Secondhand John Grisham Bargain Book Box SP4115

Secondhand John Grisham Bargain Book Box SP4115

Twenty John Grishams across thirty years, eleven of them hardback: the early blockbusters (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Rainmaker), the mid-period plot machines (The Partner, The Testament, The Brethren, The Broker), the small-town books (A Painted House, Bleachers, The Last Juror), the comedies (Skipping Christmas, Playing for Pizza, The Litigators), two Theodore Boones for younger readers, and the late return to Clanton in Sycamore Row and The Boys from Biloxi. Nearly the whole shelf for a reader who’s only read the famous ones.

1. Sycamore Row — John Grisham — Seth Hubbard hangs himself from a sycamore tree the day after writing a will that cuts out his children and leaves twenty-four million dollars to his black housekeeper. Jake Brigance, the lawyer from A Time to Kill, is named to defend it, and the whole of Ford County, Mississippi, wants to know why Seth did it. The reason, when it comes, is the best final act Grisham has written.
2. The Partner — John Grisham — Patrick Lanigan faked his own death, watched his funeral from a tree, and walked away with ninety million dollars of his law firm’s money. Four years later he’s found in Brazil, and the question isn’t whether he did it but what he did with the money, and why. Grisham’s cleverest plot, and the last page is a genuine shock. Hardback.
3. The Last Juror — John Grisham — Willie Traynor, twenty-three, buys the Clanton newspaper and covers the rape and murder of a young widow by a member of the Padgitt clan, the county’s criminal family. Danny Padgitt tells the jury he’ll kill them all. Nine years later he gets parole, and they start dying. Grisham’s slow, small-town novel, and readers who prefer it to the thrillers are not wrong. Hardback.
4. The Brethren — John Grisham — Three ex-judges in a federal prison run a mail scam targeting closeted gay men, and one of their marks turns out to be a congressman the CIA is grooming for President. The CIA has to shut the judges down without anyone finding out why. Grisham at his most cynical, and funny with it. Hardback.
5. The Litigators — John Grisham — David Zinc walks out of his two-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year job at a Chicago firm, gets drunk, and wakes up at Finley & Figg, two ambulance-chasers above a massage parlour. They’ve just signed on to a class action against a drug company, and they have no idea what they’re doing. Grisham’s funniest book, and the trial scenes are as good as his serious ones. Hardback.
6. The Testament — John Grisham — Troy Phelan, eleven billion dollars, throws himself off his office balcony minutes after signing a will that cuts out his six children and leaves everything to a daughter nobody’s heard of, a missionary somewhere in the Brazilian Pantanal. Nate O’Riley, an alcoholic litigator fresh out of rehab, is sent to find her. The jungle half of the book is Grisham’s best writing about anything but law. Hardback.
7. The Boys from Biloxi — John Grisham — Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grow up on the same street on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, play on the same baseball team, and end up on opposite sides: Keith as the district attorney cleaning up Biloxi, Hugh as heir to the mob that runs it. A capital murder trial settles it. Grisham’s biggest book in years, and the one that reads like a family saga.
8. The Broker — John Grisham — Joel Backman, a Washington lobbyist who sold a satellite system to the wrong people, is pardoned by a lame-duck President and dumped in Bologna by the CIA, who want to see which foreign intelligence service kills him first. He learns Italian and tries to stay alive. The travelogue chapters are the point; Grisham loves Bologna and it shows. Hardback.
9. The King of Torts — John Grisham — Clay Carter, a public defender on thirty-six thousand a year, is handed a mass-tort case by a stranger and is worth a hundred million within months: jets, a yacht, and a magazine profile calling him the King of Torts. Then the cases he settled turn out to be real. The book Grisham wrote because he was angry about tort lawyers, and it’s a morality tale with a very fast middle. Hardback.
10. Theodore Boone: The Abduction — John Grisham — Theo’s best friend April disappears from her bedroom in the night, and the police think a paroled killer took her. Theo thinks they’re wrong. Grisham’s thirteen-year-old lawyer in his second case, for readers of ten and up who aren’t ready for The Firm.
11. The Rainmaker — John Grisham — Rudy Baylor, fresh out of law school and broke, takes a case against an insurance company that denied a bone-marrow transplant to a dying boy and wrote “stupid, stupid, stupid” on the claim file. He’s never tried a case. Across the table is Leo F. Drummond with a team of eight. The best trial Grisham ever wrote, and the one Coppola filmed with Matt Damon. Hardback.
12. Theodore Boone — John Grisham — Theo is thirteen, both his parents are lawyers, he knows every judge in town, and he’s just found out a schoolmate witnessed a murder and won’t tell anyone. The first of the series, written for Grisham’s grandchildren’s generation.
13. The Racketeer — John Grisham — Malcolm Bannister, a lawyer five years into a ten-year sentence for a crime he didn’t commit, knows who killed a federal judge and his mistress, and he’ll tell the FBI in exchange for freedom and a new face. Then the book turns inside out. The twistiest plot since The Partner, and told in the first person for once.
14. Skipping Christmas — John Grisham — Luther and Nora Krank decide to skip Christmas entirely, no tree, no cards, no Frosty on the roof, and go on a cruise instead, and the whole street turns on them. Then their daughter rings to say she’s coming home. A hundred and seventy pages, and the basis for Christmas with the Kranks.
15. Playing for Pizza — John Grisham — Rick Dockery, third-string NFL quarterback, throws three interceptions in eleven minutes and becomes the most hated man in Cleveland. The only team that will take him is the Parma Panthers, in Italy, where the players have day jobs and the pay is pizza. Grisham’s most charming book, and the food writing is better than most food writers’.
16. The Client — John Grisham — Mark Sway, eleven, watches a mob lawyer blow his brains out in the woods, but not before the lawyer tells him where a murdered senator’s body is buried. Now the mob wants him dead and the FBI wants him to talk, and the only lawyer he can afford is Reggie Love, who charges him a dollar. The Susan Sarandon film is good; the book is faster.
17. Bleachers — John Grisham — Eddie Rake, the coach who won thirteen state championships and broke every boy who played for him, is dying, and his old players come back to Messina to sit in the bleachers and wait. Neely Crenshaw, the greatest quarterback the town ever had, hasn’t been home in fifteen years. No lawyers, no trial, a hundred and sixty pages, and Grisham’s own feelings about football in every line.
18. A Painted House — John Grisham — Arkansas, 1952: Luke Chandler is seven, his family picks cotton, and the hill people and the Mexicans arrive for the harvest. Luke sees a killing and then another thing he’s told never to speak of. No lawyers at all; the book Grisham wrote about his own childhood, and his best-reviewed.
19. The Pelican Brief — John Grisham — Two Supreme Court justices are murdered on the same night, and Darby Shaw, a law student in New Orleans, writes a speculative brief about who’d benefit. The brief is right, which means she’s next. The 1992 book that proved The Firm wasn’t a fluke, and the Julia Roberts film.
20. The Firm — John Grisham — Mitch McDeere, top of his Harvard class, takes the job at Bendini, Lambert & Locke in Memphis because it pays too well, and discovers why: the firm launders money for the Chicago mob, and no lawyer has ever left alive. The 1991 book that invented the modern legal thriller and sold seven million copies.