Scott Turow Books in Order – Complete List

Scott Turow is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kindle County legal thriller series, and several standalone novels, short stories, and nonfiction books.

Here are the Scott Turow books in order for his popular legal thriller series, Kindle County.

Latest Scott Turow Books

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Kindle County Books in Publication Order

1. Presumed Innocent, 1987
2. The Burden of Proof, 1990
3. Pleading Guilty, 1993
4. The Laws of our Fathers, 1996
5. Personal Injuries, 1999
6. Reversible Errors, 2002
7. Limitations, 2006
8. Innocent, 2010
9. Identical, 2013
10. Testimony, 2017
11. The Last Trial, 2020
12. Suspect, 2022

Presumed Innocent Books in Publication Order

• Presumed Innocent, 1987
• Innocent, 2010
• Presumed Guilty, 2025

Standalone Novels in Publication Order

• Ordinary Heroes, 2005
• Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering, 2024

Anthologies in Publication Order

• Anthologies The Crown Crime Companion, 1995
• Great Writers and Kids Write Mystery Stories, 1996
• Guilty As Charged, 1996
• Their World is Law, 2002
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2006, 2006
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2017, 2017
• California Schemin’: The 2020 Bouchercon Anthology, 2020
• Low Down Dirty Vote: Volume II: Every Stolen Vote is a Crime, 2020 (foreword)

Non-Fiction Books in Publication Order

• One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School, 1997
• Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty, 2003 (interactive ebook)
• Hard Listening, 2013 (with Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Sam Barry, Matt Groening, Roy Blount Jr., Stephen King, James McBride, Ridley Pearson and Amy Tan)

Scott Turow Biography

Born in 1949 in Chicago to a Russian-Jewish family, he attended New Trier High School, and after his graduation, he enrolled at Amherst College, from which he graduated in 1970 as Alpha Delta Phi Literary Society Brother.

Between 1970-1972 he attended Stanford University’s Creative Writing Center, which earned him an Edith Mirrielees Fellowship. He later became a Jones Lecturer, where he also taught creative writing. He remained there until 1975 when he enrolled to Harvard Law School.

Two years later, in 1977 he wrote One L, his debut work and non-fiction story about his first year of college.

The next year, in 1978, he earned his J.D., following which he became an assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, where he remained until 1986. During his time he prosecuted various corruption cases, including the notorious case of state Attorney General William Scott involving tax fraud.

Between 1997 and 1998, Scott Turow was a member of the U.S. Senate Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois, which recommends federal judicial appointments.

Currently, Scott Turow is also a partner in Denton, an international law firm, and he works most of his cases pro bono.

In 2010, the author was elected president of the Author’s Guild. He had previously been a president between 1997 and 1998.

Eventually, the lawyer novelist Scott Turow left his job as an attorney and decided to become a full-time novelist. His first novel, Presumed Innocent, became the first in his Kindle County legal thriller series and it was published in 1987. The book dealt with the issue of a prosecutor who was charged with the murder of his colleague.

The following years he wrote several other books in the series, including The Burden of Proof, Pleading Guilty, and The Law of Our Fathers, all of which became bestsellers.

Several of his books, including Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Reversible Errors and Innocent have been made into movies.

His latest explosive legal thriller novel, Presumed Guilty, is the third story in the Presumed Innocent series which started way back in 1987.

He has also written three nonfiction books and published short stories in anthologies. In addition, he wrote the forward to Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated by Dave Eggers.

Readers often compare Scott Turow to the equally prolific author John Grisham and with good reason. Both are legal thriller authors who have written bestselling novels in the genre, however, their writing styles are still different. Scott Turow’s characters are complex and well-fleshed out, and the author often focuses on exploring the human stakes in his stories.

Using first-person or close third-person narration, he can deeply go into the characters’ inner lives. He is a real character-driven author. He is often considered the “godfather of the genre.”

On the other hand, John Grisham is a much more commercially focused author, a plot-driven author who writes stories that have clear-cut dynamics involving good versus evil. His characters are often designed to move the plot along rather than giving us deep insights into their psyches.

Also, Grisham wrote many, many more novels than Scott Turow has written in his entire career so far. If anything, he crank out bestseller after bestseller year in and out.

Scott Turow Book Adaptations

Scott Turow’s legal thrillers have been made into several film and television adaptations over the years. Here’s a comprehensive list:

• Presumed Innocent (1990) – a film starring Harrison Ford, Greta Scacchi, and Brian Dennehy.
  The prosecutor Rusty Sabich is accused of murdering his colleague and former lover, Carolyn Polhemus.
  The movie was irected by Alan J. Pakula. This adaptation follows Scott Turow’s debut novel quite closely.
• The Burden of Proof (1992) – a TV miniseries featuring Héctor Elizondo and Brian Dennehy in main roles.
  Defense attorney Sandy Stern discovers some scary things while he is investigating his wife’s mysterious suicide.
  This two-part miniseries, based on Scott Turow’s second novel, aired on ABC
• Reversible Errors (2004) – a TV Film starring William H. Macy, Tom Selleck, and Felicity Huffman.
  Arthur Raven is an attorney who tries to find new evidence to exonerate his client and save him from death penalty
  It is a CBS production.
• Innocent (2011) – a TV Film with Bill Pullman, Marcia Gay Harden, and Alfred Molina as main characters.
  20 years after the initial trial, now Judge Sabich is back and faces new allegations in the suspicious death of his wife from back then.
  It aired on TNT, and it is based on Turow’s sequel to the novel Presumed Innocent.
• Presumed Innocent (2024) – the new TV Miniseries stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Negga, and Peter Sarsgaard.
  This is the latest adaptation of Scott Turow’s novel where we see once again prosecutor Sabich who gets caught up in a murder investigation.
  The series premiered on Apple TV+, and it was created by David E. Kelley and J.J. Abrams, with a rather contemporary approach.