John Grisham takes you back to where it all began . . . John Grisham's A Time to Kill is one of the most popular novels of our time. Now we return to that famous courthouse in Clanton as Jake Brigance once again finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial-a trial that will expose old racial tensions and force Ford County to confront its tortured history. Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier. The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row? In Sycamore Row, John Grisham returns to the setting and the compelling characters that first established him as America's favorite storyteller. Here, in his most assured and thrilling novel yet, is a powerful testament to the fact that Grisham remains the master of the legal thriller, nearly twenty-five years after the publication of A Time to Kill.
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"When you spend hours in a car listening to a book, sometimes it really affects you. This was one of those books. What starts out looking like a cut-and-dried story about a hand-drawn will turns into something that will stick with the listener. Nothing is ever cut and dried (or black and white) in Clanton, Mississippi. This book is the sequel to Grisham's "A Time to Kill," but you don't have to know that book to get completely lost in this one. This is more than a Jerry Springer type fight over a will. This is more than a while man leaving most of his estate to a black woman. The story behind Seth's suicide goes way back, and the reader is transfixed as the story is told. Even the tree in the first scene is significant. "
— Twigsy (5 out of 5 stars)
“Jake is one of the most fully developed and engaging characters in all of Grisham’s novels. Grisham’s acute sense of place permeates the book. Clanton and its characters seem familiar to anyone who has spent time in a Southern town.”
— USA Today“Grisham’s return to Clanton is triumphant. Sycamore Row is easily the best of his books that I’ve read and ranks on my list with Stephen King’s 11/22/63 as one of the two most impressive popular novels in recent years. Grisham, at fifty-eight, has many books ahead of him, but this could be the one he’ll be remembered for. It’s an ambitious, immensely readable novel about a bitterly contested will but about other things as well. It’s often funny and sometimes tragic. If at least a few scenes don’t move you to tears, you may not be alive…Sycamore Row is enlivened by many colorful characters… Grisham has found a story that permits the full use of his powers.”
— Washington Post“Mr. Grisham’s gift for manipulating and explicating legal battles makes this multifaceted one satisfyingly cagey…Mr. Grisham knows what lawyers have been taught to do. More important, he also knows how they actually behave…As Sycamore Row finally reaches its trial phase, the author hits his full stride. He knows the courtroom inside out, and he helpfully describes each little step of these proceedings. Even if sharp-eyed readers already know how the book’s surprises may arise…they will still miss the final whammy that Mr. Grisham has in store.”
— New York Times“Grisham’s twenty-sixth adult novel and one of his finest…Sycamore Row reminds us that the best legal fiction is written by lawyers.”
— New York Times Book Review“Leave it to Grisham to make a battle about wills nail-bitingly suspenseful in his second novel featuring lawyer Jake Brigance…All the author’s strengths are in evidence—his capturing the rhythms of small-town life in Clanton, Mississippi, his skill at making legal minutiae comprehensible, and his gift at getting readers to care about his characters.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)“A long-after sequel, of a sort, to A Time to Kill in which dogged attorney Jake Brigance fights for justice in a Mississippi town where justice is not always easy to come by. That’s especially true when the uncomfortable question of race comes up, and here, it’s a doozy…Grisham, as ever, delivers a vivid, wisecracking, and tautly constructed legal procedural from which the reader might draw at least this lesson: You never want to wind up in front of a judge, even one as wise as the earwig-welcoming Reuben V. Atlee, and if you do, you want to have Jake Brigance on your side. Trademark Grisham, with carefully situated echoes of To Kill a Mockingbird. A top-notch thriller.”
— Kirkus Reviews“Reader Michael Beck does a masterly job with all the characters, imbuing each with differences in pitch and accent; his portrayal of Jake brings to mind Matthew McConaughey, who played Brigance in the film. Verdict: Grisham’s works are always in high demand, and patrons will not be disappointed.”
— Library Journal (starred review)“Michael Beck’s masterful narration of John Grisham’s engaging novel about the validity of a handwritten will offers more than a courtroom battle. Beck expertly guides the story through myriad surprises and suspense-laden twists while affecting the drawls, twangs, and nuances of the characters’ Mississippi dialects…Beck nails the characters whether they’re confident, sympathetic, unsure, cocky, or even drunk. Overall, Sycamore Row is exactly the compelling work one would expect from Grisham, and it’s even better with the narration of Michael Beck. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile" John Grisham's writing is spellbinding and riveting as always and equally superb is the narrator Michael Beck. You can't go wrong with this duo! "
— Diedra Bryant, 8/31/2017" Writing is second to none for legal thrillers "
— Screwfist , 1/29/2017John Grisham is the author of more than thirty-five novels, one work of nonfiction, a collection of stories, and seven novels for young readers. Thirty-three of his crime thrillers have made the #1 spot on the New York Times bestsellers list
Michael Beck is an American actor and audiobook narrator. He is best known for his role in the 1979 film The Warriors. He has narrated numerous novels by John Grisham, as well as Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz and My Life by Bill Clinton. He lives in California.