John Grisham

Page Updated: 24/04/02

John Grisham

The Summons

05 Feb 02

A Painted House

The Brethren

The Testament

The Street Lawyer

Audio Titles

24/04/02

and

Books By John Grisham

About the Author

Bibliography

First British Edition Century (2002)

The Summons
Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep.
And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.
With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.
Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.
And perhaps someone else.
'Grisham's smart use of the suspense novel to explore questions of being and faith puts him squarely in the footsteps of Dickens and Graham Green' Publishers Weekly
Praise for John Grisham's previous novels:
The Partner
'A narrative triumph and a stylish joy, this novel has me gasping for more of the new satirical Grisham' Daily Telegraph
'All the ingredients of suspense, drama and meticulous attention to detail that have made Grisham's novels bestsellers ... A terrific read' Sunday Mirror

First British Edition Century (2001)

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 three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, 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.

First British Edition Century (2000)

The Brethren
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
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.

First British Edition Century (1999)

The Testament
Troy Phelan is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and looking for a way to die. His heirs, to no one's surprise--especially Troy's--are circling like vultures.
Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder.
Rachel Lane is a young woman who chose to give her life to God, who walked away from the modern world with all its strivings and trappings and encumbrances, and went to live and work with a primitive tribe of Indians in the deepest jungles of Brazil.
In a story that mixes legal suspense with a remarkable adventure, their lives are forever altered by the startling secret of The Testament.
'The Testament is his best novel in the past five� a brilliant first chapter� you have to go on reading' Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday
'Addictive' The Times

First British Edition Century (1998)

The Street Lawyer
Michael Brook is a young ambitious lawyer climbing the corporate ladder fast and is set to become a partner in the law firm Drake & Sweeney in a couple of years. His life revolves around work - he has no time to think of anything or anyone else.
Michael's secure and blinkered world is then turned violently upside-down when he and some of his colleagues are taken hostage by a homeless man and held at gunpoint in the offices of Drake and Sweeney. He and his colleagues survive, but the intruder doesn't. Michael's brush with death forces him to radically reassess his priorities and values. Who was this man? Where did he come from? Michael does some digging and learns that he was a mentally ill veteran who had been in and out of shelters for twenty years. Michael does some more digging and finds a dirty secret, a secret which involves Drake & Sweeney�
'No one does it better than Grisham. This latest novel is as unputdownable as ever' Sunday Telegraph
'Compelling ... Grisham is more adept at getting the reader to turn the page than almost any writer working today' Daily Mail

About The Author
John Grisham graduated from Law School in 1981 and for nine years ran his own law firm.
John Grisham's previous novels, A Time To Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury and The Partner, have all been number one best-sellers. Six have been made into blockbusting movies - most recently, The Rainmaker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
It was in 1984 that Grisham, three years out of law school saw a case in a courtroom one day that was to inspire him to sit down and write his first novel, A Time To Kill. It took three years of 5am stints before a full day at the office for Grisham to complete his first legal thriller. Eventually, after 25 rejections the book was published and today the going rate for a first edition of A Time To Kill is �3,000. Following the extraordinary success of The Firm, John Grisham gave up his practice to write full time. He lives with his wife and two children in Mississippi and Virginia.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

The Summons (Century, 2002) Feb 02

A Painted House (Century, 2001)

The Brethren (Century, 2000)

The Testament (Century, 1999) Century Pbk Oct 99

The Street Lawyer (Century, 1998)

The Partner (Century, 1997)

The Runaway Jury (Century, 1996)

The Rainmaker (Century, 1996)

The Chamber (Century, 1994)

The Client (Century, 1993)

The Pelican Brief (Century, 1992)

The Firm (Century, 1991)

A Time to Kill ( 1989)