William L Myers Jr Books in Order

William L Myers Jr grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in a working-class family where hard work mattered. That background stayed with him. It also gave him a close view of the people who would later matter most in both his legal work and his fiction.

He studied at Clarion University, graduating in 1980, then earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983. His early career began at a large Philadelphia defense firm, where he represented corporate clients and learned the demanding rhythms of civil litigation.

After about a decade, Myers changed direction and opened his own practice. He began representing injured railroad workers and other people taking on large companies and insurers. Over the years, he has tried cases in state and federal courts across the East Coast and has argued before the United States Supreme Court.

The courtroom never really left the page.

Myers had been writing for years before publishing fiction. He eventually set out to write a legal thriller that felt believable without reading like a case file. His experience gave him plenty to work with: lawyers under pressure, clients with everything to lose, investigations that shift without warning, and the gap between what happened and what can be proved.

His first published novel, A Criminal Defense, arrived in 2017. It introduces Philadelphia attorney Mick McFarland, who agrees to defend an old law-school friend accused of murdering a reporter. The book became a major Kindle bestseller that year and led to the Philadelphia Legal series.

The series continued with An Engineered Injustice, A Killer's Alibi, and A Criminal Justice. The books move through Philadelphia courtrooms, train disasters, organized crime, wrongful-conviction questions, and cases that become painfully personal for the lawyers involved. Readers who enjoy the series tend to come for the legal maneuvering, but also for the pressure that follows the characters home.

Philadelphia is more than a backdrop in these stories.

Myers has also written outside the series. Backstory is a psychological thriller about a man with no memory trying to learn whether his wife's death was murder, while Remi Bone follows a desperate mechanic and single father who makes a terrible choice in hopes of securing his daughter's future. Both keep the suspense and moral complications of the legal novels, even when the courtroom is not at the center.

He continues to practice law in the Philadelphia area and lives in the western suburbs with his wife, Lisa. His day job and fiction both return to a similar question: what does a person do when the system, the evidence, or their own past seems to be closing in?