A Clara Riggs Legal Thriller · Book One

ReasonableDoubt

In Stillwater, nothing stays buried.

A beloved pastor is stabbed to death in his own church. The town has its killer by morning. Defense attorney Clara Riggs is the only one asking why the case came together so fast.

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Cover of Reasonable Doubt: a woman in a yellow blazer carrying a briefcase walks toward a white-columned courthouse framed by autumn trees under a stormy sky. Coming soon
Vermont Superior Court · Stillwater Unit · Criminal Division
State of Vermont v. Eli Marsh Defendant
Charge Murder Victim Rev. Ted Weller Counsel for the defense Clara Riggs, Esq.

She swore she'd never go back to court.

Once a rising prosecutor, Clara Riggs hasn't set foot in a courtroom in years, not since the justice system she gave her life to chewed her up and spat her out. These days she works the quiet end of criminal defense from a converted laundromat called The Soapbox, with her sharp-tongued, idealistic daughter Hazel as her reluctant intern.

Then Stillwater's beloved pastor is found dead in his church, and the town names its killer before the blood is dry. Eli Marsh is twenty-five, a farmhand with a record, a drinking problem and no memory of the night. His fingerprints are on the knife. The pastor's blood is on his shirt. Everyone in town is ready to convict him, and that is exactly what bothers Clara.

Hazel grew up with Eli, and she begs her mother to take the case. To save him, Clara will have to walk back into the one room she swore she'd never enter again and ask the questions Stillwater's most trusted people would rather leave alone.

It could redeem them both. Or it could destroy what's left of their family.

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The Clara Riggs Series

Three cases. One town.

Each book is a standalone trial with its own verdict. Read them in order to follow what Clara uncovers about Stillwater, and about the people she trusted.

Reasonable Doubt cover
Book 1Coming soon

Reasonable Doubt

State v. Eli Marsh

A pastor is murdered, a troubled young farmhand wakes up beside the body, and Clara takes the case nobody in Stillwater wants her to win.

Book 2In progress

Title to be announced

State v. Amara Lancaster

Seven years after Joe Barber vanished, his bones turn up at a construction site. The town calls his widow the Black Widow, and she happens to be Clara's cousin.

Book 3In progress

Title to be announced

State v. Deja Mosley

A sixteen-year-old girl is killed on a dark road just outside town. The footage points to a young nursing student. Clara suspects someone far better loved in Stillwater.

Witness List

The people of The Soapbox

W‑1

Clara Riggs

Defense attorney · former prosecutor

Forty-three, a police officer's widow, and still haunted by the innocent man she helped convict. She runs her practice out of an old laundromat with a miniature labradoodle under the desk.

W‑2

Hazel Riggs

Law student · reluctant intern

Clara's daughter. Idealistic and quick with a comeback, she is still grieving her father and tired of living in her mother's shadow.

W‑3

Mateo Goya

Private investigator

A retired cop who knows which doors to knock on and which ones to watch. He finds what Clara needs, and sometimes what she'd rather not know.

W‑4

Lauren Harris

Office manager

Keeps The Soapbox running while her own bitter divorce threatens to boil over. Loyal, frank, and never short of an opinion.

The setting

Stillwater, Vermont

A postcard town of church steeples and sugar maples, where everyone knows your business and nobody forgets what you did. A tech company wants to build a data center on the edge of town, and the money is changing more than the skyline.

  • Stillwater County CourthouseWhite columns on the town green. Clara spent years avoiding it.
  • The SoapboxClara's law office, a converted laundromat. Clients still ask where the dryers went.
  • The Wooden SpokeThe bar where half the town's secrets are traded and the other half are overheard.
  • The Argent siteAcres of farmland earmarked for a data center, and the fault line running through the series.
Aerial view of a Vermont village in autumn: a white church steeple, red clapboard buildings and a main street winding through orange and red maples toward misty hills.
Stillwater, Vermont
About the author

Eden Harris

Eden Harris writes legal thrillers about ordinary people who wake up one morning inside an extraordinary case.

She's always been more interested in the people in the courtroom than the verdict: the juror who can't stop thinking about one detail, the witness who's telling the truth but sounds like she's lying, the attorney who took the case for the wrong reasons and stays for the right ones.

Her books are built on courtroom battles, investigations that never go where you expect, and choices with no right answer, and on characters who keep asking questions long after everyone else has told them to stop.