Richard North Patterson Books in Order

Young U.S. attorney Christopher Paget is ordered to investigate William Lasko, a ruthless tycoon with the ear of the president. As Paget follows the money trail, he uncovers a web of political corruption that could destroy his career—or his life.

Society lawyer Adam Shaw is a northern outsider in an Alabama city that guards its secrets. When he discovers his best friend’s wealthy wife brutally murdered and the friend vanishes, Adam risks his marriage and reputation to expose a buried scandal.

Peter Carey grows up as the gilded heir to his family’s powerful company, yet he is haunted by a childhood car crash he can’t fully remember. As old nightmares bleed into real threats, Peter must unlock what happened that night before someone finishes the job.

Defense attorney Tony Lord first steps into the spotlight when he defends the gunman who assassinates a charismatic presidential candidate. A year later a masked terrorist known as Phoenix kidnaps two women close to the case, turning their fate—and Tony’s—into a deadly televised spectacle.

As a teenager in a Midwestern town, Tony Lord was accused of killing his first love and fled in disgrace. Decades later, now a San Francisco lawyer, he returns to defend his former best friend, a teacher charged with murdering a student, and confronts the secrets that destroyed his youth.

Star TV journalist Mary Carelli admits she shot bestselling novelist Mark Ransom but swears it was self‑defense against rape. Christopher Paget, her former lover and the father of her son, takes the case, only to find that Mary’s version—and his own past—may not survive the trial.

When Ricardo Arias is found dead with a gun in his mouth, the scene suggests suicide, but the evidence does not. The investigation pulls defense lawyer Christopher Paget, his lover Terri Peralta, and their children into a vicious custody fight where accusations of abuse and murder collide in court.

Caroline Masters, a federal judge with a complicated past, returns to her New England hometown to defend her estranged niece, accused of murdering her boyfriend. As family tensions resurface and a former lover leads the prosecution, Caroline must decide how much truth she is willing to expose to save Brett.

With one week left in a make‑or‑break California primary, Senator Kerry Kilcannon is closing in on the presidency. Haunted by childhood violence and a secret affair with journalist Lara Costello, he becomes the target of both a determined reporter and an anti‑abortion gunman willing to kill to stop him.

In the struggling Rust Belt city of Steelton, homicide prosecutor Stella Marz faces two unsettling deaths: a clean‑cut stadium executive found with a prostitute and heroin, and her former lover, a notorious drug lawyer, murdered in grotesque fashion. Chasing the links pulls her into city hall, organized crime, and her own past.

Newly elected President Kerry Kilcannon nominates Caroline Masters as the first woman to be chief justice, just as a wrenching late‑term abortion case heads toward the Supreme Court. The confirmation battle, a girl’s fate, and a senator’s conscience collide in a showdown over what the law can and cannot protect.

Months into his presidency, Kerry Kilcannon’s family is rocked by a brutal act of domestic violence that ends in a mass shooting. Determined to confront gun deaths head‑on, he takes on the gun industry and a powerful lobby in Congress and the courts, knowing the fight could cost him everything.

Fifteen years after two brothers are condemned for the sexual murder of a nine‑year‑old girl, one of them faces execution with days to live. Teresa Peralta Paget, her husband Christopher, and his son Carlo take the case, uncovering a botched defense, buried evidence, and a death‑penalty system stacked against the poor.

San Francisco lawyer David Wolfe seems poised for marriage and a run for Congress when a bomb kills the Israeli prime minister during a visit to California. His former lover, Palestinian activist Hana Arif, is accused of plotting the attack, forcing David to choose between his future and defending the woman who upended his life.

Republican senator and former fighter pilot Corey Grace enters a bruising presidential primary after a terrorist attack jolts the campaign. As he battles a party insider and a zealot of the religious right, his romance with Black movie star Lexie Hart and a buried war secret threaten to derail his bid.

Burned out and newly divorced, California lawyer Damon Pierce answers a desperate email from an old flame whose husband, dissident leader Bobby Okari, has been framed for murdering oil workers in the African nation of Luandia. Taking the case plunges Damon into a brutal clash among a dictatorship, a U.S. oil giant, and a people fighting for their lives.

Mark Darrow, once a poor kid lifted by a football scholarship, returns to his Ohio alma mater as college president after a financial scandal. The campus still lives in the shadow of a murdered student whose body he discovered years ago—and whose killing sent his best friend to prison. Now Mark begins to question everything he thought he knew.

Lieutenant Brian McCarran comes home from Iraq shattered and soon shoots his commanding officer on a Virginia army base, claiming self‑defense. Assigned to defend him, Army lawyer Paul Terry must probe battlefield trauma, allegations of an affair, and the tangled loyalties of two intertwined military families as a high‑profile court‑martial unfolds.

Al Qaeda strategist Amer al‑Zaroor engineers the theft of a Pakistani nuclear weapon and moves it toward a devastating strike timed for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. In Washington, CIA officer Brooke Chandler races to reconstruct the plot and intercept the bomb before the attack ignites the Middle East.

After a decade working covert missions overseas, Adam Blaine returns to Martha’s Vineyard when his famous novelist father, Ben, dies in a fall from a cliff. Discovering that Ben’s new will enriches his actress lover and disinherits the family, Adam begins to suspect murder and uncovers long‑hidden betrayals on the island he once fled.

In the summer of 1968, privileged Whitney Dane is planning her society wedding at her family’s Martha’s Vineyard estate when she nearly drowns and is rescued by Ben Blaine, a volatile local who has just worked on Robert Kennedy’s campaign. Their connection forces Whitney to question her engagement, her politics, and the comfortable world she was raised to inherit.

Two months after Ben Blaine’s suspicious death, his son Adam struggles to hold a fractured family together as an inquest weighs whether Ben fell or was pushed. Living under the same roof as Ben’s pregnant former lover, Carla Pacelli, Adam must decide how far he will go—and what truths he will hide—to protect the people he cares about.

Fever Swamp collects Richard North Patterson’s real‑time columns on the 2016 presidential race, tracing the rise of Donald Trump and the unmooring of political norms. Part journal, part analysis, it follows the campaign week by week as outrage, conspiracy, and media spectacle reshape American politics.

In rural Georgia, eighteen‑year‑old Malcolm Hill, the son of voting‑rights activist Allie Hill, kills a white deputy during a chaotic traffic stop and faces a capital murder charge. As the case becomes a national flashpoint, a Black defense lawyer and Malcolm’s white biological father—a congressman—confront racism, political theater, and the limits of the legal system.