Charles Joseph Greaves was born and raised in Levittown, NY. He is an honors graduate of both the University of Southern California and Boston College Law School who spent 25 years as a trial lawyer in Los Angeles before moving to Santa Fe in 2006 to focus on a writing career. He was a frequent contributor of feature articles to Los Angeles Lawyer magazine, on whose editorial board he sat. His debut novel HUSH MONEY, a legal thriller, was honored by SouthWest Writers in their International Writing Contest as the Best Mystery, Suspense, Thriller or Adventure Novel of 2010. His second novel HARD TWISTED, a work of literary and historical fiction, was honored by SouthWest Writers as the Best Historical Novel of 2010. The novels, both still in manuscript, finished first and second overall, out of over 680 contest entrants, for SWW's grand-prize Storyteller Award. HUSH MONEY, the first installment in a series of legal mysteries, will be published by Minotaur Books in May of 2012. HARD TWISTED will be published by Bloomsbury in November of 2012. For more information, please visit www.chuckgreaves.com.

Advance praise for HUSH MONEY:

"Take John D. MacDonnald's Travis McGee, Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware, and the best of John Grisham's protagonists, shake and serve, and you'll have the hero of Hush Money. Chuck Greaves has written a confident, cool and totally engrossing legal thriller with the pop and sizzle of some of the greats of the genre. It's a hell of a debut." CHELSEA CAIN, New York Times bestselling thriller writer.

"[A] stellar first novel." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (Starred Review)

"Superbly written and paced, this sensational legal thriller reads like a polished jewel. Set in the Mercedes and Rolex horse show world, Greaves sports a smoking new voice in crime fiction . . . Hush Money's riveting characters and snappy dialogue round out a smashingly memorable first effort. Chuck Greaves has major writing chops." JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING, bestselling author