The Trials of Lila Dalton

The Trials of Lila Dalton

By L. J. Shepherd

Courts are like theatres, full of secret passages and drawn curtains.
Mirroring the public-facing part of the building is the secret half
where they keep the judges and jurors. Only the ushers are allowed
in both halves; everyone else is confined to their side, only ever
meeting in the courtroom.

Lila Dalton stands in a courtroom. Twelve strangers are staring back at her.
She has no idea who she is or how she got there. She is tasked with defending
the man in the dock before her a mass murderer. Lila tries to escape, only to find
that the court building is on Assumption Island; an offshore territory in the middle
of the ocean dedicated to the prosecution and imprisonment of domestic terrorists
and foreign criminals. It becomes clear that the man in the docks isnt the only
innocence she has to prove to be able to escape the island. But someone is sending
Lila cryptic notes. Who is the enigmatic woman whom Lila only ever catches
glimpses of? What has the man in the dock done? And who can you trust when
all around you is a labyrinth of lies?

The Pines meets a touch of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in this
innovative and brilliantly creepy dystopian debut that builds to a shocking
and unexpected conclusion.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Praise

 'A mind-blowing, audaciously inventive thriller' -Chris Whittaker

'A strikingly clever debut. A high concept legal thriller which grips from the first page, and never lets up' -Guy Morpuss

'Unputdownable' -Sophie Hannah

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

L. J. Shepherd lives in Cardiff with her rescue cat, Coral. She studied English Literature
at Christ Church, Oxford. After graduating, she decided to pursue a career in law.
While studying to become a barrister, she taught martial arts on a part-time basis.
When she had time, she wouldwrite. She began practising as a barrister in 2017,
and has enjoyed a mixed practice. The most dubious of pleasures, however, has been
in googling her name + Crown Court and discovering the imaginative array of headlines
awarded to her cases. As ever, the comments section is where the real intrigue lies.