Legal cases are stories, and some of the most compelling -- and the most disturbing -- are those that take place on death row: the innocent man executed, juveniles and the mentally ill condemned to die, a smoking electric chair, a napping defense attorney, a senile hit man. These are the stories in which Michael Mello, as a capital public defender, played a crucial role, and they are the cases that make up Deathwork, a moment-by-moment, behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of a death row lawyer and his clients.

Part memoir, part legal casebook, Deathwork offers a gritty, often...

As Confederate and Union forces clash in and around the Missouri community of St. Charles, Constance McAdams fights a war of her own. Her mind has been fractured, her heart ravaged, and her soul nearly torn from its very existence. Her husband, Gavin, threatened by a corrupt sheriff and judge, is the binding that holds her together. With a blessing from an old Choctaw woman as her only weapon, she spirals into a maddening world of crows and spirits as she fights the forces pressing in around her.