The Well Bookshop
Jake Brigance · Book 1

A Time to Kill

by John Grisham
Published
1 January 1989
Pages
515
ISBN-13
9780385470810
Type
novel
Buy on Amazon All Jake Brigance books in order
Cover of A Time to Kill

About this book

A Time to Kill is the novel that launches John Grisham's Jake Brigance series, first published in 1989, running 515 pages. It precedes Sycamore Row in the reading order. The series has run continuously since 1989.

Key facts about A Time to Kill

A Time to Kill is a novel by John Grisham. Readers have had it since 1989. It runs to 515 pages.

Our list holds 3 editions of A Time to Kill. Since each edition has its own ISBN, search for 9780385470810 to find the main one.

A Time to Kill is book 1 of 4 in the Jake Brigance series. The series has 4 published books. As a result, this is the book to start the series with. Homecoming (in Sparring Partners) is the latest book in the series with a full release date, out on 31 May 2022.

Additionally, John Grisham writes Theodore Boone and Camino Island as separate series. Those series sit on our legal thriller, middle grade and mystery shelves. Meanwhile, The Widow is the latest published John Grisham book on file, from October 2025.

About John Grisham

John Grisham is an American author widely credited with popularizing the modern legal thriller, having sold hundreds of millions of books across a career built on tightly plotted stories of lawyers, courtrooms, and corporate or criminal conspiracy. See every John Grisham book in order.

Its place in Jake Brigance

A Time to Kill is book 1 in the Jake Brigance series. It is followed by Sycamore Row. See the full Jake Brigance reading order.

Jake Brigance is a small-town Mississippi defense attorney in fictional Ford County who keeps taking on the cases no one else will touch — cases that force his town, and the reader, to confront race, class, and the limits of the justice system in the Deep South. John Grisham's very first novel, A Time to Kill (1989), introduced Brigance defending a Black father who killed the white men who raped his ten-year-old daughter, and the two sequels return to Brigance and Ford County decades later — a bitterly contested…

Editions

Last updated