"Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA" raises provocative questions about the US legal system and the death penalty. It also portrays the plight of Kirk Bloodsworth, who, because of his valiant effort to help make DNA testing available to all prisoners, is now described as a modern-day hero. Since his release in 1993, twelve other inmates on death row have been exonerated by DNA. Bloodsworth was wrongfully convicted in 1984 for the gruesome rape and murder of Dawn Hamilton, a nine-year-old girl in Baltimore County, Maryland. When the Judge sentenced him to death, the courtroom erupted into applause, believing justice had been served. Nine years later, after serving time in one of the harshest prisons in the country, Bloodsworth was set free based on a new procedure called DNA fingerprinting - a procedure he came across while reading a true crime book borrowed from the prison library. For ten years after Bloodsworth's release, Baltimore County refused to run DNA tests on key crime-scene evidence. When they finally did, a match was immediately found. The Identity of the DNA match adds even more irony and a surprising twist to Bloodsworth's amazing story. DC attorney and novelist Tim Junkin masterfully depicts Bloodsworth's traumatic, ultimately inspiring twenty-year journey.

Tim Junkin's fast-paced insider novel tracks a moral journey. Jack Stanton began his career as a public defender in the Washington, D.C., "Agency." A quick study and a charismatic trial lawyer, Jack believed wholeheartedly in indigent clients' rights to the best legal defense possible. He worked tirelessly and won some tough cases against the District's corps of prosecuting attorneys. His reputation for expert client preparation grew alongside his passion for winning.

Ultimately, however, Jack pays for that reputation with his integrity. And, for his workaholism, he pays with his marriage. By the time he decides to leave the Agency to establish his own private law practice, his line between truth and manipulated fact has thinned to almost nothing. And so, specializing in medical malpractice cases, Jack succeeds brilliantly until he obscures that thin line altogether and is charged with lying under oath.

He runs, hiding out in a secluded house on the Chesapeake Bay. It's there that he encounters an idealistic young woman plotting to avenge her father's murder by terrorists. Her plight leads Jack to act once again on behalf of an underdog and to regain-at least for himself-his own idealism and honor.

With its intriguing cast of the accused and their defenders, "Good Counsel" dramatically illustrates the process and practice of litigation. It's a knowing, taut, suspenseful novel that confronts the high price of professional success.

Set along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, this first novel tells the story of Clay Wakeman, who spent his boyhood on the water and finds he can't leave it. When his father is lost in a storm off the Eastern Shore, Clay drops out of college to take possession of his father's boat and his work as a waterman, that is, as an independent commercial fisherman.

Since the old boat constitutes his sole inheritance, Clay starts out small. He recruits his oldest friend, Byron, a traumatized Vietnam vet, to join him in a crabbing business. Just as they're breaking even, Hurricane Agnes roars in to ruin the salinity of the eastern Bay waters. Agnes forces them across the Bay to set their crab traps along the Virginia shoreline and to move in with Matt and Kate, Clay's uppercrust friends from college.

It's in these unfamiliar waters that their real troubles begin. Clay falls irrevocably in love with the spoken-for Kate; Byron's demons pursue him with even greater vengeance; and out in the Bay the partners stumble onto a drug running operation. Lines are drawn by the dealers. And, at the very end, in a riveting boat chase, Clay comes very close to losing the battle . . . forever.