The Widow

John Grisham | Paperback | October 2025

The new incredible legal thriller from John Grisham.

She needs a lawyer. He needs a payday.

Simon Latch is a small-town lawyer struggling with debt, gambling issues and an impending divorce. But when Eleanor Barnett, an 85-year-old widow, visits his office to secure a new will, it seems his luck has finally changed: she claims she's sitting on a $20 million fortune and no one else knows about it.

She could be the ticket to his fortune.

Once he's hooked the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar, even from his own assistant. But there are complications: other lawyers are circling his client like vultures.

But when she is hospitalised after a car accident, Eleanor's story begins to crack. Simon realises that nothing is as it seems. And as events spiral out of control, he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn't commit: murder.

The Widow is classic Grisham courtroom drama combined with a confounding murder mystery that will enthral his legion of fans.

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Author Info

Bestselling rural crime author Fleur McDonald has always had a strong affinity with the land and the vast Australian outback. Raised in Orroroo, South Australia, Fleur loves the open roads, red dust and magical sunsets. With 24 fiction novels and more than 850,000 book sales to her name, Fleur has built a strong following of loyal readers with an insatiable appetite for her craft and characters, most notably Detective Dave Burrows.

She spends much of her year behind the wheel, traversing our big country, scouting inspiration and potential storylines for future books, and appearing as a guest speaker at a range of events, including country shows, ladies' days and writers' festivals. A trailblazer in all aspects of her life, Fleur has been a jillaroo farming the land for more than 20 years, founded DVassist to help regional dwellers access crucial support for family and domestic violence, and raised two children with developmental and speech delays, teaching them Makaton sign language to communicate.

These days, in between putting out two books a year, she has her sights set on learning to fly a plane. Fleur now lives in Esperance, Western Australia with her two children, Rochelle and Hayden, and two fur children, border collie Shadow and energetic kelpie, Jack.

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Author Info

Since The Firm in 1991, John Grisham has published a number one bestseller every year. His books have been translated into 45 languages and have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. Nine have been adapted to film, including The Firm, The Pelican Brief and A Time To Kill.

His first work of non-fiction, The Innocent Man, was adapted into a six-part Netflix docuseries; his second, Framed, highlights work with organisations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted.

He is the two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was distinguished with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.

John lives on a farm in central Virginia.