Angels and Demons - Dan Brown

Cry Wolf - Wilbur Smith

Wild Justice - Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith - Power of the Sword

Power of the Sword is a rich and thrilling adventure, a magnificent feat of storytelling that sweeps the reader from the deserts, mountains and cities of Africa to the heartland of Nazi Germany, and from the turmoil of the Depression years into the white heat of war.

A novel of life-long love and hate, of courage and revenge, Power of the Sword is the story of two half-brothers – the sons of Centaine de Thiry Courtney from The Burning Shore – caught up in the tumult of their nation's history through almost two decades.

Blood enemies from their first boyhood encounter, Manfred De La Rey and Shasa Courtney find themselves adversaries in a war of age-old savagery to seize the sword of power in their land.

Moving from the teeming goldfields of the Highveld to the secret citadels of Afrikaner power, from the ringing Olympic stadia of Berlin in 1936 to the raging skies over the Abyssinian hills, Power of the Sword is epic fiction rooted in documentary fact-a majestic entertainment by a master of his craft.

Power of the Sword is the second book in the second Courtney sequence of novels

Green Mile- Stephen King

A first-person narrative told by Paul Edgecombe, the novel switches between Paul as an old man in a nursing home sharing his story with fellow resident Elaine Connelly, and his time in 1932 as the block supervisor of the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, nicknamed "The Green Mile". In this year, a new inmate arrives named John Coffey, a 6'8" black man who has been convicted of raping and murdering two small white girls. Besides John, there are two other prisoners on the cellblock during the main period the book focuses on: Eduard "Del" Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist and murderer, and William "Wild Bill" Wharton, a wild-acting and dangerous multiple murderer who is determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. Other inhabitants of the Green Mile include Arlen Bitterbuck, a Native American convicted of killing a man outside a bar, Arthur Flanders, an insurance executive who killed his father to perpetrate insurance fraud, and Mr. Jingles, a mouse, whom Del teaches various tricks.

Paul and the other guards are antagonized throughout the book by Percy Wetmore, a sadistic guard who enjoys aggravating the prisoners. The other guards have to be civil to him despite their dislike of him because he is the Governor's nephew. However, when he is offered a place at the nearby Briar Ridge psychiatric hospital as a secretary, Paul thinks they are finally rid of him. However, Percy refuses to leave until he is allowed to supervise an execution, so Paul hesitantly allows him to run Del's. Percy deliberately avoids soaking the sponge in brine that is supposed to tucked inside the electrode cap to ensure a faster death. When the switch is thrown, the electric currentcauses Del to suffer an agonizing death and literally fry in the chair.

Over time, Paul realizes that John Coffey possesses inexplicable healing abilities. These powers heal Paul's urinary tract infection and revives Mr. Jingles after Percy kills him by stepping on him. John is very empathic and sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others around him. One night, the guards drug William Wharton, then put astraitjacket on Percy and lock him in the padded restraint room so that they can smuggle John out of the prison and take him to the home of Warden Hal Moores. Hal's wife has a deadly brain tumor, which John cures. When they return to the Mile, John passes the "disease" which he took out of the warden's wife onto Percy, causing him to go mad and shoot Wild Bill to death before falling into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. Percy is committed to Briar Ridge.

John shows Paul that it was Wild Bill who committed the murders, not himself. Paul is unsure how to help John, but John tells him not to worry, as he is ready to die anyway, wanting to escape the cruelty of the world. Those healed by John gain an unnatural lifespan. In the end, Mr. Jingles lives to be at least 64 and dies of old age at Paul's nursing home, while Paul is now 104 years old and wondering how much longer he will live.

Street Lawyer - John Grisham

A man known only as 'Mister', enters the offices of the Washington DC law firm Drake & Sweeney and takes many of the lawyers hostage. Although he is eventually shot by a police sniper and the hostages freed, one of the hostages, an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock, is concerned by what he has learned from "Mister" and feels compelled to investigate the circumstances further.

He find his way to the 14th Street Legal Clinic, where he meets Mordecai Green, a fearless advocate for the homeless, who asks him to help one night at a homeless shelter. So Michael is introduced to the world of the homeless. As Michael's investigation deepens, he finds that his own employer was complicit in an illegal eviction, which eventually resulted in the death of a young homeless family. He takes a confidential file, intending to copy it, but is quickly suspected of its theft.

Shocked by what he has found, Brock leaves his firm to take a poorly-paid position with the 14th Street Legal Clinic, which works to protect the rights of the homeless. This leads to his wife divorcing him. He admits one of his clients, Ruby, to a therapy class for drug-addicted women, and in the process meets Megan, the book's love interest.

As Drake & Sweeney come after Michael with theft and malpractice allegations, the Clinic launches a lawsuit against the law firm and its business partners. Terrified of the certain bad publicity, the matter is settled by Mediation and the clinic receives a large payout to be shared with the victims of the eviction.

Drake & Sweeney's head partner, deeply troubled by the events, offers to make pro bono staff available to assist the work of the Clinic in fighting for the rights of homeless people. The book ends with Michael taking a short vacation with Megan and Ruby.^[3]