Jessica Ford Books in Order

The Jessica Ford series is Karen Robards' legal and political romantic suspense thread. It is compact, only two main novels, but it has a strong continuing arc, so it is best read in order.

Jessica Ford begins as a young attorney in Washington, D.C. In Pursuit, she is pulled into a late-night assignment involving First Lady Annette Cooper. Then a car crash kills everyone in the vehicle except Jessica. The country sees a tragic accident. Jessica begins to suspect something much darker.

That one night changes her life.

The first book puts Jessica in the middle of political danger before she fully understands what she saw or why it matters. People connected to the First Lady's final hours start dying, and Jessica's best chance of staying alive is Secret Service agent Mark Ryan. He is suspicious of her, drawn to her, and not exactly easy for her to trust.

Justice picks up after the fallout from that conspiracy. Jessica has tried to disappear into an unofficial witness-protection life, changing her appearance and keeping a low profile. The problem is that she is also a good lawyer, and a high-profile court win pushes her face back into public view. Once that happens, the danger comes with it.

The series works because the legal world is not just window dressing. Robards uses law firms, court cases, witness protection, federal agents, and Washington power circles to keep Jessica under pressure. She is smart and stubborn, but she is also young enough in the first book that survival often means learning fast while people with more power move around her.

The romance is tied to the suspense. Jessica and Mark are not simply pausing the plot to fall for each other. Their relationship is tangled up in evidence, protection, mistrust, old wounds, and the fact that danger keeps forcing them into each other's orbit.

If you like Robards' contemporary suspense but want a tighter, more political setup, start with Pursuit. Then go straight to Justice, where the personal cost of surviving the first book catches up with Jessica in a very public way.