A Guide to Collecting Everyman's Library

Book excerpt: Hardworking New Orleans environmental lawyer Rebecca Boudreaux's life just got substantially more complicated and dangerous because of the new case that her public interest law firm plans to file on behalf of citizens living in the Cancer Alley area of Louisiana. The focus of her case is River Road Recyclers, or Triple R, an oilfield waste recycling business that recently expanded its operations to illegally accept hazardous wastes. Rebecca must reveal how the company has doctored and falsified reports submitted to the government, spewed enormous amounts of toxic pollutants daily to the air and water near her clients' homes, and caused devastating health effects to her clients, all of which could have been avoided had the company just operated as it was required to under the law. Her efforts are hampered when her inside informants keep mysteriously dying, her clients are terrorized, her key witness is forced to hide in a rundown shack in the bayou until trial begins, and her own life is at risk. When Rebecca collapses in the courtroom and is rushed to the hospital on the first day of trial, her boss, Joe Cairns, steps in to litigate the case in her place. The drama climaxes as he exposes whether Rebecca's best friend, her steamy new love interest, the directors of the greedy and corrupt "recycling" company, or someone else has been acting . . . With Malicious Intent.