was a practicing attorney and member
of the Mississippi State Legislature when his first novel, A Time To Kill,
was published. (He woke up at 5:00 every morning for three years in order to finish the novel.) His
next novel, The Firm, was one of the biggest hits of 1991, spending 47 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list
and becoming the longest-selling paperback on the Publishers Weekly best-seller list. It was made into a major motion
picture starring Tom Cruise, and the film became one of the biggest hits of 1993. The Pelican Brief, starring Julia Roberts
as a Tulane law student, was released the following year and was another major hit. The Client and The Chamber enjoyed
similar best-seller status, and in 1994 The Client became yet another hit film, this time starring Susan Sarandon in a role
that earned her an Oscar nomination. When A Time To Kill was sold to Hollywood, Grisham received $6 million and final
say over the script and casting.
Americans may say they hate slick lawyers, but they sure love to read about them--Grisham's novels have been
translated into thirty-one languages. At home in Oxford, Mississippi, life is hardly a trial. Mrs. Grisham edits her
husband's manuscripts while he coaches Little League.
In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.
The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed courthouse in Clanton, Mississippi. The trial came to a startling and dramatic end when the defendant threatened revenge against the jurors if they convicted him. Nevertheless, they found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
But in Mississippi in 1970, "life" didn't necessarily mean "life," and nine years later Danny Padgitt managed to get himself paroled. He returned to Ford County, and the retribution began. THE LAST JUROR
The King of Torts The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.
As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life—that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession’s newest King of Torts...
Trumble is a minimum-security federal prison, a "camp," home to the usual assortment of relatively harmless criminals--drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, two Wall Street crooks, one doctor, at least five lawyers,
and THREE former judges who call themselves THE BRETHREN: one from Texas, one from California, and one from Mississippi. They meet each day in the law library, their turf at Trumble, where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours writing letters. They are fine-tuning a mail scam, and it's starting to really work. The money is pouring in.
Then their little scam goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, a powerful man on the outside, a man with dangerous friends, and the Brethren's days of quietly marking time are over.
BLEACHERS After his successful foray into mainstream fiction with a coming-of-age tale, The Painted House (2001), John Grisham tries his hand at yet another subject with his winning new novel Bleachers. Forgoing his usual focus on chills, thrills and courtroom drama, Grisham turns his writer's eye on the world of Southern high school football and uses a small-town microcosm to tackle some big questions: Is it better to forget your past or to face life's questionable judgments head on? Is the catharsis worth the price paid? And is it truly possible to forgive?
The setting for Bleachers is Messina, a town in an unidentified Southern state which becomes the center of the universe for high school football fans on Friday nights. It's the home of the multi-champion Spartans and their legendary coach, Eddie Rake, who, on this weekend, lies on his deathbed. The bleachers of Rake Field are the gathering place for coach Rake's "boys," who sit and swap stories and beers as they wait for the passing of their beloved—and hated—coach.... Read More ...
Law professor Ray Atlee and his prodigal brother, Forrest, are summoned home to Clanton, Mississippi, by their ailing father to discuss his will. But when Ray arrives the judge is already dead, and the one-page document dividing his meager estate between the two sons seems crystal clear. What it doesn't mention, however, is the small fortune in cash Ray discovers hidden in the old man's house--$3 million he can't account for and doesn't mention to brother Forrest, either.
Ray's efforts to keep his find a secret, figure out where it came from, and hide it from a nameless extortioner, who seems to know more about it than he does, culminate in a denouement with an almost biblical twist. It's a slender plot to hang a thriller on, and in truth it's not John Grisham's best in terms of pacing, dramatic tension, and interesting characters (except for Harry Rex, a country lawyer who was the judge's closest friend and in many ways is the father Ray wishes he'd had. He's so vivid he jumps off the page) THE SUMMONS BY John Grisham. (review provided by Amazon.com)
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SPECIAL PREVIEW OF JOHN'S NOVEL A PAINTED HOUSE
The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with two weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist- high to my father, almost over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a good crop.
Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that’s never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.
For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever.
A Painted House is a moving story of one boy’s journey from innocence to experience.
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A Great Novel by John
