Sparring Partners

John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade, specialising in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. One day, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987.

His next novel, The Firm, spent 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and became the bestselling novel of 1991. Since then, he has written one novel a year, including The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker and The Runaway Jury.

Today, Grisham has written a collection of stories, a work of non-fiction, three sports novels, seven kids' books, and many legal thrillers. His work has been translated into 45 languages. He lives near Charlottesville, Virginia.

***THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***

'Three sparkling Grisham stories for the price of one . . . Appealing entertainment' IRISH INDEPENDENT
'These three novellas in a single volume show Grisham at his masterful best, exquisite evocations of the law though far from complimentary about lawyers . . . A minor masterpiece' DAILY MAIL

Three thrilling stories of the law from the master of the legal thriller.

Homecoming takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham's unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he's not in the courtroom. He's called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole some money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Until now. Now Mack is back and he's leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned.

In Strawberry Moon, we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can't save him, the courts slam the door, and the Governor says no to a last minute request for clemency. As the clock ticks down, Cody has only one final request.

The Sparring Partners are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe one another, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time and try to save herself?

350+ million copies, 45 languages, 10 blockbuster films:
NO ONE WRITES DRAMA LIKE JOHN GRISHAM