Scott Turow Books in Order: Kindle County & Complete Book List

By Anna Marie CarrollThriller

Reading the Scott Turow books in order starts with the Kindle County Legal Thriller books, his long-running legal thriller series set around a fictional Illinois county. These books dig into crime, courtroom pressure, politics, family secrets, and the messy choices people make when the legal system closes in on them.

Turow’s legal fiction works so well because he spent years in the courtroom as an attorney and federal prosecutor. If you’re here because of Presumed Innocent, I’d still start with Kindle County in publication order. That gives you Rusty Sabich, Sandy Stern, and the rest of Turow’s connected world in the order readers first met them.

Jump to:

The best place to begin is with Turow’s Kindle County books. Each novel has its own case, so you can technically read them out of order. But I wouldn’t recommend that for a first read.

These books share a setting and a cast of recurring characters. Someone who appears in one book may come back later in a new role, and those appearances can give away pieces of earlier stories. Publication order is the simplest choice, and it also matches the way Turow built the world.

  1. Presumed Innocent (1987)
  2. The Burden of Proof (1990)
  3. Pleading Guilty (1993)
  4. The Laws of Our Fathers (1996)
  5. Personal Injuries (1999)
  6. Reversible Errors (2002)
  7. Limitations (2006)
  8. Innocent (2010)
  9. Identical (2013)
  10. Testimony (2017)
  11. The Last Trial (2020)
  12. Suspect (2022)
  13. Presumed Guilty (2025)

Presumed Innocent Books

If you’re mainly here for Rusty Sabich, this is the tighter list to follow. Presumed Innocent introduces Rusty, Innocent returns to him years later, and Presumed Guilty brings him back into the courtroom again.

  1. Presumed Innocent (1987)
  2. Innocent (2010)
  3. Presumed Guilty (2025)

Scott Turow Standalone Book

If you want a Scott Turow novel outside Kindle County, Ordinary Heroes is the one to grab. It follows Stewart Dubinsky, who always knew his father served in the Second World War but never knew the full story. After his father dies, Stewart finds old letters and begins piecing together what really happened during the war.

  1. Ordinary Heroes (2005)

Scott Turow Nonfiction Books

Turow’s nonfiction begins with One L, his memoir about his first year at Harvard Law School. He later returned to nonfiction with Ultimate Punishment, a short, personal look at capital punishment through the eyes of a lawyer who had seen the legal system up close.

  1. One L (1977)
  2. Ultimate Punishment (2003)

Scott Turow Anthologies and Contributor Works

Turow has also written essays, introductions, forewords, and shorter pieces for several collections. Some of these are anthologies he contributed to, while others are books where his role was editor, foreword writer, or part of a larger group of writers.

  1. The Crown Crime Companion (1995)
  2. Guilty as Charged (1996) (Editor)
  3. Great Writers and Kids Write Mystery Stories (1996)
  4. Writers on Writing (2001)
  5. The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers (2001)
  6. Their Word Is Law (2002)
  7. Surviving Justice (2005) (Foreword)
  8. The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 (2006) (Editor)
  9. Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All (2013)
  10. Suspense Magazine December 2013 (2013)
  11. By the Book (2014)
  12. The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories: The First Ten Years (2014)
  13. The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook (2015)
  14. Anatomy of Innocence (2017) (Introduction)
  15. California Schemin’: The 2020 Bouchercon Anthology (2020)
  16. Fight of the Century (2020)
  17. Low Down Dirty Vote: Volume II: Every Stolen Vote is a Crime (2020) (Foreword)
  18. Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering (2024) (Collaborative novel)

About Scott Turow

Scott Turow grew up in Chicago, later serving as a federal prosecutor there, and he says the city has always been his literary homeland. He first studied English literature, then moved into law, and both sides of that background show up all over his books.

Turow attended Amherst College, earned a master’s in creative writing from Stanford University, and later went to Harvard Law School. His first published book, One L, grew out of his experience as a law student.

His fiction breakthrough came with Presumed Innocent, the first Kindle County novel and the book that introduced Rusty Sabich. It remains the best starting point for most readers.

Several of Turow’s books have been adapted for film and television. Presumed Innocent became a 1990 film starring Harrison Ford, Raul Julia, and Greta Scacchi. The Burden of Proof became a 1992 TV miniseries starring Héctor Elizondo and Brian Dennehy.

Reversible Errors was adapted as a 2004 TV miniseries starring William H. Macy, Tom Selleck, Felicity Huffman, and Shemar Moore. Pleading Guilty was filmed as a 2010 TV pilot starring Jason Isaacs and Isabelle Fuhrman, though it was not picked up as a series. Innocent became a 2011 television movie starring Bill Pullman, Marcia Gay Harden, and Alfred Molina.

Presumed Innocent was later adapted again as an Apple TV+ series starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Rusty Sabich.

Turow was awarded the Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in October 2023.

Looking for more books in order?

If you want more thriller authors and reading-order guides like this one, start with my Thriller Books in Order index.

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