Publication Order of Kindle County Books
| Presumed Innocent | 1987 |
| The Burden of Proof | 1990 |
| Pleading Guilty | 1993 |
| The Laws of Our Fathers | 1996 |
| Personal Injuries | 1999 |
| Reversible Errors | 2002 |
| Limitations | 2006 |
| Innocent | 2010 |
| Identical | 2013 |
| Testimony | 2017 |
| The Last Trial | 2020 |
| Suspect | 2022 |
| Presumed Guilty | 2025 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Ordinary Heroes | 2005 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| One L | 1977 |
| Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty | 2003 |
About Scott Turow
Scott Turow is an American novelist and former practising lawyer whose legal thrillers, beginning with “Presumed Innocent” in 1987, are set mainly among the lawyers and judges of the fictional Kindle County. His books have been translated into more than forty languages and have sold more than thirty million copies.
Turow was born in Chicago on 12 April 1949, the son of a doctor, and grew up on the city’s North Side and in the suburb of Winnetka. He graduated from Amherst College in 1970 and spent two years at Stanford University’s Creative Writing Center on an Edith Mirrielees Fellowship before entering Harvard Law School in 1975. His first book, “One L” (1977), is an account of his first year there. After graduating in 1978 he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago until 1986, when he became a partner at the Chicago firm of Sonnenschein.
“Presumed Innocent” is narrated by Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor charged with the murder of a colleague, Carolyn Polhemus. Alan J. Pakula’s 1990 film starred Harrison Ford, and an Apple TV+ series with Jake Gyllenhaal followed in 2024. “The Burden of Proof” (1990) turns to Sabich’s defence lawyer, Sandy Stern, in the aftermath of his wife’s death, and was adapted for television in 1992. In 1990 Time put Turow on its cover as “the Bard of the Litigious Age”.
Later Kindle County novels include “Pleading Guilty”, “The Laws of Our Fathers”, “Personal Injuries” and “Reversible Errors”, which won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction in 2003. Sabich returns in “Innocent” (2010), in which he is by then an appeal court judge accused of murdering his wife; a television adaptation with Bill Pullman aired on TNT in 2011. “Ordinary Heroes” (2005) steps away from the courtroom to follow a journalist uncovering his father’s service as an army lawyer in the Second World War.
Turow’s non-fiction also includes “Ultimate Punishment” (2003), his reflections on the death penalty, which received a Robert F. Kennedy book award. He was president of the Authors Guild from 2010 to 2014, and in 2023 the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame gave him its Fuller Award for lifetime achievement. His most recent novel, “Presumed Guilty”, was published in January 2025 and brings back a retired Sabich to defend his fiancée’s son on a murder charge.
Photo: Rosiestep, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).