It should have been a routine investigation. Instead, DEA K-9 agent Adam “Deck” Decker watches in horror as one Denver hospital seems to be Ground Zero for overdoses of a new drug. Now Deck can only hope a certain icy, green-eyed ER doctor will help him and his canine partner track down the deadly source. Dr. Tori Sampson has her reasons for not trusting federal agents, especially ones working for the DEA. But the rash of overdoses—including a heartbreaking case involving a teen—is alarmingly high. And the new opioid is not only extremely dangerous, it defies all the usual medical treatments. So Tori has a choice: work with the big, brawny, and annoyingly hot DEA agent...or watch more innocent people die. Tori’s the only person who can help Deck break the case, and they’ll need to trust each other, no matter how high the tension and attraction sizzling between them runs. But with every question answered, they realize there’s something more behind these typical teen overdoses. There’s a pattern here, and a pattern can only suggest one thing: there’s a killer on the loose. Each book in the K-9 Special Ops series is STANDALONE: * Tough Justice * Burning Justice

Charles Chatman believed he would die in a Texas prison. He was sent there at age 21, convicted of raping a 52 year old white woman in his neighborhood, and sentenced to 99 years. The victim had picked his picture out of a line-up and the jury had ignored the testimony of his witnesses, that he was at work when the rape occurred. His court-appointed attorney made feeble efforts to defend him. He had served 27 years when Michelle Moore, a public defender working with the Innocence Project of Texas arranged a DNA test which proved him innocent, and District Judge John Creuzot ordered him released from prison. Richard Miles was more fortunate. After he had served 14 years of a 40 year sentence for murder, investigators for Centurion Ministries discovered police reports which had been hidden from him and his attorney, Ed Gray. A new trial was ordered, then the sole witness who had identified Miles recanted his testimony and claimed that he had been instructed to lie by a Dallas prosecutor. Over 250 prisoners in the U.S. have been exonerated in the last 20 years, some on death row and others serving long sentences. DNA testing has freed the majority, proof of false identification and misconduct by police and prosecutors the others. Dallas County, with one percent of the U.S. population, has accounted for 25 wrongful convictions, ten percent of the total. Henry Wade, Dallas County District Attorney for 32 years, ran the most aggressive and successful prosecutor's office in the country. Ed Gray, as Assistant District Attorney and criminal defense attorney had a ringside seat to the Henry Wade era. In these pages he explains how some of the innocent were convicted. TOUGH JUSTICE is the first book which attempts to portray the career and the history of Henry Wade, the most famous prosecutor in the history of Texas and perhaps the United States. After graduating from the University of Texas Business School and Southern Methodist University School of Law, Ed Gray was a civil law firm associate when he was appointed to represent an indigent defendant in Dallas District Court in 1969. In his first trial, Ed won a Not Guilty verdict and a job offer from District Attorney Henry Wade. He was quickly promoted to Felony Court, where he led the Dallas D. A.'s office in trials and convictions for the next four years. He was lead counsel in 15 murder trials, 13 attempted murder and aggravated assault trials, 8 rape trials, and 49 robbery trials resulting in sentences as high as death and 1200 years and only one Not Guilty verdict. Ed Gray has been a board certified criminal defense attorney since 1975, and has tried 525 criminal jury trials in state and federal courts.

“Tough Cases stands out as a genuine revelation. . . . Our most distinguished judges should follow the lead of this groundbreaking volume.” —Justin Driver, The Washington Post A rare and illuminating view of how judges decide dramatic legal cases—Law and Order from behind the bench—including the Elián González, Terri Schiavo, and Scooter Libby cases Prosecutors and defense attorneys have it easy—all they have to do is to present the evidence and make arguments. It's the judges who have the heavy lift: they are the ones who have to make the ultimate decisions, many of which have profound consequences on the lives of the people standing in front of them. In Tough Cases, judges from different kinds of courts in different parts of the country write about the case that proved most difficult for them to decide. Some of these cases received international attention: the Elián González case in which Judge Jennifer Bailey had to decide whether to return a seven-year-old boy to his father in Cuba after his mother drowned trying to bring the child to the United States, or the Terri Schiavo case in which Judge George Greer had to decide whether to withdraw life support from a woman in a vegetative state over the wishes of her parents, or the Scooter Libby case about appropriate consequences for revealing the name of a CIA agent. Others are less well-known but equally fascinating: a judge on a Native American court trying to balance U.S. law with tribal law, a young Korean American former defense attorney struggling to adapt to her new responsibilities on the other side of the bench, and the difficult decisions faced by a judge tasked with assessing the mental health of a woman who has killed her own children. Relatively few judges have publicly shared the thought processes behind their decision making. Tough Cases makes for fascinating reading for everyone from armchair attorneys and fans of Law and Order to those actively involved in the legal profession who want insight into the people judging their work.

A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.

The authors trace the developments that have led to prison over-crowding before proposing a possible solution to the problem. They compare the British approach to the way that US & European countries handle these issues.

Third in the high-octane FBI thriller series from New York Times–bestselling author. Taking down the head of the Moretti crime syndicate was Special Agent Lara Grant’s biggest coup, but she paid a heavy price to make the bust. She’ll do anything to keep him—and her secrets—behind bars. But Lara knows he’s playing the FBI like a maestro even from jail. So when her boss’s daughter is kidnapped, it’s personal . . . and not just for Lara. With the team at breaking point, it’s up to Lara to keep everyone focused. Until a chilling photo is delivered to her home address. Moretti knows where she lives. And he knows what she’s hiding . . . Praise for the novels of Carol Ericson “Ericson jumps from action to action with the accuracy and grace of a trapeze artist, keeping readers on the edge of their seats.” —RT Book Reviews “Super intense, very fast paced, and action packed.” —Night Owl Reviews