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

Short Story Collections Anthologies in Publication Order

• Anthologies The Crown Crime Companion, 1995
• Great Writers and Kids Write Mystery Stories, 1996
• Guilty As Charged, 1996
• The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers, 2001
• Their World is Law, 2002
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2006, 2006
• Suspense Magazine December 2013, 2013
• The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories: The First Ten Years, 2014
• By the Book: Writers On Literature and the Literary Life, 2014
• The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook: Wickedly Good Meals and Desserts to Die For, 2015
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2017, 2017
• Anatomy of Innocence: Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted, 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 – About the Author

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 as a law student.

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. He was thefirst Chair of the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission.

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 series, a 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. After several decades, Scott Turow brought back his popular character, Rusty Sabich, which we all thought to be fully retired, since the previous novel was published in 2010.

Of course, as the time passed in real life, it did so in the novel world as well. Rusty is now 77, enjoying his retirement living in the Midwest, however he is pulled back to the courtroom to defend the son of his fiancée, Bea, an elemental school principal, in a murder trial.

The novel explores some heavy themes including racial and social justice, societal bias, as well as the fragility of reputation and truth. Scott Turow got some inspiration from the 2021 case of Gabby Petito who was killed by her boyfriend, and he also included a few scenes in the novel as well.

He also has three nonfiction works 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.” His book have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

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

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.

What was the first book written by Scott Turow? The first book by Scott Turow, One L, was published in September 1977. Scott Turow’s latest book is Presumed Guilty, published in January 2025.

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.

Scott Turow Awards and Nominations

• Presumed Innocent received the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 1987.
• Presumed Innocent received the Silver Dagger Award in 1988.
• Presumed Innocent was nominated for the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery in 1988.
• Reversible Errors was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Mystery/Thriller) in 2002.
• Reversible Errors received the Heartland Prize for Fiction in 2003.
• Ultimate Punishment received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 2004.
• Scott Turow received the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction (inaugural committee recognition) in 2010.
• Innocent was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2010.
• Scott Turow received the Thrillermaster Lifetime Achievement Award from International Thriller Writers in 2014.
• Testimony was nominated for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2018.
• Scott Turow received the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2023.