Washoe County Library System

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details and the paper began to prosper. The murderer, Danny Padgitt was tried before...

Ray Atlee and his brother, Forrest, receive a letter from their father, a reclusive, retired judge, instructing them to return home to Clanton, Mississippi, to discuss his estate, but the judge dies before his sons arrive, leaving behind a secret known only to Ray.

In 1946 Clanton, Mississippi, World War II hero Pete Banning calmly and inexplicably kills his pastor and friend, the Reverend Dexter Bell, and refuses to defend his actions during the subsequent trial. Pete Banning was Clanton, Mississippis favorite son, a decorated World War II hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning he rose early, drove...

Twenty-two years after the bombing of a Mississippi law office in which Marvin Kramer's two sons died, Klan member Sam Cayhill, the accused killer, has nearly exhausted his death row appeals, until young lawyer Adam Hall takes the case. A Mississippi Klan member is accused of bombing the office of a civil rights activist. The first two trials result in a hung jury, but twelve years later a re-trial results in a death sentence. Years later, within...

Court-appointed lawyer Jake Brigance puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line to defend a sixteen-year-old suspect who is accused of killing a local deputy and is facing the death penalty.