "Doctor Jeff" confesses to his wife's murder, Boston lawyer David Cavanaugh is appointed as his defence counsel. But Cavanaugh and Logan's dead wife went to law school together, and from what he remembers of his friend, nothing is making sense. Then the unthinkable happens - evidence starts pointing not to Doctor Jeff, but to Stephanie's son, JT.

'Soon, Cavanaugh realises that though this family has a dark secret, it may not be the one the popular Doctor Jeff insists on revealing to the world. With the Logan children unwilling to reveal what really happened, and Doctor Jeff one step ahead of his defence team, Cavanaugh must race to uncover the truth, before more lives, including those closest to him, are lost.' (Publisher's blurb)

'When attorney David Cavanaugh takes a call from an old friend in New Jersey, he immediately offers to help. Chris Kincaid is now a US Senator and his dilemma concerns the disappearance of another member of their childhood gang - Marilyn Maloney - who the now-married Senator used to date. Then a blonde woman's body is hauled out of the Passaic River in David's home town of Newark, and the situation becomes more complicated - there is a corpse to identify and, despite his fears about where this might be going, David leaves his wife and baby daughter in Boston to help Chris "sort things out".

'The situation soon spirals out of control as Chris involves David in a lie to the police. Marilyn is dead, Chris is confirmed as her lover and the popular senator - arrested for her murder - engages David as his attorney. Now David finds himself drowning in a sea of uncertainty - practising in a State he has never practised in before, defending one old friend accused of murdering another, and coming home, where his older brother, Sean, has a long-held grudge to settle.

'Buried family secrets, devastating lies and a seemingly uncatchable killer, plague David and his unlikeliest of allies - the career cop, who is supposed to be working for the prosecution. Worse still, David soon discovers that proving Chris innocence is linked directly to another mistake - made by someone very close to him, many years before...' (From the publisher's website.)