A Time to Kill (Penguin Graded Readers Level 5)

With over 55 million of his books currently in print worldwide, John Grisham has been described as “the bestselling novelist of the 90s”. A Time to Kill is his first novel. The story is set in the southern states of the USA, where the Ku Klux Klan still meet and racial tension can still run high.

It begins with the vicious rape of a ten-year-old black girl by two white men. They are quickly arrested and charged. However, things then get more complicated. The girl's father, Carl Lee Hailey plans the murder of the two rapists and shoots and kills them in the town courthouse. He is sentenced to death. Jake Brigance, an ambitious young lawyer, agrees to defend Carl Lee. Can he possibly get Carl Lee off? Does Carl Lee deserve to go free? The Ku Klux Klan certainly don't think so. The attention of all of America is focused
on the trial . . .

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