by Viola Davis
First published 2026
Judge Mary Stone runs her family farm and presides over the courthouse in Union Springs, Alabama. The town respects her, and she has earned that trust through years of fair decisions. Then a case arrives that splits the community down the middle. The criminal facts are clear, but the ethical questions have no easy answers. Stone must choose between life and death, knowing that her decision will satisfy no one. The case becomes the most controversial in Southern legal history. Stone fights to deliver justice to the people and town she loves, even as the pressure threatens to tear everything apart. This is her battle to do what's right when right has no clear definition.
Genres: american-fiction, southern-gothic, 21st-century, legal-thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: moral-dilemma, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Alabama, Union Springs
Period: 21st-century
432 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company