A woman falls from her fifteenth-story window … was she pushed? Her husband, a high profile executive, stands accused [...]]]> Coffeetown’s newest release, Truth Be Veiled (242 pp, $16.95/paper, $24.95/cloth, ISBN: 978-1-60381-080-7), by Joel Cohen and Carla T. Main, is a fascinating examination of legal ethics as well as a compelling page-turner about a complex murder case.

A woman falls from her fifteenth-story window … was she pushed? Her husband, a high profile executive, stands accused of the murder. He is counting on renowned criminal lawyer Justin Steele to clear his name. But Justin suspects there is more to the story. What is the truth in this case, and how far does the law and personal conscience allow it to be concealed—or revealed—so Justin can win an acquittal? Truth Be Veiled is a riveting play-by-play of the process leading up to trial, told by a criminal lawyer and master storyteller.

“The original version of this novel was conceived to teach law students about ethics,” Cohen says.  “However, folks, including students, were so enthusiastic, I decided to enlist Carla’s help and turn it into a bona fide murder mystery.  It’s difficult for the layperson to imagine how easily the wheels of justice can get mired in technical issues and layers of truth and falsehood. Anyone who cares about justice and the law will hopefully be intrigued by an insider’s account.”

“Truth Be Veiled was a pleasure to work on,” says Main. “Joel and I have known each other since I was a summer associate at Stroock, some 25 years ago. So when he explained this project to me, I was thrilled to be a part of its development. The challenge was to create a plot that turns on how the characters confront and deal with the law in all their varied roles as advocate, defendant and investigator.”

Joel Cohen, a former prosecutor, practices white-collar criminal defense at New York’s Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, LLP. He teaches legal ethics at Fordham Law School, lectures widely and authors columns on law and legal ethics for the New York Law Journal and Law.com.

Carla T. Main is an award-winning legal journalist who writes about law and society. She is the author of Bulldozed (Encounter Books, 2007), an examination of the impact of eminent domain development on communities.

To obtain a discussion/teaching guide for this book, please contact info@coffeetownpress.com.

Truth Be Veiled is available in Kindle ($6.95) and print editions on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, and Amazon.fr.  It can also be ordered through Coffeetownpress.com. Bookstores will soon be able to order hardcover and paperback editions through the Baker and Taylor catalog. In the meantime, please contact info@coffeetownpress.com.

Praise for Truth Be Veiled …

“Truth Be Veiled is a compelling journey of a criminal defense lawyer with a client accused of murder. Author Joel Cohen navigates this dangerous terrain of truth, morals and legal ethics brilliantly. We know, because he’s been there.”

—Nicholas Pileggi, author of many books and screenplays, including Goodfellas (Wiseguys) and Casino

“Truth Be Veiled takes legal ethics out of the textbooks and into the real world, illustrating the subtle conflicts between morals and ethics in criminal defense work.  The reader is left to wonder, like the book’s hero, lawyer Justin Steele, whether the truth matters in our criminal justice system.”

—Barry Scheck, co-director of The Innocence Project at The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

“In the context of a highly readable legal thriller, Joel Cohen plumbs the depths of ethical issues that lie at the core of every criminal defense practice but are rarely discussed or debated.”

—Gerald L. Shargel, New York Criminal Defense Lawyer and Professor at Brooklyn Law School

“The fictional Justin Steele, created by criminal defense attorney and adjunct law professor Joel Cohen, uses the Socratic Method to deftly guide his young associate through the perilous intersections of law, morality and ethics. This fascinating murder mystery will have readers guessing all the way to the end.

“While a great read for anyone, it is a ‘must read’ for those starting a career in criminal justice, either as prosecutor or defense attorney.”

—Charles J. Hynes is the District Attorney of Kings County, New York, and author of the novel, Triple Homicide (St. Martin’s Press, 2007)

“Truth Be Veiled sheds light on what people in daily contact with our criminal justice system know: that it often fails in ways that cause individual suffering beyond belief, and sometimes even utterly wrongful convictions. Joel Cohen shines in the telling of the defense of George Robbins and his counselor, Justin Steele, and movingly portrays how a defendant feels when he is on trial for murder.”

—Martin H. Tankleff, now working as a paralegal in a New York law firm after serving more than 17 years in New York prisons after his wrongful conviction

Keep reading for an excerpt:

George heard a thud and a sickening cracking sound, as if someone far away had broken a very large egg. Adrianna lay in the alleyway below. All was quiet. She was dead.

George had stood by the window, transfixed. All around him the scene erupted into chaos. The police arrived, and an ambulance. Their neighbor, Ruth Munsell—the building busybody—had watched the tragedy unfold. Or at least she said so, since everyone knew that the view from her apartment into the Robbins’ was obstructed. Mrs. Munsell’s apartment was across the air shaft from theirs and one floor up. And thank Heaven for that, George had often thought, or she would have made watching Adrianna and him a full-time hobby.

Mrs. Munsell told the police: “George Robbins had his hands on his wife as she fell from the window.” … She told the detectives that she heard a man and a woman screaming from the direction of the Robbins’ apartment just before Adrianna fell. She wouldn’t budge from this statement.

The police found no outward sign that Adrianna was doing anything with the plant—no gardening tools, no dirt on her hands, nothing to back up George’s version of the events. They asked George if Adrianna suffered from vertigo. He answered them honestly: “No.” And then they asked him the oddest question. ‘How many flower pots did you keep on the ledge?’ Why would anyone care about such a thing at a time like that? he wondered.

No one else saw the fall or heard her crash to the ground.

The death of J. D. Salinger left me feeling that I had lost a boyhood friend. Salinger himself was never a personal friend of mine, but his creation Holden Caulfield was. Holden was one of the very few who understood my young self, who shared my amusement in the sound of a [...]]]> Thank you, Mr. Salinger

The death of J. D. Salinger left me feeling that I had lost a boyhood friend. Salinger himself was never a personal friend of mine, but his creation Holden Caulfield was. Holden was one of the very few who understood my young self, who shared my amusement in the sound of a loud fart in a quiet chapel, my sadness that young girls sometimes become hookers, my hatred of pomposity in all its smiling faces, my fear both of school and of leaving school, my desire to protect little children from falling off a cliff, my dream of someday escaping, like Thoreau, to the safety of a little cabin in the woods. In writing about Holden, Salinger was writing about me.

During the two years I worked on A Reader’s Companion to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye I came to understand just how thoroughly Salinger and Caulfield are one and the same person. I never met J. D. Salinger in person, never made the pilgrimage to New Hampshire to knock on his door, never even sent him a fan letter. I respected his desire to be left alone. But I came to know him through his writing about me and my writing about him.

Salinger wrote one really fine book. The Catcher in the Rye sold enough copies for the next sixty years that he never really had to “work” again. He could afford to live and then die in his isolated cabin in the woods. He is gone, but we will always have Holden Caulfield, just as we will always have Huckleberry Finn. Thank you, Mr. Salinger. We’re beholden to you.

–Peter Beidler, Author of A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

Taking a Walk Through J. D. Salinger’s New York

Walking in Holden’s Footsteps

Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, is one of the most often read, often taught, and often criticized novels in the history of literature.

For the first time since 1898, readers can experience Henry James’s eerie The Turn of the Screw the way his original readers did, [...]]]>

The Turn of the Screw: Collier's Weekly version

Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, is one of the most often read, often taught, and often criticized novels in the history of literature.

For the first time since 1898, readers can experience Henry James’s eerie The Turn of the Screw the way his original readers did, as a twelve-part weekly serial. The Coffeetown Press edition showcases the novel as it first appeared, complete with provocative illustrations by John La Farge and Eric Pape, in Collier’s Weekly.

This unique edition, with an analytical introduction by Peter G. Beidler, will of course be valuable to scholars. It will be particularly useful, however, for undergraduate classroom use.

It allows readers to experience first-hand the suspense generated by the week-by-week grouping of chapters.

It also lets them read the young governess’s story of her dangerous encounter with prowling spirits as it first appeared, before James made the 500-odd changes in wording he introduced later. After reading Beidler’s detailed appendix analyzing all of James’s revisions, readers will see that in many ways this earliest version of The Turn of the Screw was James’s best.

Peter G. Beidler spent most of his long teaching career as the Lucy G. Moses Distinguished Professor of English at Lehigh University. He has published widely on Henry James and especially on The Turn of the Screw. His Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century came out in 1989. He co-edited (with Kimberly C. Reed) the Modern Language Association’s Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (2005). In addition, he edited all three editions, with associated cultural and critical materials, of The Turn of the Screw for the popular Bedford Books series Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (1992, 2004, 2010). For that Bedford series he presented James’s last (1908) version. For this Coffeetown Press edition he presents for the first time in more than a century James’s first (1898) version as it was serialized in Collier’s Weekly.

Beidler was named National Professor of the Year in 1983 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation. He was named Fulbright Professor at Sichuan University in Chengdu, mainland China, for 1987-88, and the Robert Foster Cherry Visiting Distinguished Teaching Professor at Baylor University, for 1995-96. He now lives with his wife Anne in Seattle, WA.

Coffeetown Press is proud to announce the release of My Dear Charlotte, by Hazel Holt.  My Dear Charlotte is a British myrder mystery that takes place in the Regency period.  Unlike other popular Regency mysteries and romances, My Dear Charlotte is based on the letters of Jane Austen to [...]]]>

My Dear Charlotte, by Hazel Holt

Coffeetown Press is proud to announce the release of My Dear Charlotte, by Hazel Holt.  My Dear Charlotte is a British myrder mystery that takes place in the Regency period.  Unlike other popular Regency mysteries and romances, My Dear Charlotte is based on the letters of Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra.  While the story is new, the details having to do with balls, dinners, and other social events are given in the words of Jane Austen herself, making this a historical mystery novel of extraordinary veracity.

This thrilling Regency murder mystery will appeal to all fans of mystery novels.  It will also be welcomed by readers of Jane Austen because this unique novel is constructed using the actual language of Jane Austen’s letters.  It’s great fun, and an important new work by the renowned author of the Mrs. Malory Mysteries.  Here’s an excerpt:

Of course it cannot be denied that Mr Woodstock himself will lead a happier life without his formidable spouse, though I do not believe that he could have summoned up the courage to dispose of her!

Mr Rivers will be glad to be rid of one who would have put obstacles in the way of his plans for the Barbados estate, but I do not think that may be considered a sufficient reason for an honourable man to take a life.

Mrs West, however, seems to me to lack such scruples if they stood in the way of her daughter’s advancement. I do not at present see how she could have brought about Mrs Woodstock’s demise, but no doubt, if I give my mind to it, I may presently think of something.

Poor John coachman also had reason to wish his mistress dead, since his whole happiness (and that of Sarah) depended upon keeping his position at Holcombe and if he had been turned away without a character his case would have been miserable indeed.

So you see, there are a number of people who will be happy at Mrs Woodstock’s death. Perhaps I should add myself to the list for the sake of those hours of tedium and the many irritations she has subjected me to!