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Sparring Partners
Cover of Sparring Partners
Sparring Partners
Novellas
Borrow Borrow
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham is the acknowledged master of the legal thriller. In his first collection of novellas, law is a common thread, but America’s favorite storyteller has several surprises in store.
 
“Homecoming” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he’s not in the courtroom. He’s called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again—until now. Now Mack is back, and he’s leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned.
In “Strawberry Moon,” we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can’t save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request. 
The “Sparring Partners” are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time in her career and try to save herself?
By turns suspenseful, hilarious, powerful, and moving, these are three of the greatest stories John Grisham has ever told.
Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham is the acknowledged master of the legal thriller. In his first collection of novellas, law is a common thread, but America’s favorite storyteller has several surprises in store.
 
“Homecoming” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he’s not in the courtroom. He’s called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again—until now. Now Mack is back, and he’s leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned.
In “Strawberry Moon,” we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can’t save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request. 
The “Sparring Partners” are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time in her career and try to save herself?
By turns suspenseful, hilarious, powerful, and moving, these are three of the greatest stories John Grisham has ever told.
Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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About the Author-
  • John Grisham is the author of forty-seven consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include The Judge's List, Sooley, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A Time for Mercy, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.
     
    Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
     
    When he's not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
     
    John lives on a farm in central Virginia.
Reviews-
  • Booklist

    May 15, 2022
    In ""Homecoming,"" one of this trio of novellas, Grisham revisits one of his most popular characters, attorney Jake Brigance (from A Time to Kill, Sycamore Road, and A Time for Mercy). Here, Brigance is surprised to learn that a former colleague, who fled the country after stealing money from his clients, wants to come home. The story sets the reader up with certain expectations and then goes in an entirely different direction, leading to a satisfying and surprising conclusion. "Strawberry Moon," the most emotionally resonant of the three novellas, is set during the few hours remaining in the life of death-row inmate Cody Wallace, who was convicted as a teenager and has spent half his existence awaiting execution. "Sparring Partners," which is most like a Grisham legal thriller, puts readers on the metaphorical battlefield as two brothers, co-owners of a struggling legal firm, are forced to hammer out a truce; the warring brothers are wonderful characters, and the story is full of twists and turns. An absorbing collection and a real treat for Grisham's fans.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Grisham's books have sold nearly 500,000 copies, a number that will take another leap forward with his first collection of novellas.

    COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Kirkus

    May 15, 2022
    Three Grisham novellas show the less glorious side of the legal profession. In the first, Homecoming, Jake Brigance is a lawyer in a small Mississippi town with too many lawyers. One day, his office receives an envelope containing a note and enough cash for a one-week vacation to Costa Rica for Jake and his wife. All he's asked to do is convey a message and relay the response. The offer/request is from Mack Stafford, an attorney who'd skipped town three years earlier with $400,000 of his clients' money, leaving behind his wife, two teenage daughters, and clients who still don't even know they've been bilked. Now he feels bad and wants to come home and reestablish contact with family. Will they want anything to do with him? No startling twists, but Mack is surprisingly sympathetic given what he's done. In Strawberry Moon, 29-year-old Cody Wallace sits on death row for a botched robbery-turned-murder committed when he was 14. His brother had pulled the trigger on the homeowners and was killed in the shootout. Over the years, Cody's lawyer has tried every legal trick and delaying tactic he could, and now it's execution day. The only hope left is clemency from the governor. Meanwhile, Cody's sole visitor has been his lawyer, although a Midwestern woman has corresponded with him and sent him books--lots of books. With execution imminent, he has one last wish that's against prison rules and could get a friendly guard fired. The last yarn, Sparring Partners, features a most dysfunctional family of lawyers. Bolton Malloy is the disbarred head of Malloy & Malloy and is serving prison time for killing his wife, a most disagreeable woman whom no one misses. Rusty and Kirk, his two lawyer sons, despise each other as well as dear old dad, but their old man has forced them to sign an agreement never to leave the firm without paying a serious penalty. Bolton hopes to get out of prison soon, but the kids hope otherwise. So while the first two stories are touching, the last is anything but. You just want everybody to slither back under a rock--or maybe under separate rocks. Grisham's fans will enjoy these tales of betrayal, hope, and dysfunction.

    COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Publisher's Weekly

    June 13, 2022
    Thinly developed characters and underwhelming plots mar the three entries in bestseller Grisham’s first novella collection. “Homecoming,” the opener, underutilizes Ford County, Miss., attorney Jake Brigance, the lead of Grisham’s debut, A Time to Kill. A couple hand deliver a letter to Jake from Mack Stafford, someone they met on vacation in Costa Rica; he’s an old colleague of Jake’s who fled the county three years earlier after filing for bankruptcy and divorcing his wife. Mack asks Jake for help learning the level of risk he would face if he returned home to reconnect with family he abandoned, including his mother and daughters. The story line ends with a whimper, presenting no genuine ethical dilemmas. Readers will struggle to feel any sense of gross injustice in “Strawberry Moon,” about the last hours of a young man facing execution for a crime he aided in as a teen. Equally unmemorable is the title tale, which focuses on machinations at a law firm. Mundane prose doesn’t help (“It was one of those raw, windy, dreary Monday afternoons in February when gloom settled over the land”). Grisham has done a lot better. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Co.

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Novellas
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