Lisa Scottoline

Lisa Scottoline (born July 1, 1955) is an internationally celebrated, chart-topping American legal thriller novelist, essayist, and former corporate trial lawyer whose high-stakes suspense fiction has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in English literature, studying contemporary American literature under legendary novelist Philip Roth, before earning her Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She clerked for the President Judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania and built a highly successful early career in corporate litigation before resigning from the bar to follow her full-time literary ambition. Scottoline vaulted into national publishing prominence with her 1993 debut thriller, Everywhere That Mary Went, which introduced the world to the fictional all-female Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates and secured an Edgar Award nomination. She cemented her status as a powerhouse architect of legal suspense by winning the prestigious 1995 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original for her second novel, Final Appeal. Renowned for her lightning-fast pacing, deep institutional procedural knowledge, and emotionally resonant themes of family bonds, her extensive bibliography spans dozens of consecutive New York Times bestsellers, including Look Again, Don't Go, and her acclaimed historical fiction epics, Eternal and Loyalty. Moving seamlessly from grit to comedy, she co-authored a beloved, long-running humorous non-fiction column and essay book series—including I See Life Through Rosé-Colored Glasses—alongside her daughter, bestselling novelist Francesca Serritella. She enters a blockbuster new chapter by launching a massive, 25-city international media book tour in support of her highly anticipated July 2026 thriller release, The Longest Night—a pulse-pounding courtroom drama centered around a locked-room federal conspiracy that critics hail as her most complex legal maze to date.