9 SCORPIONS (C)

Award-winning author Paul Levine captures the dark side of the legal world with gripping, mordantly witty prose that "gets leaner, meatier, better with every book" (Miami Herald). Now, he delivers a thrillingly authentic page-turner about the murderous secrets of those who make and break the law at the highest level: the United States Supreme Court. Lisa Fremont is a rising young lawyer gifted with a brilliant mind, natural beauty -- and an alluring sensuality. A newly hired law clerk on the staff of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Truitt, Lisa has a bright future. She also has a past that her curriculum vitae doesn't reveal....Long before she was Lisa Fremont, Esquire, she was Angel, an underage stripper in San Francisco's Tiki Club. And long before Max Wanaker was president of Atlantica Airlines, he was the wealthy benefactor who took her off the streets.Her driving ambition put her at the top of her class at Stanford, but her tuition, a highpowered career head start, and a new life came courtesy of Max, who knew a good bet when he saw it. Max took his angel far with a devil of a deal -- now, he's calling in the debt. Three years ago, on its approach to Miami International, Atlantica Flight 640 crashed, claiming hundreds of lives and sparking a multimillion-dollar legal battle that is about to come before the Supreme Court. The swing vote belongs to Sam Truitt, and Max is depending on Lisa's expertise in the art of persuasion to save Atlantica. Lisa knows there's only one way to get Justice Truitt's vote: put aside her passion for justice and get into Truitt's life, into his head -- and into his bed. But Lisa's obligation to Max is about to be overruled by a raw desire for Sam Truitt....One of the nation's most powerful men, Justice Truitt is also just a man -- with a failing marriage and a sharp, sexy law clerk succeeding in winning him over. Not knowing whom to trust as he steps into the minefield of the Atlantica case, he puts his career and his life on the line to strip away layers of corruption and violence outside the system -- and within. For even among his fellow Justices -- as tangled and deadly as nine scorpions in a bottle -- Truitt may find the deadly sting of malevolence at the highest levels of Law. In the Machiavellian maze of political intrigue and personal betrayal that is the Supreme Court, Lisa Fremont and Sam Truitt could make one hell of a legal team. But inside the hidden sanctums of the halls of justice, there's only one rule to live by: stay one step ahead of those who live by no law at all.

Paul Levine is the award-winning author of Flesh & Bones and To Speak for the Dead. A former trial and appellate attorney, he is now a full-time novelist.