Richard North Patterson has 19 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 13 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 9 ratings. The most-rated is Protect and Defend.
Protect and Defend
Summary
A compelling new novel from Richard North Patterson - a major departure, and that confirms his place among the most important popular novelists at work today. A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret; and the prospect that a volatile abortion case - a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents - will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal. As these stories intertwine, building in complexity and suspense, Patterson gives us the resounding clash of competing ambitions between the president and the majority leader; the equally momentous collision of science and culture in the courtroom; and, in an unprecedented novelistic depiction of the legal process from the perspective of the judge rather than the lawyers, a revelation of both how the judicial system works and how it intersects with politics, for better or for worse. Protect and Defend is a triumph - the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century.
©2000 Richard North Patterson (P)2000 Random House, Inc.
Dark Lady
Summary
In Dark Lady, Richard North Patterson displays the mastery of setting, psychology, and story that makes him unique among writers of suspense, and one of today's most original and enthralling novelists. In Steelton, as struggling city on the cusp of an economic turnaround, two prominent men are found dead. One is Tommy Fielding, a senior officer of the company building a new baseball stadium, the city's hope for the future. The other is Jack Novak, the local drug dealers' attorney. Fielding's death with a prostitute, from an overdose of heroin, seems accidental; Novak is apparently the victim of a ritual murder. But in each case the character of the dead man seems contradicted by the particulars of his death. Coincidence or connection? The question falls to Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz. A driven woman, she is called the Dark Lady by defense lawyers for her relentless, sometimes ruthless, style: in seven years only one case has gotten away from her, and only because the defendant took his own life. Making her way through a maze of corruption, deceit, and greed, trusting no one, Stella comes to believe that the search for the truth involves the bleak history of Steelton itself - a history that now endangers her future, and perhaps her life. Dark Lady is Richard North Patterson's signature work.
©1999 by Richard North Patterson (P)1999 Random House, Inc.
The Spire
Summary
Both a razor-sharp thriller and a poignant love story, this twisting tale of psychological suspense is Patterson's most compelling novel in years. Mark Darrow grew up in a small Ohio town with no real advantages beyond his intelligence and athletic ability. But thanks to the intervention of Lionel Farr - a professor at Caldwell, the local college - Darrow became an excellent student and, later, a superb trial lawyer. Now Farr asks his still-youthful protégé for a life-altering favor. An embezzlement scandal has threatened Caldwell's very existence - would Darrow consider becoming its new president? Darrow accepts, but returning to his alma mater opens old wounds. Sixteen years ago, on the night of his greatest triumph as Caldwell's star quarterback, he discovered the body of a black female student named Angela Hall at the base of the Spire, the bell tower that dominates the leafy campus. His best friend, Steve Tillman, was charged with Angela's murder and ultimately sent to prison for life. But now, even as Darrow begins the daunting task of leading Caldwell, he discovers that the case against his friend left crucial questions unanswered. Despite his new obligations - and his deepening attachment to Farr's beautiful though troubled daughter - Darrow begins his own inquiry into the murder. Soon he becomes convinced that Angela's killer is still at large, but only when another mysterious death occurs does he understand that his own life is at risk.
©2009 Richard North Patterson (P)2009 Macmillan Audio
Balance of Power
Summary
President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancie, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington - the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA). Allied with the President's most determined rival, the resourceful and relentless Senate Majority Leader Frank Fasano, the SSA declares all-out war on Kerry Kilcannon, deploying its arsenal of money, intimidation and secret dealings to eviscerate Kilcannon's crusade and, it hopes, destroy his presidency. This ignites a high-stakes game of politics and legal maneuvering in the Senate, the courtroom, and across the country, which the charismatic but untested young President is determined to win at any cost. But in the incendiary clash over gun violence and gun rights, the cost to both Kilcannons may be even higher than he imagined. And others in the crossfire may also pay the price: the idealistic lawyer who has taken on the gun industry; the embattled CEO of America's leading gun maker; the war-hero senator caught between conflicting ambitions; the female senator whose career is at risk; and the grief-stricken young woman fighting to emerge from the shadow of her sister, the First Lady. The insidious ways money corrodes democracy and corrupts elected officials...the visceral debate between gun-rights and gun-control advocates...the bitter legal conflict between gun companies and the victims of gun violence...a ratings-driven media that both manipulates and is manipulated...Richard North Patterson weaves these engrossing themes into an epic novel that moves us with its force, passion and authority.
©2003 Richard North Patterson (P)2003 Random House Inc., Random House Audio, A Division of Random House, Inc.
Conviction
Summary
When the body of nine-year old Thuy Sen is found in the San Francisco Bay, the police quickly charge Rennell and Payton Price with her grisly murder. A 12-person jury, abetted by an incompetent defense lawyer, is nearly as quick to find the brothers guilty, and to sentence them both to die for their crimes. Fifteen years later, overworked pro bono laywer Teresa Peralta Paget, her husband Chris, and stepson Carlo, a recent Harvard law graduate, become convinced not only that Rennell didn't receive a fair trial but that he may well be innocent. Racing against the clock and facing enormous legal obstacles, Teresa, Chris, and Carlo desperately try to stay Rennell's execution, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and to an enormously moving and powerful conclusion.
©2005 Richard North Patterson (P)2005 Random House, Inc.
Exile
Summary
An ambitious young lawyer takes on his biggest case: the televised murder trial of a woman he still loves... David Wolfe is an ambitious former homicide prosecutor who is planning to run for Congress. A political dinner for the Israeli Prime Minister is hosted by his current girlfriend, Carole Shorr, a liberal supporter of both the Palestinian and Israeli causes. But when David receives a call from Hana Ashawi, a Palestinian woman who was David's classmate at Harvard Law School, he is rattled. Hana was more than a peer - she was his lover. When, furthermore, the Israeli Prime Minister is assassinated, apparently by Hana's partner, David finds himself thrown into a situation with enormous global, political and emotional implications.
©2007 Richard North Patterson (P)2014 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Fall from Grace
Summary
The mysterious, violent death of a prominent New England patriarch exposes a nest of dark family secrets in bestselling author Richard North Patterson’s twentieth compelling novel. Adam Blaine arrives on the island of Martha’s Vineyard to attend the funeral of his estranged father, Ben Blaine, a famous and charismatic writer who has served as patriarch of his clan for many years. A man fond of sailboats, good wine, and women other than his wife, Ben Blaine has left behind a string of secrets in addition to an emotionally distraught widow and his strangely aloof mistress, Carla Pacelli, a beautiful television actress who once had a drug problem. As soon as Adam arrives, he discovers that Ben has disinherited his mother, uncle, and brother in favor of his lover, and begins to wonder if his father’s death - caused by an inexplicable fall from a cliff - might be murder. Using his training as a CIA operative, Adam skillfully seeks to obscure the evidence suggesting that a family member may have killed his father, while at the same time fighting to undo the will, which favors the enigmatic Carla. As he walks this tightrope, Adam risks his freedom and perhaps his life, even as he unearths increasingly disturbing family secrets never meant to be discovered, and which cause him to question his understanding of his own life and everyone around him - his beloved mother, uncle, and brother and, not least, Carla. Filled with tight psychological intrigue that will keep readers guessing until the very last page, Fall from Grace confirms that “Richard North Patterson is one of the best in the business” (Time).
©2012 Richard North Patterson (P)2012 Simon & Schuster Audio
Silent Witness
Summary
A main selection of the Literary Guild Attorney Tony Lord left his hometown and the bitter memories of his girlfriend's murder behind. Now, 28 years later, he's pulled back to Lake City to defend his closest high school friend against a charge of homicide. Sam Robb, the married father of two, is a local football legend. But he was also the last to see 16-year-old Marcie Calder alive, and as shocking forensic evidence at the trial reveals, he is the father of her unborn child. Probing the darkest recesses of love and friendship, Lord will discover things too disturbing to ignore - that Sam wasn't the only one in Lake City with a motive for killing Marcie, that small-town secrets can hide devastating betrayals, and that the past has a way of repeating itself...even in murder. PLEASE NOTE: This is the abridged edition. An unabridged version is also available.
©1997 Richard North Patterson (P)1996 Random House Audio Publishing, Inc., All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, Reproduced by Arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing, Inc.
Degree of Guilt
Summary
Powerful, glamorous television journalist Mary Carelli is charged with the murder of famed novelist Mark Ransom. However, she pleads self-defense against rape. Christopher Paget, Mary's attorney (and former lover), prepares to shock the courtroom with revelations about Ransom's past as a twisted sexual predator. But as the trial unfolds, Paget is in for some surprises of his own. He learns that Mary may not be telling the whole truth about the rape, and may well have a secret motive for murder. Meanwhile, newly disclosed tapes of Ransom force Mary to confront ugly secrets about her own past, including testimony at Congressional hearings 15 years earlier that led to her stardom and helped Paget bring down the President.
©1992 by Richard North Patterson (P)1992 by Random House Audio Publishing, Inc., All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, Reproduced by Arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing, Inc.
The Lasko Tangent
Summary
Self-made millionaire William Lasko has an eye for wealth and the ear of the President and a talent for using both to get whatever he wants. But the Economic Crimes Commission wants to bring the corrupt, untouchable Lasko down, and they enlist the services of straightlaced U.S. Attorney Christopher Paget to do it. Paget has to walk a tightrope, gathering enough evidence to nail Lasko without alienating the White House, knowing full well that men like Lasko make their own rules - including the elimination of enemies like him.
©1979 by Richard North Patterson (P)1994 by Random House Audio Publishing, Inc., All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, Reproduced by Arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing, Inc.
Silent Witness
Summary
A main selection of the Literary Guild Silent Witness begins in 1967, in a small Midwestern town. Seventeen-year-old Tony Lord, Lake City's star athlete, seems destined for great things. His driving ambition is precisely what attracts Alison Taylor, the daughter of the town's leading family, and it is what sets Tony apart from his two closest friends: Sam Robb and Sam's girl, Sue Cash. Suddenly, everything changes. Alison Taylor is brutally murdered, and Tony is the number one suspect. The town turns against him. His friendship with Sam is destroyed. And Tony leaves Lake City, vowing never to return. Twenty-seven years later, an urgent phone call from Sue changes Tony's life once more. For Tony Lord is now a San Francisco lawyer - a relentless advocate dedicated to the defense of his clients. Sue's plea for help is one he cannot ignore: Her husband, Sam Robb, now the vice principal of Lake City High School, is suspected of the murder of a female student. In seeking to save him, Tony must confront not only the fear that Sam is a murderer, but the concealed passions and buried truths that underlie Alison's death so long ago.
©1997 Richard North Patterson (P)1996 by Random House Audio Publishing, Inc., All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, Reproduced by Arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing, Inc.
Loss of Innocence
Summary
From acclaimed author Richard North Patterson comes a sweeping family drama of dark secrets and individual awakenings, set against the backdrop of the tumultuous summer of 1968. America is in a state of turbulence, engulfed in civil unrest and uncertainty. Yet for Whitney Dane - spending the summer of her twenty-second year on Martha's Vineyard - life could not be safer, nor the future more certain. Educated at Wheaton, soon to be married, and the youngest daughter of the all-American Dane family, Whitney has everything she has ever wanted and is everything her all-powerful and doting father, Charles Dane, wants her to be. But the Vineyard's still waters are disturbed by the appearance of Benjamin Blaine. An underprivileged yet fiercely ambitious and charismatic figure, he is a force of nature neither Whitney nor her family could have prepared for. As Ben's presence begins to awaken independence within Whitney, it also brings deep-rooted family tensions to a dangerous head. And soon Whitney's set-in-stone future becomes far from satisfactory and her picture-perfect family far from pretty.
©2013 Richard North Patterson (P)2013 AudioGO
Balance of Power
Summary
From the courtrooms to the White House, an epic novel which confronts the terrible toll of gun violence so prevalent throughout the US, and now in the UK. 'A must read for anyone interested in the gun debate' (Bill Clinton). Five months into his term, President Kilcannon and his fiancée, television journalist Lara Costello, have decided to marry. But the occasion is followed by a terrible tragedy: a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire. It is a shattering event that consumes Kilcannon and his wife, challenging both their marriage and his presidency in such a personal way that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence throughout the US. In a high-stakes game of politics and legal manoeuvring where ideals collide in the Senate, the courtroom and across the country, President Kilcannon is determined to win at any cost. But in the clash over gun rights and violence, the cost to both Kilcannons may be even higher than the President imagined.
©2003 Richard North Patterson (P)2014 Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Eden in Winter
Summary
Number-one New York Times best-selling author Richard North Patterson - the author of more than 20 novels, including Degree of Guilt and Silent Witness - returns with the dramatic conclusion to the Blaine trilogy: Eden in Winter, the final volume that completes the story begun in Fall from Grace. Two months after the suspicious and much-publicized death of his father on the island of Martha's Vineyard, it is taking all of Adam Blaine's will to suture the deep wounds the tragedy has inflicted upon his family and himself. As the court inquest into Benjamin Blaine's death casts suspicions on those closest to him, Adam struggles to protect them from those who still suspect that his father was murdered by one of his kin. But the sternest test of all is Adam's proximity to Carla Pacelli - his late father's mistress and a woman to whom, despite her pivotal role in his family's plight, Adam finds himself increasingly drawn. The closer he gets to this beautiful, mysterious woman, the further Adam feels from his troubles, yet the closer he also comes to revealing the secrets he's striven to conceal and condemning the people he's fought so hard to protect. An acknowledged master of the courtroom thriller, Patterson's Blaine trilogy, a bold and surprising departure from his past novels, is a complex family drama pulsing with the tumult of the time and "dripping with summer diversions, youthful passion and ideals, class tensions, and familial disruptions" (Library Journal).
©2014 Richard North Patterson (P)2014 Blackstone Audiobooks
Private Screening
Summary
"Thrilling.... PRIVATE SCREENING succeeds on all counts. It's a footrace of a read, daring you to put it down." (ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION) The nation is stunned silent when presidential hopeful James Kilcannon is shot dead in front of his rock-star girlfriend Stacy Tarrant. Fiercely independent attorney Tony Lord dares to defend the shooter, but the already bizarre plot takes another twist. As America watches, a mysterious and ruthless figure, known only as Phoenix, takes to the airwaves - and takes the wife of a wealthy newspaper mogul and Stacy's manager as his hostages. Phoenix mounts a televised trial of his own - in which Stacy Tarrant and Tony Lord are helpless defendents, millions of viewers are jurors, and - unless his chilling demands are met - Pheonix is the unstoppable executioner....
©1995 Richard North Patterson (P)2012 Random House
No Safe Place
Summary
In his first audiobook since the national best seller Silent Witness, Richard North Patterson gives us an extraordinary novel of presidential politics. Senator Kerry Kilcannon's insurgent campaign against Vice President Dick Mason has come down to the last seven days. Whoever wins the California presidential primary is likely to win the Democratic nomination. And for all the votes his passions and magnetism have gained him, Kerry's problems are formidable. Kerry is haunted by the tragedy of his older brother, a presidential candidate who was assassinated in California twelve years earlier. Kerry has stumbled in his advocacy of abortion rights, and a right-to-life fanatic has pushed this explosive issue to the forefront by murdering three people at a women's clinic. In addition, a journalist is striving to verify the story that while still married, Kerry had an affair with a reporter. And now, ever more threatening, Kerry is being stalked by the abortion-clinic murderer himself. With rare authenticity, Richard North Patterson depicts the world of high-stakes presidential politics that will hold the listener enthralled from the first to the last sentence.
©1998 by Richard North Patterson (P)1998 by Random House Audio Publishing, Inc., All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, Reproduced by Arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing, Inc.
Richard North Patterson Value Collection
Summary
Eyes of a Child Ricardo Arias is found dead in his apartment, the gun that killed him wedged in his mouth. The physical evidence might confirm suicide, but there is no doubt that it strongly suggests murder. The police investigation quickly uncovers a maze of emotion and conflict that surrounded the dead man in the last months of his life: an estranged wife, Terri Peralta; an ugly custody fight over their six-year-old daughter, Elena; threats of extortion; accusations of adultery; and sexual abuse of the child. And then the police uncover a murder suspect. He's Terri's new lover, Christopher Paget, a man of wealth and prominence, an extremely high-profile San Francisco defense attorney. Now, defense attorney becomes defendant. Paget's defense attorney works desperately to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury, even as Paget and Terri struggle to preserve their future and that of their cherished children. Degree of Guilt Mary Carelli, one of the most powerful women in TV journalism, is charged with the murder of America's most eminent novelist, Mark Ransom. As her trial unfolds Mary's lawyer, Christopher Paget, willl be surprised by Mary's secret motive for murder...by evidence that Mary is lying...and by an enigmatic judge with an agenda of her own. The Lasko Tangent William Lasko is a self-made multimillionaire who's got an eye for wealth and influence, the ear of the president, and a talent for using both to get what he wants. The Economic Crimes Commision wants the corrupt Lasko brought down and Chrisopher Paget is picked for the job. To gather enough evidence to nail Lasko without alienating the White House, Paget's got to go by the book. But Lasko makes his own rules and eliminating enemies is his golden one.
©2000 Richard North Patterson (P)2000 Random House Audio
Degree of Guilt
Summary
Christopher Paget is a trial lawyer with a famous past. As a young investigator he brought down a president. It cost him his relationship with Mary Carelli. Fifteen years have passed while Paget raises their son, seeking privacy. Until a murder changes everything. Now a television journalist, Mary is charged in an eminent novelist's death. Her defense is attempted rape, and she wants Paget to defend her. But a fateful question remains: was it self-defense...or murder?
©1992 Richard North Patterson (P)1994 Random House, Inc.
The Final Judgment
Summary
Hours after 22-year-old Brett Allen finds her boyfriend brutally slain, she finds herself in police custody, the prime suspect. Her aunt, Caroline Masters, is summoned to act as her defense attorney. The result is a painful meeting with Brett, whom Caroline has not seen since infancy, and a confrontation with 3 people from whom she is deeply estranged: her first lover who is now the prosecutor, her half-sister, and most difficult of all, her domineering father. The story moves quickly now, opening into the police investigation and the courtroom. Yet the truths about herself and her family that Caroline ultimately uncovers are painful beyond the deepest doubts and shocking beyond the deepest fears that haunt her adult life - and make up the explosive core of the author's most powerful novel to date.
©1995 by Richard North Patterson (P)1995 by Random House Audio Publishing, Inc., All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, Reproduced by Arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing, Inc.