The Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction - the Previous Winners

My January blog showcased the finalists and winner of the 2015 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Just to refresh your memory, this prize is awarded annually to a published work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. The University of Alabama School of Law is now accepting entries for works published originally in 2015, until March 31, 2016. The finalists will be announced in May 2016 and the winner in September 2016. So stay tuned for those announcements.

Having enjoyed a few of the 2015 finalist/winner titles has piqued my interest in the previous years winners. Here's a list of those titles along with a brief annotation:

2015 - Secret of Magic by Deborah Johnson
           Winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction"If you liked The Help, you'll love this one!"—EW.com In a novel that "brings authentic history to light,"* a young female attorney from New York City attempts the impossible in 1946: attaining justice for a black man in the Deep South. 

2014 - Sycamore Row by John Grisham
           John Grisham takes you back to where it all began. When wealthy Seth Hubbard hangs himself from a sycamore tree and leaves his fortune to his black maid, 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. A sequel to A Time to Kill, one of the most popular novels of our time and which established John Grisham as the master of the legal thriller.

2013 - Havana Requiem by Paul Goldstein
           Losing his successful law firm and marriage to pride and alcohol, litigator Michael Seeley slowly recovers his reputation only to risk everything by accepting a case from an aging musician who with six other composers seeks to reclaim copyrights to culturally significant Cuban songs.

2012 - The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly
           Mickey Haller has fallen on tough times. He expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home. Despite the danger and uncertainty, Haller mounts the best defense of his career in a trial where the last surprise comes after the verdict is in. Connelly proves again why he "may very well be the best novelist working in the United States today" (San Francisco Chronicle).

2011 - The Confession by John Grisham
           When Travis Boyette is paroled because of inoperable brain tumor, for the first time in his life, he decides to do the right thing and tell police about a crime he committed and another man is about to be executed for.