1. DETENTION

As a new lawyer on her own, Alexandra McLeod learns all sorts of new things from her paralegal, Phyll, who runs the show. Nicknamed Shadow, Alexandra grew up in a New York Penthouse smothered by an overly-protective mother; Shadow fit her perfectly because she was often underfoot. When she was upset with her Mom, the famous television comedienne, Clarice McLeod, she would ask who her father was so she could go live with him. But Mom would defer the matter, saying Dad disappeared like a Shadow when he found out she was on the way.

Because she was dumped by her father and her first husband, a privileged guy of good family, Shadow feels the loss but tries to forget it! Harry the Jerk told Shadow he wants to marry his Law School Clerk, whose family is from the same tier as his. So, there, she told herself. Nothing now is holding you back.

Shadow is determined to become a great lawyer. Within reason, Shadow lets Phyll, who has been a paralegal long enough to know what she’s doing, run the show and there is no limit to what Phyll is capable of doing.

Phyllis MacArthur lives a life devoted to two important forces: God and Sex. She requires a balance of each and lets Shadow know that should be her goal as well.

It isn’t. Shadow knows that she and her paralegal are direct opposites in that regard and Shadow does not want to be coupled anytime soon given her disastrous experience with love and her first marriage to Harry the Jerk!

Together, the Phyll and Shadow Show, as others quickly come call them, is a winning team, especially when they add their investigator, Felipe (called Fee Lo by those who love him) Hernandez.

The three feel a commitment for life to make services available for children who are caught up in Juvenile crime or taken by the Children’s Protective Services into custody of the state when their parents flunk parenthood!

After Shadow represents Fee Lo, when he is temporarily removed from his job because he made an arrest to protect a notorious reporter, he shows up at Shadow’s office and announces he is joining their practice since he cannot pay Shadow for services otherwise.

But, before they start work together, Fee Lo, the chief deputy at the Detention Center for juvenile offenders, calls Shadow to the Center at three o’clock in the morning for a probable cause hearing for a sixteen-year-old, Phoebe Sunshine MacPearson.

Phoebe is going to be arraigned—told her rights—which must be done within 48 hours of arrest, and some magistrate must decide if sufficient evidence supports holding an accused to file charges. Shadow admits she agrees with the State that Phoebe should be held—she blew away the face of her best friend in a episode of madness. But Shadow will not allow them to certify the child as an adult and transferred to the felony court although Mom agrees to it.

It’s an ordinary night for Fee Lo and Shadow but for the fact that the teen in trouble is the granddaughter of the man who runs the County. He is called the County Judge—not a real judge but a lot more powerful.

Phoebe was picked up at a drunken orgy at her mother’s house with friends, who were all drunk and high and Phoebe was still holding the smoking gun when arrested. “She had it coming” Phoebe says of her best friend, whose face was obliterated by the force of the close-up shot. Fee Lo calls Shadow because, he says, he needs somebody who gives a damn who will actually represent this child’s interest because to Fee Lo she is one of the most neglected ever.

Phoebe’s boyfriend, Little Ace Tuttle, a known dealer, was in bed with Phoebe’s best friend at the time Phoebe fired the gun. He retaliates that same night thinking her grandfather would bail her out and life would go on as normal. Besides, he said, it was a silly accident. He goes after the Judge, with whom he has a past. Judd Baker, the retired district judge on call is helping a friend by covering her docket when he gets shot in the head by this drug-dealing young man.

The Reporter, whose crusade cost the Judge his job, is also on the scene and insists he saw everything and can help. Instead Fee Lo carries him in as a witness to protect him from the perpetrator who is still at large and is armed. Fee Lo holds him until he can check the camera, which is full of fuzzy images of a truck, although you can’t really tell what the driver is up to. Fee Lo will lose his beloved job taking care of kids in trouble because he arrests the reporter and seizes his camera.

Being the kind who never takes nothing without fighting back, Fee Lo returns to his home in the Valley and tracks down what he knows is there, which gives him a win. Rather than going back to the Center, Fee Lo adopts Shadow and Phyll and becomes an important part of their practice.

A good-looking FBI agent, Jake, again appears at a time Shadow needs saving; this time serving Fee Lo with Mickey Little’s lawsuit in federal court. Shadow is glad to see him again; but not particularly anxious to pick up where they left off. He lingers over a hand shake and Shadow gets the message he is back on the scene. She feels the tug of desire, but it is not her nature to let her body tell her what to do.

This opening book in a series about courthouses and the people who work there, tracks the initial court experience for those who want to understand the law but are tired of reading law books! As you read about how the typical case starts and is developed, you meet all the characters in the series, but are left guessing as to how their affairs will finally work out. Little Phoebe, for example, has a real fight on her hands if she is to get justice. Shadow knows exactly how she is going to handle the criminal case, but getting justice for Phoebe is another matter altogether!

2. RUTTER INDUSTRIES

Having lost his job with the County, Fee Lo visits Rutter Industry, the largest business in Texas and second only to Exxon and Atlas in the world. He applies for a job on Rutter’s security squad, which is larger in number than most cities and counties together. Fee Lo is a small-built, heavily muscled man who can take care of himself. He is charming and easily persuades Sharon Donaldson, who manages Rutter’s personnel work, that he is a Rutter legacy. Both parents worked for Rutter in South Texas. She hired him on the spot but within two weeks she tells Shadow she has no idea who Shadow is talking about, she never met him, and she never hired him.

Shadow knows the innocent-looking very sweet young woman is lying. She knows because Fee Lo called Shadow at 2 in the morning just the week before and asked her to bring the bike to the hole in the fence on ninety-sixth street and come straight down that aisle until she saw him. He says to turn the bike around and be ready to ride. She did so and saw him standing on the roof line of a stack in the oil field. The next thing she knew, Fee Lo jumped from the tower and was on the bike behind her driving them back through the gate.

“That’s the way it happened,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“They threw this guy off the stack to get rid of him! Said it was suicide because the boss learned he was gay and was going to fire him.”

Then Fee Lo disappears, along with his friend, the Babe, the woman he is more enamored with than any other ever in his life. Babe is a reporter for the Enterprise and she also goes by Lorena (when she’s using Bubba the Bouncer to get the information she needs there). Little Babe gets around. Shadow and Phyll believe Babe enticed Fee Lo to hire on at Rutter to get information for her. Now both are missing, having disappeared like the wind.

Searching for them, Shadow meets an important new force in her life, Roger Shutte, a wizard with money, whose number one contact proves to be that same FBI agent. In the search for Fee Lo, Shadow finds the evidence for what is going on at Rutter. She thinks a scientist there invented a portable pure water machine that desalinates water in a light-weight unit that can be packed up and carried under one arm. He knows Rutter made dangerous changes to his work. He spills the beans on them and he also disappears.

Jake, that FBI man, believes Rutter is very much involved in supplying terrorists in the middle east with a formula to shut down rural townships that oppose the autocratic leaders of Syria and other places in the Middle East. Rutter’s aged founder thinks he is on a Christian crusade and has no idea he is about to supply forbidden poisons to terrorists. Dr. David Dickerson will do everything he can to fight this, including passing clues to Sharon Donaldson, to the Babe (who exchanges what she has with what Fee Lo finds as Sharon’s mole) and to Roger Shutte (who sends it to Jake).

Using her own methods, Shadow manages to uncover the same thing, faster, and Jake’s boss decides they need her help and assigns Jake to seduce her to get her help. Needless to say, Shadow, who thought she had found Mr. Right at last, decides it ain’t so, despite Jake’s openness about what his boss wants in dealing with her.

We are both adults, she tells him after a particularly disturbing recognition of his power over her. Don’t make it personal!

Meanwhile, Jake is teaching Phyll to fly and the loyal paralegal has clearly joined Jake’s team.

This swift read opens the series by putting Fee Lo in danger and by forcing Shadow to accept that sometimes your own body has a plan of its own. That struggle often sends lawyers to therapy, if they are smart, and to trouble, if they act on it!

3. WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

After six years of incarceration, an inmate, uses the form provided by the prison system to write the Judge who tried his case and say that he is being wrongfully held. The trial Judge sends the document, as required, to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA), the highest criminal court in Texas. That Court on review sees something disturbing. The applicant says his trial attorney did not present a plea bargain to him and he said his appellate attorney never told him about the outcome of his direct appeal to the Intermediate Court of Appeals.

Judge Tamara Brown, Shadow’s favorite Judge, asks Shadow to “look into it” and reply to the TCCA on her behalf because she has a conflict and cannot serve on the case. Shadow is not thrilled; but this Judge gives her work and she thinks this is the price she pays. She wants to help the judge.

Together, she, Phyll, and Fee Lo divide up the work. Each reads the trial record, and each zeros in on a topic. They are on their game! Phyll researches the issue of sufficient representation of Counsel, the essence of Applicant’s claim.

Fee Lo looks into the parties and prior history. The work is significant. Fee Lo seems to remember the family of every kid who was ever in the juvenile system and he knows things here that he is duty-bound not to disclose.

Shadow researches whether the Defendant/Applicant got due process in his trial if what he claims is true; and if not, whether he deserves a new trial. Shadow determines there was never a plea offer fully formed and that the trial attorney met his duty. The appellate attorney did not. He failed to timely give the correct notice. Shadow finds, despite opposition of her partners that the applicant is entitled to be placed where he should have been after the Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled.

Her team vigorously objects to this. They believe it is unjust for the victim to be forced to come to trial and testify again to the Defendant’s sexual assaults.

Shadow files her Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law but before the mail goes out, Applicant sends a cousin to make sure she does the right thing. Although that break-in filled Fee Lo with terror when he was held hostage by a gun wielding boy, who seemed not to know what he was doing, they send Shadow’s work out and wait for the TCCA to rule before pursuing charges on the break-in.

All’s well that ends well; the TCCA follows Shadow’s recommendation, upholds the conviction, and Shadow learns what the conflict was.

After the conviction, the child’s mother disappears. The father is a blow-hard and probably upsets the wrong people and gets charged with her murder. He is acquitted but in the meantime Mom’s rights are terminated on grounds of abandonment and dad voluntarily relinquishes his rights to allow the child to be adopted.

After the TCCA rules, Judge Tamara provides Shadow with the sealed CPS file. The victim was adopted by a woman who had lost a child in an automobile accident involving a group of teenagers leaving a football game. The woman adopted a son one year later.

The woman’s name shocks Shadow into knowing they came close to a disaster.

Applicant filed a subsequent writ seeking new trial and other relief. It was denied without review.

4. MANSLAUGHTER

Shadow’s next assignment is not as an appointed attorney for an indigent person who is too poor to pay an attorney. This young man requested Shadow because she represented him when he got caught selling drugs and got a pre-trial diversion arrangement for him because he told the judge he would work hard to satisfy his Deferred Adjudication. Had he done what he was supposed to do they would not be in this mess today, she has told him.

His family is not only wealthy, his father agreed to pay her and then proceeded to tell her how he thought she should manipulate the evidence and what to do with the case. Risking loss of her fee, she told him that was not the way it worked. Facts are facts and manipulation can be seen as lying or tampering with evidence.

Just as Dad’s attempt to direct a result from the female District Attorney did not work, it doesn’t work on Shadow either.

Preston Howard III is charged with manslaughter after he placed a loaded gun against the chest of his best friend and fired, killing him instantly. It was not intended and they should send him home, he told Shadow. Intended or not, his friend is just as dead, she told Preston, and the State is just doing its job.

At the time of the shooting, Preston ran. Holly Ann, who was there, ran in the opposite direction because she was afraid Preston would shoot her next. Preston said don’t tell anyone, but when told it would be obstruction, Holly Ann told all. She told the State and Defense the same story but for her additional memory when she talked to Shadow. Shadow taped the interview with the Mother’s consent because she wanted Shadow to keep Holly Ann from having the go to trial and testify; but that was not to be. It proved to be very important: the victim said something that Shadow believes set Preston off before he pulled the trigger.

Shadow’s instinct as a lawyer tells her something is affecting her client. Using what she learned from trial experts at a school in Wyoming, Shadow tries to get to the heart of her client so that she can like him well enough to do a good job for him. What she uncovers, piece by piece, with the help of Dr. Betty Godfrey, is a dark past. As a 6-year old, Preston saw his father murder his mother, whom they say is a runaway. Her body was gone the next morning and the boy knew someone had come back and stolen her away from him. The death and the theft of the body left the boy and a four-month-old Baby Luke alone until the neighbor discovered them two days later. Therapy and electrical stimulation reduced Preston’s memory and pushed the murder to the back of his mind and he grew to hate his Mother for leaving him and little Luke.

Dad has a lot to hide and Shadow joins forces with the DA’s first assistant to find out what it is. Only, she does not tell the First Assistant what she is up to—believing he won’t be convinced unless he sees it first for himself!

In the end, Preston regains his memory through the work of Dr. Betty Godfrey who works with Shadow to bring this moment to the jury.

Manslaughter is an accidental crime; temporary insanity is a fleeting defense. There are no winners here and there seems to be no way to bring true justice to the two boys most affected by these events; but Shadow tries and will consider the outcome a win.

5. BRITTANY WALL

Before she reached the age of 13, Brittany Wall was tried two times in adult court, found guilty, and sentenced and put in jail with adults. At 13 she was adjudicated as a prostitute, although the law gives her more protection than the prosecutor and judge were inclined to give her.

“They just didn’t understand,” the sweet-natured child will tell you. She has a child’s native empathy for others and she has the capacity to reason of a five-year old. Despite that, every kind of man has penetrated every orifice of her body with parts of his own or other devices and pays the money and walks away, surely knowing she is young and intellectually challenged. Her parents are out of the picture. She has been a ward of the State of Texas since the age of six and sees her abusers as people who love her. The State has done nothing to find out who these people are or to protect this child.

In the State’s defense, if it tries to keep her safe, she runs like the wind and has been designated as a chronic runner.

She “lives” with a boyfriend, Bill Smith, who takes the money she thinks she earns “for groceries;” but the state has never looked for nor found him. They do business in a parking lot. He takes the money and sends johns to an old camper truck that he leaves parked until it is towed. Brittany is surviving on street sex.

Judge Tamara asks Shadow to look at the case. “There is something about this that I know is wrong ,” she says, “but what is it and how can I fix it?” she asks. “This is one William Catherton Bennet ran through when I was gone for a single day and asked Old Judge Pat Tate to sit in for me. They emptied the holding cell.

Is there a law that protects this child? Shadow approaches the First Assistant, who has recently become her lover. “You may be right about the law, but that’s the way we’ve always done it,” he says. He alerts her that she is about to “open a keg of worms.” She tells him she took the case and will do her best for this kid who has no one else. He goes home for the evening, upset. Shadow thinks their being a couple has undergone a number of tests already; but this may be the final one and she decides, it will come out the way it comes out. Having seen this child and having heard the story, there is no way that she or Phyll can close the door without helping this child.

Both understand, along with the Guardian, that the result for the child may be questionable because she is probably never going to age out of state custody due to her mental limitations.

Meanwhile, Shadow has to deal with that FBI guy.

She “walked” Ben Ramsey into federal witness protection and she has to be present when they relieve him of the information that helps them solve the mysteries of his series of murders for hire. When they fly to an unknown destination for her to meet with her client, Ramsey, who has been moved for his own protection, someone tries to get at Jake—or his boss says to get at Shadow—by putting sugar in the gas tank of his plane. They lose the engine at 8,000 feet and Jake’s personal 6-seat Cessna won’t come back to life. He allows the plane to glide in on the wind coming off the sea and lands the plane safely.

Shadow’s time of confusion about men is over. The first thing Jake says is “I love you so very much; I will never let anybody harm you.” Shadow considers the situation to be hopeless. But after the landing in which he performs like the expert he is, Shadow gives into her body, which says every time she is in Jake’s presence: “Over here, Sir, at your service.” She tells Jake she can’t fight it anymore; she is in love with him; however desperate it makes her feel.

When Shadow prevails in Brittany’s case with the Texas Supreme Court, which on behalf of Brittany orders protection for all of Texas’ Children but especially those being sexually trafficked, Jake tells Shadow that he refuses to wait a day longer and escorts his wife-to-be to pick up a license and stand before her favorite judge. Clarice, her Mother, has already planned the party; all she has to do is get on the first plane from New York and she gets there in time for the ceremony. Phyll, who is typically in charge, has already managed to get Beatrice, Jake’s Mother, to town to check out this woman he has fallen for.

6. AUSTIN INTERLUDE

Shadow loves married life. And when her new husband says that he has to go work in Austin, she says that if he can’t commute, she and Phyll, will commute.

As it happens, one Billie Jane Hawkins already has an office for a non-profit, CHAMP, which is in Austin as a result of Shadow’s success in the Brittany Wall case. Billie Jane wants Shadow and Phyll—and Fee Lo ONCE SHE MEETS HIM–to office with her and represent CHAMP in the next legislature to encourage support from the state to rescue children who have been trafficked.

Meanwhile, Shadow had noticed some time back that Phyll made a casual change in her choices for Shadow. Always on the search for an appropriate mate, to draw out nature’s demands on behalf of her co-worker, at times it seemed that Phyll spent at least half of her time working pleas with Edward Stevens and promoting him to Shadow. She thought, they were a perfect match. It seemed to Shadow, that they had a good relationship. They still do but it is no longer a romance.

When that lawman came back on the scene, not only did he announce his determination to hold Shadow to a promise she made many months before, he never wavers. He gave Phyll flying lessons and ultimately Fee Lo as well, as if he were preparing them for his eventual presence in their partnership.

Their Austin Interlude reveals a new alliance being formed by those three who seem to be in cahoots with this little woman, Billie Jane Hawkins, whom Shadow figures out early is an operative from elsewhere but is assisting with whatever is going on in Austin that forced Jake to come to his new location.

Shadow and Phyll register as lobbyists for CHAMP and start taking cases, working Monday and Friday in Austin and the days in between at home.

A new client walks in at Austin—a young Hispanic Member of the House of Representatives with an unbelievable story about an arrest and a total lack of memory of what led up to it. Fee Lo pulls out all stops as he investigates what really happened. Typically Fee Lo gets what the government couldn’t and the picture he paints makes the three partners aware that something scary is on the horizon.

Shadow has a pretty good idea that it has something to do with the State of Texas, the ambitions of some of its leaders, and key elections and that the threat is the method already created to change what the voters decide.

True to her form, Shadow asks no questions, but consults her usual sources. This time Roger Shutte is not as free with his information, but she gleans as much as she can get from the newspaper morgues in Austin and at home.

The relationship among the group is strong but Shadow senses something going on beneath the surface, which reveals her to be on the same track as her staff. Jake has to make a move he is not sure of to ensure that what he and his staff uncovered is utilized and the election process is not taken over wrongfully.

To purchase this Sixth Book in the Courthouse Series, Austin Interlude, go to Amazon.com.

7. HABITUAL OFFENDER

Stevens will not reduce or dismiss charges against the wife who is being held legal hostage by her Habitual Offender Husband, who given his past record, will be sentenced for a minimum of 25 years, if convicted.

Frieda Henny, the DA, won’t bend because she is being attacked by her opponent for treating women better than men—especially white men! That is a call for battle in rural Texas.

But something strange is going on. The missing Babe appears in a nocturnal “visit” to Fee Lo, with Norma Sue present. Then Babe “visits” with the three of them and Shadow goes to work. If Babe is still around, Shadow knows that Roger Shutte will know about it and she picks up an important clue.

She next goes to East Texas and re-visits those who knew Babe best. She returns to the interviews at NASA and with the two Rutter Engineers, one of whom left Rutter for Good, the other of whom probably stayed around to spy. Shadow confirms that both Babe and Dickerson are on the move, which means both are alive and Dickerson is still thinking and inventing.

Shadow suspects that the action is coming from Dickerson’s ranch. Three of the women camp out there, hoping to draw attention of the man called Goose, that they think can help them find the two: Shadow, Phyll, and Emmeline, the Botanist who worked with Dickerson at NASA, analyzing moon rocks.

Dickerson created a hidden lab in a dessert cave where he has brought Babe back from her near-death experience with Ben Ramsey. He continues his work on interdimensional travel, the so-called time-travel, which has always been at interest as necessary for conquering outer space.

Shadow does something most people have not done and will not get to do. She takes a journey, however brief, over a light field and visits her husband Jake and her friends, Fee Lo and Norma Sue.

Shadow also discovers, she is so sick on the day after her light field journey that she is keeping a diary for Dr. Dickerson about what she has eaten (only the things she always eats) and how sick she’s been.

“That is not from space-walking,” Denise the criminal clerk says. She says the news of what Shadow did spread like grits and greens through the courthouse.

“We’ve been taking bets that you and Jake are going to have a baby,” Denise, the Criminal Coordinator, says.

“You’ve been doing that since we married,” Shadow says.

“I know, but now Stevens is making sure people know it’s not his.”

“Oh my God!” Shadow says and is otherwise speechless.

Still reeling from this change, Shadow leaves one hurdle behind and in the process of returning to Austin for a break from all the action, she steps right into another controversy.

Dr. Anna Adams, a young emergency room doctor performs an emergency abortion on a child patient, who is presented pregnant and bleeding to death from a rape by three men, who are cousins and think they can mess up the DNA report by mixing three sets of DNA together. Her father brought the bleeding child to the emergency room. He asks Dr. Anna to save the child, whatever she has to do. Despite a Court order, Dr. Anna saves the child victim, who has an intrauterine infection and fever of 108 degrees. The doctor gets notice she is being arrested but Fee Lo and Shadow take her in, to make bail, avoiding the crowd of politicians who have gathered on the steps to vow revenge against the doctor who disobeyed the law.

Shadow tries an old maneuver that she thinks is sure to work in this case. For the first time in her career she represents the perfect witness. The young doctor is well spoken and soft spoken. You cannot look at her without believing everything she says. She is as petite as a child herself and you want to help her.

Before the State can act based on the political action, Shadow takes her perfect client to the Grand Jury and shares with them the information she has not released to the public: that the child was raped by three cousins who conspired to wipe out the evidence of the one of them who got her pregnant. They think they will avoid prosecution that way with one rape kit made up of three sets of mixed DNA evidence.

The Grand Jury gives the three co-defendants the opportunity to test their theory by handing down an indictment the politicians never expected to have to deal with and the Grand Jury No Bills the young Emergency Room Doctor.

Stevens on his own Dismisses the drug-dealing case against the wife set up by her drug-dealing husband to take the rap!

And Shadow really is pregnant and although she had difficulty at first accepting that fact, she has since come to see the miracle involved in having a child.

8. MURDER AT THE COURT OF APPEALS

NOTE!!!

See Missing Page 50 on the website!!!

The largest tort award in our country’s history hits the Sixteenth Court of Appeals, a new court with older judges brought out of retirement to handle complex business cases.

This book takes a step back to the beginning of Alexandra (Shadow) McLeod‘s career. She is a new lawyer, fresh out of South Texas College of Law, and has not yet gotten her result from taking the Texas Bar Exam. Using family ties, she becomes a briefing attorney for a Texas Justice of the Sixteenth Court.

The one she is assigned to brief for is a gentleman of the old school. His wife is a modern woman who lives a largely independent life of travel with her sophisticated and artsy friends. The Justice compensates for his wife’s lack of support by having a regular visitor to the Court to nurse his ills, a Friday Night habit that leads to friction between him and the Chief Justice. Working late, Shadow hears their fight, which involved things being thrown.

Shadow’s Justice ends up dead.

Briefing Attorneys research and write recommended Decisions for their Judges, but Shadow’s Justice, Bernard St. John, issues only his own work. As the year progressed Shadow learned from the Justice’s faithful secretary that all of his previous Briefing Attorneys were women and had the same experience. They meet and share experiences and ultimately join forces to find the Justices’ murderer when Shadow is threatened as a suspect.

It is not the person they think it is; but in the process of letting him know of their accusations, he teaches the hardest lesson for a lawyer to learn: It’s okay to make a mistake if you are woman enough to concede it and work to find the truth. Most women are when they have to be and Shadow finds that many men prefer avoiding the consequences by pretending things never happened.

The issues return to the large tort award as the cause.

The finger is pointed at Shadow when the villain leaves a bloody copy of the proposed opinion in her apartment. Shadow meets Jake, the undercover FBI agent for the first time. He is looking for a man he’s been chasing since an attack by him left a female pilot, who served with Jake in the military, near death before anyone found her. These two will see each other again.

But in the meantime, Shadow’s fellow Briefing Attorney, Ben Ramsey disappears and is tagged as the murderer.

9. On the Wings of a Snow White Dove

This second early Shadow book shows Shadow completing her Clerkship at the Sixteenth Court of Appeals and entering into private practice with a woman, Phyllis MacArthur, who rescues Shadow from a defeating verbal attack by the husband who is divorcing her to marry his law clerk at the school where he teaches. She came with him to Texas so that he could teach at the law school and she transferred from Georgetown to Houston. Leaving her for a younger woman, he told her, “Go back to New York to your Mama, Shadow, you’ll never be a lawyer!”

Together this lawyer and paralegal close down the practice of a retiring elder attorney, who continues to give them advice but no work as they close down his practice. The retiring lawyer who has worked 50 years and says: “no more, I’m through,” tells Phyll: “Shut it down!” Instead, Phyll finds “someone—a licensed attorney—who can sign the pleadings,” and closes it down while opening a new office with Shadow. The two will be called The Phyll and Shadow Show by many of their colleagues.

Bobby Gene Simpson is led to believe by the newest of his five wives that the General, Tom Crow, his manager, has been hiding income from him.

Clarice, the comedienne and Shadow’s mother tells her daughter she must help the General since she has to find some way to become known as a lawyer. Mom is not satisfied with Shadow’s defending of only children, whose problems are only child related and a waste of resources as far as Mom is concerned.

The Singer brings a $20 million lawsuit for unpaid earnings, among other things. He is represented by a veteran lawyer who is also something of a showman, Fentress Chilton.

When Shadow’s mother insists, Shadow thinks she is trying to pay back the man who sent child support to her mother and then put up the money for Shadow’s college, but her Mother has never shared with her who might actually be her father. And it hits her in the face at a strange time; but she is committed to winning the General’s case.

Shadow does meet the man who will become her best friend: Felipe Hernandez, known to all as Fee Lo, a deputy sheriff assigned to the Detention Center, which handles juvenile cases for the Counties to the South of the Big City. He’s looking for his girlfriend, The Babe, who he thinks is being seduced by a Bouncer named Bubba. Since Bubba is either Shadow’s brother or her cousin—and no one says which is true--Shadow calls Fee Lo’s bluff and he folds. Just as she has a sister’s immediate need to protect Bubba, she endears herself to Fee Lo in the same way and they are never far apart after that!

The trial is long and has a disastrous ending but the two women bounce back and move their emerging law firm to the Coast when the case is over, renting and then buying a small cottage near the water. It turns out to have a surprising history—Despite the law shingle, men come to the door looking for services that are not legal. Some come back for the legal ones after they get to know the woman lawyer and her kickass assistant.

That mysterious FBI man once again surfaces, this time to pluck Shadow from the Bay! “I see that I’ve actually caught myself a real mermaid,” were his first words.

10. BEN IS BACK

Book Ten, BEN IS BACK ends as Ramsey always expected it to but he is more than surprised at that result. Ben Ramsey has been Shadow’s colleague and friend but he is also a hired killer who responds to the highest bid.

Shadow walks him through federal witness protection and he repays her by trying to kidnap her for his freedom from the feds. Shadow faces actual danger to herself and to her first child who is due at the time of the kidnapping.

In the meantime, there are many surprising twists and turns that reveal a different side to Ben as Jake’s Mother Beatrice, a graduate Sociology major at the University, takes on his cause by analyzing why a man with everything goes to the dark side for money. She must disclose this work to Shadow in order to get the full picture of Ramsey.

This is an exciting Tenth Book in the series that raises all the old issues and resolves them in order not to leave the reader with questions. Additional chapters are planned and these will do the same for all the folks you meet.

11. The Babe

Book Eleven, The Babe, features the dedicated woman who has given her life to journalism. Yearning for the sea pulls her from isolation with Dr. Dickerson and Babe responds by sending a message to the one person she knows who will figure out where she is and come to the rescue.

The sea and its energy are coming back to Babe: she wants to stop hiding and to come home. She makes two appearances using Dr. Dickerson’s earth space walking machine. She believes that Rutter wants the technology bad enough to give them the safe return the aged founder promises. He says they will be safe it they again join the massive corporation and turn over Dr. Dickerson’s latest work to the company. Only Rutter or the Government can afford this expensive venture, he tells them.

With Dr. David Dickerson’s care, Babe survived near-death from Ben’s torture and has a strange recovery when speech finally comes back to her.

But it will not be easy and she has residual problems resulting from having a lack of oxygen to the brain. An accident brings Babe to Shadow’s door and Shadow and Fee Lo seek a method to welcome her back to being a reporter in a matter fitting with her past in which her greatest desire was to be awarded a Pulitzer.

The adventure of two special needs kids and a “Mama,” a special needs adult, all three of whom have Down’s Syndrome or Trisomy 21, take the adventure of a lifetime and their story provides Babe with the means to return to journalism and her old life of searching for the coveted Pulitzer Prize.

Knowing Babe as we do, her story does not surprise us but it keeps those around her guessing! Ultimately, the draw of the brown-sanded beach and Bay bring her back to the business and town she loves.

To purchase the Eleventh Book in the Courthouse Series, The Babe, go to Amazon.com.

In the fall, look for two more:

Miss Ima, the Girl Who Was First Lady of Texas

A well-known philanthropist tells the story she wanted to write herself but ran out of time.

And

Lilith and Her Sisters

From the Bible to Playboy, this woman’s made history and is likely to step into a scene without prior notice.